SINGAPORE — It takes a special kind of person to turn visions into visuals. The stunning scenes in the hit television series Game Of Thrones (GOT) wouldn’t be what they were without the show’s lead storyboard artist, William Simpson.

The Northern Irish artist - who got his start in comics books (Aliens, Batman, Transformers and Judge Dredd) and later created storyboards and concept art for films (Byzantium, Your Highness and City Of Ember) - has been working on GOT since it started in 2011.

Just what is a storyboard artist? These people work closely with the directors to translate their ideas into sketches as they “visualise what (directors) want with the camera so it’s clear to directors of photography and everybody else who’s involved in the shoot”, said Simpson.

“If we do things with CGI elements, we need to make sure we’ve drawn up a sequence so that we know which shots are going to cost an awful lot of money and which shots aren’t,” he added. “What you end up trying to do is to find the best way to portray a particular sequence in a way that is in keeping with the script but is also easy to do. It’s important to save your money for the really, really big moments of the show.”

Those moments, as GOT fans would know, occur regularly, what with battles, beheadings and fire-breathing dragons thrown into the mix. But it’s the spooky white walkers that hold a special place in Simpson’s heart.

“Because they were going to be a main part of the story even though we only see them briefly, it was probably my favourite thing to conceptualise,” he said.

“We haven’t moved that far away from what the original art ideas were. “I was basing my stuff more on George’s (the novelist George R R Martin) descriptions in his books because at that stage we just really didn’t know what was going to work for the show.”

Other proud moments for Simpson include the ice climb with Jon Snow (“you should see the boards, they are very detailed”), the riot against Joffrey and the attack on Sansa.

Even though it’s not necessary for his drawings to resemble the show’s actors, it helps to know who they are. “You have their images in your mind when you sit down and try to draw things, and it’s almost like you want to get something of their approach to acting into your characters when you’re drawing them,” said Simpson. “We know how these people move, how they react, how they should be on screen.”

It complicates things a bit when the actor hasn’t been cast for a role: Simpson drew the storyboards for the Battle of Blackwater Bay before Liam Cunningham had been cast as Ser Davos Seaworth. The original sketch featured a “pretty hairy guy ... a long-haired, seafaring, Conan-type character”. “And of course, when you see who the actor is – he hardly has any hair. I couldn’t change the drawings so I just went on with my version of the character.”

What happens to the storyboards after the scenes have been shot? Well, you won’t be able to find them on eBay: Simpson hangs on to them. If he didn’t, “these things would be snapped up and dragged off by the lighting guys and the drivers or different people walking around the place”, he said. “I know there are a few (prop) chairs that have gone into people’s back gardens,” he added.

So, don’t hope to cop some GOT sketches from Simpson’s desk. “You may find scribbles lying around my floor, but they’re probably of Batman.”

Encore broadcasts of the fourth season of Game Of Thrones happen on July 12 and July 13, five episodes per day from noon onwards on HBO Signature (StarHub TV Ch 603).