As we mentioned a few days ago, season seven of Game of Thrones was nominated by the Art Directors Guild Awards. We gave the show a good chance to win — and it did!
Game of Thrones was nominated in the ‘One-Hour Period or Fantasy Single-Camera Series’ category, with the episodes “Dragonstone,” “The Queen’s Justice” and “Eastwatch” representing the show. It competed with A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Crown, Mindhunter and Stranger Things, all of them period dramas (or timeless black comedy-dramas, in the case of Lemony Snicket’s adaptation) and, we can all agree, worthy competitors. In the end, however, Deborah Riley’s art direction won the day!
Deborah Riley accepts honor at #ADGAwards for Game of Thrones. pic.twitter.com/HHwb5Fjk6p
— Peter Caranicas (@petercaranicas) January 28, 2018
At the Art Directors Guild event, Riley accepted the award for her marvelous production design, which was one of the highlights of season seven. You should really take a look at the design presentation Game of Thrones submitted to the ADG Awards. We have seen some of this concept art before, but there is never before seen artwork as well!
This is Game of Thrones‘ fifth win — though not consecutively. For seasons two and three, it won the ‘One-Hour Single Camera Series’ award, which later bifurcated into a contemporary series award and a period or fantasy series award, which the show won in seasons four and five. Then, however, season six was taken over by Westworld, which was duly celebrated at our sister site. But this year Game of Thrones returns to the top!
Congratulations, Deborah Riley and everyone involved with the art department!
I believe the work done by Deb and her team is unmatched and the award is well deserved. In watching “from imagination to reality”, u get an understanding of the volume of work done and how much they enjoy the challenge. Be it film or television, only GOT, Westworld and Christopher Nolan films put in so much effort to keep cgi to a minimum were possible.
Glad to hear that. Congrats to Deborah Riley and GoT on winning the award 🙂
well done Game of thrones art department!
Just to clear something up, Karakter primarily do the vfx concepts. It’s just Philipp Scherer from Karakter who joined the art department for season 7. All the other concept artists in the art department are freelancers
Always a thrill to read how the industry reacts to and rewards the amazing creativity associated with this show. Congrats again, Ms. Riley!
Speaking of art, the 2018 ASoI&F calendar has put forth some images that don’t necessarily get highlighted because they are derivations of book stuff. I was pleasantly surprised that January’s image depicts Val (!) and a pregnant Dalla (!!). (Oh, how I wish Val had a role to play in GoT!) Given the possible baby-related threads in S8 (for Cersei and Dany, as well as Jon’s royal story) it’s great to be reminded of the other mysterious baby threads out there. 🙂
Good, good, double good, yeah.
Onedon,
I don’t know anything really about the use of CGI and how little/how much they use it, but I had to comment on this. GoT, Westworld, and Christopher Nolan movies are just about my favorite things to watch, so maybe there is a trend with this. These two shows (along with Fargo) and Nolan’s movies are my favorite projects, cinematically speaking. They always have beautiful and epic shots that are unmatched with anything else I’ve seen.
It definitely helps that these shows and movies have some of the most intricate and elaborate plots and have a great “epic” feeling to them, which coupled with their cinematography, makes for some awesome television and film. But maybe I’m just a fanboy.