Here is my yawning baby dragon statue I sculpted with Super Sculpey Firm. It is so far my favorite material for sculpting. It is holding sharp detail great, and is easy to manipulate with tools and grey finish show shapes and shadows better than translucent beige version of this polymer clay.
The idea of the baby dragon was on my mind since the custom toy I made for the exhibition in Cardiff, you can read more about it here. I planned to make my own little toy I could self produce and have on sale in my webstore after I watched few episodes of Game of Thrones, I started dreaming about realistic and animatronic baby dragon, I could take on the streets and amaze people. I spent 2 years of my free time between job and commissions and developed 3 versions of 3d printed skeleton. I started with huge head with lots of servos and tried to scale it down to reduce weight and costs of motors. Second version was working great and was hit huge on Dublin Maker Faire in 2014. Here is the short video showing how it worked. It had realistic range of movement, but was already hard on servo motors even without heavy silicone skin.
I decided to reduce its size even more and needed to redesign everything to move motors outside to reduce overheating issues. That meant I needed to use cable mechanisms. My home made 3d printer has issues with accuracy and the delicate plastic parts bend and twist, reducing the accuracy of cable motion. I spent lots of time redesigning this thing, but finally realized, that to achieve the results I wanted, will need to make it with proper tools with aluminum or steel elements for durability and accuracy. I don’t want to spend time cutting the silicone body and fixing plastic parts when they break inside. I decided to put this idea in the box and move to sculpting again. This led me to creating even smaller version as a statue or resin kit what could also serve me as a base for future animatronic version.
This is the first resin copy of the statue. When I finished the prototype, I made silicone rubber mold and cast 2 resin kits. I am in the process of painting second version in red color scheme. to be continued…
