Skinning the Wings

For skinning the wings, I used spray glue (3M Super 77). Not the most elegant solution, but cheap. With more time I would have sewn the fabric with runs for the wing spars and attached the wing spars after they were in the fabric. In my excitement earlier I had glued all the wing pieces together, making sewing in place impossible.

Skinning the Head

I first tacked adding fabric to the head. Fortunately, we selected a fabric with a lot of give. Using spray foam and nails I was able to affix the fabric to the foam head. At some of the curves I would cut the fabric and stretch it around the curves. The eyes proved most challenging because fabric just does not want to naturally roll into all sides of an eye socket. In retrospect I would have wrapped some fabric around the inside of the eyes and had the main fabric splay into it. When the fabric wrapped around the lips/jaw, I trimmed it to size and used a chisel to cram the last 1/2" of fabric in next to the teeth. This held both the fabric and teeth in place. So happy that worked.

The Dragon Teeth

I cut up a few of the plastic ninja swords into a saw tooth pattern. Then I used the hot knife to make offset grooves into the top and bottom jaws. The bottom teeth would be on the inside and the top teeth would be on the outside. I was trying to figure out a way to have much bigger fangs, but there wasn't a whole lot of room in the lower jaw to nest large fangs in. This does make her look a bit tamer, but nothing I can do just now.  I later finished the inside of the mouth with some black and red paint, painting a tongue inside. 

Choosing the Skin

We had several discussions about what to make the skin out of. We considered thin white upholstery foam that could be dyed the right color, fabric, plastic, and so forth. The woman in charge of props called and said she found some great fabric at Hi-Fashion Fabrics in Sacramento. I met her there with the drama director and we loved the fabric. The dyed-red fabric provided a rich texture and a faint glitter. The orange/peach color should work great for the belly and the spikes, providing a nice contrast with the red. We selected a solid red for the wings.

The Dragon Talons & Spikes

It took me a while to figure out what to do for the dragon talons and spikes around the head. The breakthrough came when I found some plastic ninja swords and scythes at the Dollar Tree store. I was able to easily cut the scythes to the right length for a talon, and then used the hot knife to cut a slot in the feet. The pile of talons looked like I'd just cut a huge cat's nails.

The dragon has three spikes on her head. the placement of these for me was crucial. Looking at other puppets on the web they tended to be lots of variations as to where they ended up. I referred to the movie stills and placed the plastic ninja swords as best I could, cutting a slot for them with the hot knife.

The Dragon EYES!

I knew I wanted to get the eyes to light up. On the internet the dragons that stood out on stage had light-up eyes. I looked around for quite a while and settled on 4" hamster balls as the eyeball. I bought two so that I could use the side that didn't have the twist-off opening. As I was shaping the eyes I made sure that I could slide the eyeballs into a tightly fitting eye socket. I drilled holes and inserted tubes to allow for wire runs between the eyes and from the left eye to the back of the head.

To light up the eyes I settled on hotwiring a couple of those cheap LED flashlights that take the three AAA batteries. I drilled a hole in the side of the battery, ran some wires in-between the battery and one connection, and out to a switch I bought at Radio Shack. The first one was a snap. The second try drove me crazy! It kept lighting up a little bit like it was crossing a wire somewhere just enough to give it some power. I must have rewired and swapped out the battery pack four times. I finally went with soldering the wires to the battery connections.

A quick trip to Michael's craft store provided the thick orange glitter paper for the back of the eye and a big yellow Easter basket bag (cut in half) scrunched into the clear hamster ball provided a nice yellow glow. A Sharpie-drawn eye slit in black provided the finishing touch. The eyes were in business!

The first round, when I only had one color

Yes, that's an Easter egg basket bag in the eyeball.

I colored the LED light lens on the bottom with red Sharpie, and colored the bottom of the eyeball with red Sharpie to give it a red glow.

Given our tight budget, I went with cheap LED flashlights. Had I more money I would have gone with high-power flashlights or some soft of color change LED. Oh well, next time.

I considered for a while how to make the eyelids blink, but given the amount of time that I had available I decided to pass on that particular feature.

The Dragon Fat

The first time I put some of the fabric over the irrigation tube ribs, the dragon looked a bit emaciated. In the movie the dragon is a rather full-figured female. So, I went by the store and picked up five yards of 1" batting. By applying this over the top of the dragon, it should provide a much better look. I was able to use the duct tape to connect it to the legs as well which should provide for a better overall look. It was easy to punch holes in the top to accommodate the dragon spikes by just pushing down carefully over the spike. We shouldn't need batting for the underside of the dragon because the fabric will hang below the dragon.

The spikes poked through pretty easily

I cut notches for the wings. You can also see the hole for the pin to attach the wings.

Backstage at the theater. It's important to keep people from not fiddling with your work in progress.