The 2011 Emmy nominations for "Outstanding Main Title Design" have just been announced and some familiar faces (and studios) are back with more outstanding work.

"Winter is coming." —Lord Eddard Stark

A fiery astrolabe orbits high above a world not our own; its massive Cardanic structure sinuously coursing around a burning center, vividly recounting an unfamiliar history through a series of heraldic tableaus emblazoned upon it. An intricate map is brought into focus, as if viewed through some colossal looking glass by an unseen custodian. Cities and towns rise from the terrain, their mechanical growth driven by the gears of politics and the cogs of war.

From the spires of King's Landing and the godswood of Winterfell, to the frozen heights of The Wall and windy plains across the Narrow Sea, Elastic's thunderous cartographic flight through the Seven Kingdoms offers the uninitiated a sweeping education in all things Game of Thrones.

What promises did our ancestors fulfill and what lunacy did they survive? What historic, phantasmagorical travels did they wheedle and render throughout? ...And in a breath we realize that reasons for exorcists exist within. German Expressionist-American newsreels and tarot currency pushing an otherworldly balance that is at once hyper real and not untrue. And you get to float through it all, like the pilot of the first zeppelin or the character in the head of young Bruegel the Elder.