Game of Thrones – The Training Session

Game of Thrones – The Training Session

The random factor of this exercise has given me the first appearance of two point of view characters in a row this week.

Things are looking up.

So today we get to see Jon Snow in his first training bout at Castle Black. One thing I’ve found interesting about Game of Thrones is it feels like it spends a lot of its time masquerading as a young adult adventure novel. This sets us up to be shocked when we realize how wrong that perception is.

Based on that, I find that this chapter provides us with an interesting feint. When criticizing Jon, Alliser Thorne actually has a good point, there is no grandstanding in a real battle. Because of this, we briefly mistake him for a grumpy but fair mentor. We only realize how much of a sadistic asshole he is later.

Finally, some design thoughts I had for this picture is how I intend to handle Castle Black, and Winterfell as well. Even though it’s hinted that a lot of the dates in the background are exaggerated, Castle Black is old. So old it occurs to me it should have a completely different style of architecture from more of the classic castles down south. So I gave it cyclopeaan walls as a foundation, with more more medieval bits added later.