Imaginary worlds and battles for the power for the conquest of the throne in a convoluted game of power which creates alliances and conflicts between the noble families of the city. We are speaking of the series which has held everyone with bated breath, in suspense to know who will finally win the so wanted throne of swords: Game of Thrones.
Every watcher has his or her preferred character and theory, but certainly we can all agree on how spectacular the dragons of Daenerys are. That is why at Viking a gigantic origami style dragon was commissioned, inspired from this saga: a piece of work which was assembled in the office during the weekend, so as to surprise everybody on Monday morning. In a good 110 hours of work and 1,200 pieces of A4 paper.
The dragon, created entirely of paper, is almost 13 metres long, 2.80 metres high and has a wing span of 6 metres.
A dragon with 1,200 pieces of paper
It was all possible thanks to the genius of Andy Singleton, a paper artist know through the world for his work for Burberry, Kensington Palace, Play Station, Harrods and many others and who is also, himself, a fan of Game of Thrones.
For Andy the task of creating a large-scale dragon was a challenge, even though he was used to working on large items. He used a technique of incision and folding to sculpt the paper and layering to create shape. He started with free sketches to develop the structure and then a few more detailed drawings to develop the design and approach to the creation. Once the outlines were finished, he created a scale model, a step which also helped him to understand how to create the internal support for the large-scale sculpture, which risked collapsing under the weight. Once the model had been made on a reduced scale, it was time to start the large-scale creation, which required about 10 days and the equivalent of 1,200 pieces of A4 paper.
Andy selected pieces of special paper to replicate the texture of the scales of the dragon. The first part made was the head which is about a metre and a half long. Once finished, he could work on the rest: he made the shape of the tail on large-scale, so as to be able to calculate the approximate total length of the piece. The following step was to create the structure of the frame to support the whole.
But what will happen to it? Don’t worry, so much paper will not be wasted. The dragon will be donated to a school.