This Dragon Tail Has A Fading Amber Color Pattern. It's Composed Of Actual Bronze Down The Center, Blending

This dragon tail has a fading amber color pattern. It's composed of actual bronze down the center, blending into brown and orange anodized aluminum. The underbelly is standard uncolored aluminum. Also featured in the design is a full like of spikes down the spine.

The bronze when it's new is a shiny-penny copper color, and over time it oxidizes to a more matte and muted brown. I like the material a good amount, and I'm glad the commissioner for this was also excited about it. I don't get much chance to use the material.

I'm including the pattern I drew up for this coloration, in case people are curious. I'll also see about getting someone to model it before I ship it out, because I really liked the blend of colors on this tail and I'd like to get more photos.

Is there a way you could make a core to the dragon tails so you could move it the way you want? Like if you didn't want it swinging around so much or if you're being still but still want the tail to move.

In theory yes, but not yet.

Years ago I had a basic idea for a way that I could make my tails move on their own, involving some motors and some stiff cables that ran the length of the tail. But motors and things like that are not things I have any experience with, and life is busy, and I never worked actively on it.

But sometime last year I saw a kickstarter for some people making animatronic tails, and they seemed to be doing it in basically the same way I had figured would work. I was excited. They were offering them with fur coverings like cats and dogs or what have you, but I got one that was just the mechanism and control box so I could at some point build a tail of my own around it.

But life has been busy, and I haven't gotten around to making it yet. Eventually I will, and once it's worked out I'll surely make it available for commissioners.

If people are curious, here's the website for the people who made the animatronic tails: http://thetail.co/

This dragon tail is made of white painted aluminum, a material I hadn't had much chance to experiment with before. It claims to be a sturdy automotive paint, and it definitely has a storm trooper sort of feel to it. Personally, I'd been a bit hesitant to make much with it, because I don't really trust paint on metal, but it seems durable enough, and I sent some sample scales to the commissioner and she was cool with them.

The tail is a pretty short one, at only 24 inches long. It's also got a line of spikes down the spine.

If you're curious about these tails I make, check out this page with information about them: http://armoreddragon.tumblr.com/tails

Chandelier Saga Part 3: Assembly

And here's the exciting part--putting everything together!

We have:

Pieces being cut on the laser cutter

Treating all the wood with flame-retardant

Sorting all the pieces back out (I etched a label on every piece so this would be feasible.)

Beginning to construct the skin, expanding radially from the bottom center

Assembling the parts for the support structure, along with getting the bulb sockets in place.

Attaching the substructure into the skin

Testing it out (and replacing the bulb that released the magic smoke)

Moving it upstairs and finishing construction in the living room

Just barely fitting it into the car.

And that was it! I was done! It would be hung by rigging professionals, and it would be beautiful! Photos of it installed will be coming in another post.

Cranked out these two dragon tails over the span of a week! It felt good.

The rainbow one I made for myself, and managed to get it done before Halloween. Someone had purchased my previous personal tail shortly before, and I needed something to show off for the holiday of costumes. I'd had the rainbow tail idea kicking around in my head for quite some time, and I'm happy I finally got it made.

The black and red one was made for a commissioner.

Both are made of anodized aluminum scales linked together with stainless steel rings. Both also have lobster clips at the tip for attaching a spade tip to. I'll be cutting the leather for the commissioner's spade tip tomorrow. For my own, I usually cut a few different ones out of different materials to swap out whenever I feel. Also, whenever I find myself at an appropriate party I'll clip glowsticks onto them.

If you're interested in these tails I make, you can check out my tail information page! I'm finally catching up on my commission queue, so I'm likely to finally be able to get new commissions done with relative speed.

I'm thinking about putting a whole lot of metal spikes into the rainbow tail, so it'll match the crazy rainbow helm I recently made. But it'll have to wait until I order more spikes, because that helm used up all of the spikes I had of those types.

Here's the completed rainbow leather helm with spike mohawk. It's super ridiculous and I think it's awesome. The large spikes in the center curl back viciously in a claw shape. The two rows of tall cone spikes start out a bit wider in front and narrow as they sweep over the head towards the neck.

As I often do, I laser-cut the pieces out, which lets me pre-cut the holes for the stitching in nice accurate lines. It's also quite well fitted to the shape of a head, since I based the geometry off a 3D scan of a head. (You can see part of that process on my previous post about this design.) 

The leather itself is quite light, though the spikes give it some heft. It weighs in at 10.5 oz total. The weight means it rests pretty solidly on the head even without any straps. Though gravity will take it off if your head tilts past horizontal.

Anyway, I'm really happy with this as a first shot at this concept. I wasn't thinking of this one as a final product to sell, because while working I wasn't positive it would work as well as it did. And then I went and made it super-awesome-gay and kinda-weird. If anyone likes it, though, or would be interested in a version that was less over-the-top in terms of colors or metal, let me know and I'll come up with a price.