Game of Thrones artists modeled the dragons off a chicken

Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons are among the most fearsome creatures in the Game of Thrones universe, give or take Cersei Lannister after she’s had a few. They fight over the corpses of dead animals while in mid-air, flash-fry Astaporian slavers extra crispy, and have become so difficult to control that Daenerys was forced to lock two of them in a deep dark dungeon at the end of last season. However, in an interview with the Washington Post, special effects studio Pixomondo revealed that the design of the dragons was originally based off a chicken, a revelation that may render them slightly less terrifying.

Pixomondo, which has worked on the show since  its second season, maintains a team of between 22 and 30 people devoted entirely to bringing the dragons to life. When initially tasked with designing them, visual effects supervisor Sven Martin figured that a chicken would make a good point of reference and picked one up at a nearby grocery store.

“I was looking for an animal so we can really discover how the muscles underneath should work,” Martin said. “I called over all the animators and they all had to just play with the chicken … You could feel how the muscles underneath are moving and what are the restrictions, where the bone can’t go. We built our dragon basically the same way.”

So basically, imagine a roomful of animators manhandling a chicken, becoming suddenly inspired, and spitting out the 3-D model for Drogon shortly thereafter.

There were other points of reference. As Martin explains, the dragons looked most like chickens during season 2, when they were “standing around just doing little steps.” Chickens, of course, cannot fly over long distances, so Pixomondo had to alter the designs for future seasons, specifically by making the breast muscles look strong enough to enable flight. As the dragons evolved, the animators also took inspiration from the dinosaur that sprayed Newman with death goo in Jurassic Park.

Martin also noted that “The dragons had to become a little bit more aggressive overall, a little bit more like guard dogs, so it was important that they have a big difference between their demure pose when they’re just calm near [Daenerys], but very aggressive with a big showoff when there was someone attacking their mother. The threatening pose was something we wanted to show a lot.”

If the trailers for Season 5 are any indication, the dragons seem none too please with Daenerys’ decision to lock them up. If they get too aggressive, she can just repeat to herself, “They’re just big chickens,” over and over.

• Published on 03/20/2015 at 1:30 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:06 PM CDT