You’re well known as a comic artist. How did you get into storyboarding? 

By complete fluke. I was asked by a low-budget feature film director if I would be interested in storyboarding his movie 24 Hours in London, purely on the basis of my comics work. I’d never done it before, but I thought, how hard can it be? I’ll give it a go. I was doing them at home and faxing them over, and they’d get them two days before they were going to shoot a scene, which is a weird way of doing it, I later discovered.

Once I found out I enjoyed it, I got involved in a couple of short films that were being made in Ireland. The big mistake was going down on set one day, and when I went I realised that I actually really enjoyed this business. Free sandwiches, free beer and being able to do some artwork – fantastic. 

How did Game of Thrones come about? 

At the start of the last decade the comics industry was contracting, so I ended up doing more storyboards for advertising and animation, and things like costume design and prop art. I did films, too. I worked on the Spike Milligan story Puckoon and [fantasy dragon epic] Reign of Fire. 

I was working on the film Your Highness and a producer friend asked me to do a bit of work, although I didn’t even know what it was for. It was just weekend work, concept art of things like castles, which were then sent off to HBO. We got it, and when Your Highness finished I was straight into doing concept ideas and storyboards for the Game of Thrones pilot. 

What did creating the concept art for Game of Thrones involve?

At first I was working closely with the head concept designer, the supervising art director and the set dresser. There was some work with costume too, but that was mostly ideas for the costume department to think about. Like, the producers asked me to do versions of the Hound’s costume and helmet that would then go into the mix with the costume people’s work.

I was also designing all the weaponry at that stage, so things like Arya’s sword Needle – Jon Snow’s sword – Longclaw, I designed all of these and the armour to go with them. Then things like Cercei’s carriage, the Godswood trees, the first versions of the White Walkers, the three-eyed raven. A lot of it’s about interesting concept points, for example a painting of Dany in the flames with the dragons hatching (which happened at the end of the first series), just to get us all thinking about what this could ultimately be. 

I’ve storyboarded all four seasons – the first three completely by myself, but last year they thought there was going to be an excess so they go another guy in. We’re due to go back for the fifth in June. 

And what about the storyboarding? 

First I sit down with the scripts myself, and then it’s a case of talking to the directors and working through their ideas, then you produce the artwork. Some directors will give you a free hand on stuff and others are meticulous about what they need, so you have to adapt. There are no camera angles in the script. When you’re talking to a director he may want certain things in there, but other times you’ll make these choices yourself.

Once I know what I’m doing and why I’m doing it I go away into my room and get on with the drawings. It’s like a comic strip, you sit down and work through these images to make sure you’ve got a clarity that anyone can understand. There are a lot of notes and changes, but you don’t need a thick skin because you understand that’s part of the development of the piece. Nothing’s set in stone. You may draw all these pictures but there’s no guarantee they’re going to be shot.

Where do you work?

I’m in the office at the production base, although occasionally I’ll go over to set, especially if a new location’s been built. I do everything on paper, which makes me quite old-school. It all goes into the computer eventually, of course, but a lot of the guys on the team do everything using tablets. I say tablets are for taking, not drawing on. 

In Focus: Storyboarding the Ice Wall climb from season 3 

There are some complete scenes I was given a free hand in to break down myself, and one of them was the Ice Wall climb, when Jon Snow’s going up the wall with the Wildlings.

Our director Alik Sakharov hadn’t been over it yet, so I did a breakdown of shots with a note of a few things I knew the line producer needed, and I went away and storyboarded the whole thing.

Alik was very pleased with it and he shot it pretty much as is.

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Main image: HBO. Other images courtesy of William Simpson.