Dragon Tail #2 For This Month! This One Is Also Anodized Aluminum. Its Got A Purple Diamondback Pattern

Dragon tail #2 for this month! This one is also anodized aluminum. It’s got a purple diamondback pattern over black, with a standard aluminum underbelly. Also a line of chrome spikes down the spine. The tail measures in at 34 inches long and 3 lb 12 oz.

I’ve got a couple days’ downtime now while I wait for more rings to arrive, then I’ll continue working on #3! I’m doing so much chainmail this month. I’ve torn through 2 TV shows on my Netflix queue already.

I’ve been re-learning to code! Here are some spiral experiments I was toying with.

I use Rhino for all my 3D modeling at work and for crafting, and the most recent update to the Mac version brought in a Python scripting environment. Back in college I’d done some stuff in Visual Basic (which was what Rhino had available at the time), and had made some fun stuff, but I hadn’t been able to do much of that nature for a few years.

I’ve been working through some tutorials to get the hang of the language, but this little guy is the first thing I coded on my own in Python. Basically it just takes a starting object, rotates it around an origin by the golden angle (137.5°), scales it by a percentage, drops out a copy and then repeats. I was inspired by work by John Edmark at Stanford who makes 3D printed spiraling blooming sculptures that animate. So for the 3D versions I added a rotation of the spiraled object as a basic variation to toy with. For the near future I’ll probably just use the flat version to cut or engrave patterns into surfaces, but who knows, maybe I’ll have some ideas I’m excited about enough to have them 3D printed.

For people who’re curious, here’s the short little script I wrote that does the spiraling, rotating the spiraled object, and also alternates between 3 colors. If you’ve got Rhino, feel free to copy it, modify it, make your own stuff using it, whatever you like. It’s not very clean code anyway. Code after the break:

import rhinoscriptsyntax as rs

obj = rs.GetObjects("Pick objects to spiral-array.") cen = rs.GetPoint("Pick center point.") rep = rs.GetInteger("How many copies?") scale = rs.GetReal("Pick a scale factor (ideally close to 1.0)")

phi = 137.508 #that's the golden angle. def spiral(input, center, angle, scale, i):    if i == 0:        rs.CopyObjects(input)    temp = rs.RotateObjects(input, center, angle)    temp = rs.ScaleObjects(temp, center, [scale,scale,scale])    output = rs.CopyObjects(temp)    #output the un-modified template, fed to the next iteration.    #then start to modify it according to the iteration number.    #each iteration's modified version is just dropped from temp.    cenpoint = rs.SurfaceAreaCentroid(input)    temp = rs.RotateObjects(input, cenpoint[0], i*2)    if i%3 == 0:        rs.ObjectColor(temp,[255,0,0])    elif i%3 == 1:        rs.ObjectColor(temp,[0,255,0])    else:        rs.ObjectColor(temp, [0,0,255])    return output #pass it a template object, do the scaling and moving to that object, #and pass it to the next step, but to modify the individual seeds, just #tweak and drop out the objects without worrying too much about keeping #track of them.

working = obj for i in range(0, rep):    working = spiral(working, cen, phi, scale, i)

These cuddling dragon tails are just here to advertise that I’m open for dragon tail commission requests! I’ll be closing the window for requests at the end of Thursday.

For full info, check my informational page here: http://armoreddragon.tumblr.com/tails And if you’d like a tail, fill out this form here: https://goo.gl/forms/n9rmkT8WcM14H0fB2

First completed tail with a floof on the tip! I really like how it turned out. I’ll add this as an option on my info page once I work out the details a bit more.

This one came in at 33 inches long from the top of the belt loops to the tip of the floof, and weighs 2 lbs 12 oz. The tail is in pink anodized aluminum.

Finally put ears on this dog mask/pup hood! 

This was a prototype/first run at making a mask in this style, with snout in front and buckles in back. It worked out pretty well, and I think the buckle arrangement looks pretty clean. The snout and ears both detach with snaps, which felt like it was a good way to start thinking about modularity. And there’s enough room in the eye area that it fits on over my glasses, which I think is pretty cool. The snout is open at the bottom, which is pretty comfortable, but the snout is deep enough that it doesn’t really expose the chin very much. And the base structure should be able to support different types of snouts.

The only thing I’m a little bit skeptical of is the ears. I wanted to try a minimalist construction, and it seems to work with just 2 points of attachment (which pivot too, being snaps). But the shape is maintained by stress in the curved segment between the snaps, and I’ll have to see how that holds up when the ears get bonked. But if it does need some adjusting, they’re removable, so that’s easy.

The next mask I make with this structure I’m going to adjust how the straps attach to the mask. Here they’re just riveted directly to the mask. Next time I’ll attach D-rings to the mask and attach the straps to those. That’ll let them pivot around that point, rather than needing to be lined up to point in just the right direction. 

Mask was made by hand from 4 oz vegetable-tanned leather, stained black. I’ll finish it with neatsfoot oil, which’ll darken it up a bit more and make the surface a bit more supple. Rivets and snaps are nickel-plated steel.

Question for you; would you be able to take what youre doing for the tails and apply it to a pair of gauntlets for one to wear? Preferable something nice and durable for daily wear?

Sadly, I don’t currently have a good way of making scale gauntlets. The reason has to do with the particulars of how the scales get linked together. They look good when the material is under tension vertically, but horizontal tension makes it stretch out in a weird-looking way. For gauntlets, you really want the scales pointing down towards your hand, but that means that the material is under horizontal tension. So it just doesn’t work very well.

A solution to this could be to attach the scale maille down onto a sheet of leather, but I haven’t worked that out yet.

I would probably point you towards someone who knits with scales added in. Here’s someone on Etsy who makes some nice scale gauntlets using that method: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Crystalsidyll?section_id=6132040