Westeros

Just as with the early look at Loras Tyrell’s armor last season, this video has to be one of my favorite’s so far, focusing as it does on Simon Brindle’s armor design for HBO’s Game of Thrones. Here’s the video:

And Game of Thrones scores yet another nomination in a guild award, this time from the Art Directors Guild. The award is handed out to production designers for their work on a single episode, and in this case production designer Gemma Jackson and episode 6, “A Golden Crown”, are featured.

HBO’s show joins sibling show Boardwalk Empire, as well as Pan Am, American Horror Story, and The Playboy Club. The awards ceremony will be held in Bevery Hills on February 4th. Congratulations to Ms. Jackson and the production team, and good luck!

Back in December, we shared the fact that HBO’s Game of Thrones was up in a number of categories for TV.com’s Best of 2011 awards, which are voted on by the public. The results are now in—and the show did quite well, capturing Best New Series and Best Drama series, reaching the #2 spot in three other categories (Best Dramatic Actor, Best Kid Character, and Biggest Badass). Another feather in the cap for the show and its cast!

Some time after midnight, and still quite awake, Linda had the idea that perhaps we should get around to recording a new Westeros.org video... and what better topic to discuss than the chapter from The Winds of Winter that George released as a holiday gift for his readers.

It’s sparked quite a lot of discussion on the forum, and in our 15 minutes of video we just touch on several of the more discussed topics. Hope you like it! And apologies for the quick sign off—we only just discovered afterwards that Youtube had graciously allowed us to record videos longer than 15 minutes. Which means we can be more expansive in the future.

Suffice it to say, there will be spoilers!

Ted Nasmith, one of the “Big Three” Tolkien artists (along with John Howe and Alan Lee), turned his hand to depicting castles of the Seven Kingdoms for the World of Ice and Fire worldbook, which ended up being published in the 2011 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar. But that was, we knew, not the last work of his we would be seeing for the world book… not least when it was announced that he had been hired to produce the art for the new limited edition of A Game of Thrones.

So it was with some pleasure that it was pointed out by Finnish fan raijap that there was a new entry in his gallery of George R.R. Martin. It is, I think, now one of my very favorite depictions of the Wall, right up there with his Castle Black painting. I believe this piece is also intended for the World of Ice and Fire.

Over at Not a Blog, George R.R. Martin revealed that he had a holiday gift up on his site for fans: the first sample chapter from The Winds of Winter, the sixth novel in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series! A very pleasant surprise, to say the least, and it has some juicy details that hint towards some of the upcoming events Martin has hinted at.

Although this is the first sample chapter he’s posted at his official website, he has read one chapter at a convention, a detailed report and discussion of which can be found at the A Song of Ice and Fire forum.

It goes without saying that there are spoilers. For extensive discussion and speculation, see this thread over at Westeros.org’s A Song of Ice and Fire forum.

Today, two columnists for the UK’s The Guardian newspaper have named HBO’s A Game of Thrones among 2011’s best dramas (as well they should)... but it was a third article referencing A Game of Thrones that caught our attention.

Irish correspondent Henry McDonald writes that the Northern Irish film industry is “booming”, and that it’s fuelled predominantly by HBO’s series choosing to film there. It’s an interesting look at the industry side of things, and some impressive numbers are thrown around.

And then, at the end, this:

Selected for the TIME 100, named one of EW’s entertainers of the year, and so on and so forth—it’s been a banner year for George R.R. Martin and his “A Song of Ice and Fire” series. And as we come to the close of 2011, another plaudit: USA Today has named Martin their Author of the Year, citing the booming popularity of the novels and the success of HBO’s adaptation. Congratulations to GRRM!

USA Today has been quite interested in the series, having published a cover feature back in July just before A Dance with Dragons hit the shelves.

Amazon.com is offering quite a few deals on downloadable games, and this one caught our eye: A Game of Thrones: Genesis from Cyanide Studio for just $10, a 75% saving!

For those who don’t mind paying more and prefer Steam, the game is also available there at a more modest 50% off as part of the Steam daily holiday sales. The Steam sale price ends tomorrow, but we’re not sure how long the Amazon.com sale lasts.

Atlus USA doesn’t do things by halves. Yesterday saw the release of this trailer for Cyanide Studio‘s Game of Thrones: The Roleplaying Game (preorder: XBox, PS3), combined with heaps of new information coming out of Paris thanks to Focus Home Interactive (the European publisher)... but it turns out that Atlus had more up its sleeve.

First, here’s a trailer ocused on the Wall, and features James Cosmo as Lord Commander Mormont and some bloody action when wildlings attack:

But wait, there’s more!

We’ve already posted extensively about the single-player Game of Thrones: The Roleplaying Game, and we’ve also reported on the development of a licensed MMO and Facebook social game.

However, for various reasons, some fans have been disappointed, having really hoped a really large, well-known studio tackled the license. But not necessarily for lack of interest. EA and Bethesda have considered it at some point… and now we learn that BioWare did as well.

Like clockwork, yesterday’s post with detailed information regarding the officially licensed Game of Thrones: The Roleplaying Game has been followed up with the serendipitous arrival of a two minute long trailer, which you can see embedded below courtesy of German gaming site GameStar:

And that’s not all, folks, because it turns out that French site Fantasy.fr was also present at the presentation in Paris… and got to record it! See below for those videos, which show off some of the gameplay and cutscenes and locations, and a synopsis of additional details from them. Note that the video presentation is all in French.

This past Saturday, HBO snuck out a brand new behind the scenes video that, so far, has been exclusive to HBO and HBO On Demand. However, it’s wormed its way out there to the Internet, and we thought we’d share it with fans. Lots of neat bits—including our most extensive glimpses of Brienne of Tarth, Melisandre of Asshai, and Stannis Baratheon, three of the primary characters added to this season (don’t worry, there’s a bit of Davos as well!)

We’ve already captured key images for our Behind the Scenes gallery, starting here with this image of Audley’s Castle which serves as the location of Robb Stark’s war camp. As usual, we identify characters and locations, and discuss various details that may be of interest.

We should note that, technically, some of these shots might be considered spoilers—so if you really don’t want to know anything about what’s going to be happening next season, best skip it.

This is nifty. With the end of the year on us, Random House—the largest publisher in the world, of whom Bantam is a subsidiary—posted its list of best-selling ebooks in various categories. And if you scroll down to the top-selling science fiction and fantasy titles…

Well, it starts to feel a bit deja vu-like, because the first six entries are all A Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R.R. Martin—A Game of Thrones followed by A Dance with Dragons, then A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and A Feast for Crows rounding out the top 5… and the four-volume e-book set holding the #6 spot. Rather dominating, to say the least!

This past Thursday, the French media received the first official presentation of Cyanide Studio‘s Game Of Thrones: The Role-Playing Game (published by Atlus in the US and by Focus Home Interactive in Europe).

Some members from the French George R.R. Martin fan site called La Garde de Nuit were invited to attend, and have prepared the following report, which LGdN’s Evrach sent to us in translated form with permission to repost (many thanks to him, and LGdN!):