Check out some of the concept art behind Game of Thrones Season 5

Karakter, a German design studio, has been working with HBO on Game of Thrones since the show began—it even won three straight Emmys for Outstanding Visual Effects for its contributions on the show. Recently, the studio released some of the concept designs it did for Game of Thrones Season 5, and they are breathtaking. Take a look.

That would be Wun Wun the giant bursting out of the hut where Jon and the wildlings held their summit meeting. The Massacre at Hardhome was obviously an effects-heavy sequence in Season 5, so it’s featured in several of the images.

Behold some concept illustrations for the wights. The wight children are never not going to be deeply unsettling, are they?

Doubtlessly, the sequence in Daznak’s Pit also required a lot of work at the concept stage. Daznak’s Pit was one of the areas for which Karakter designed a fully three-dimensional space, which allowed directors to try out camera angles and provided templates for further pre-production work. This was the first year Karakter tried something like this. If the opinion of VFX supervisor Joe Bauer counts for anything, it won’t be the last. “You wouldn’t believe how useful these 3D models were,” he said.

Also, I like how the designers at Karakter put Dany in the blue dress she wore for pretty much the entirety of Seasons 3 and 4—how were they to know that she would ditch it for a bunch of white gowns in Season 5?

Head over to Karakter’s website for more beautiful images, including additional shots of the Massacre at Hardhome and the chaos at Daznak’s Pit. The studio has also posted the concept art behind areas in Braavos, the Great Sept of Baelor, the Eyrie, and Castle Stokeworth. And if that’s not enough, you’re also free to look at some of the work they did on past seasons. Really, you could easily spend an afternoon gazing slack-jawed at this stuff.

H/T Kotaku

• Published on 07/28/2015 at 1:00 PM CDT
• Last updated on 07/28/2015 at 1:01 PM CDT