Golden Dragon

        The Golden Dragon is a project which has been in development since mid way through second year. I was approached by a fellow student, Fiona, who asked if I would be interested in creating the titular dragon for a short stop motion animation she was writing:

One day the little prince was strolling in the woodland, behind his mother’s castle.

When he stumbled upon a 5,000 year old baobab tree, 

He knew baobab trees contained magical properties, and that they were also very fun to climb..

However as he stumbled closer and reached up, a secret passageway was revealed.

He stepped inside and as eyes adjusted to the light, he realised, he was in the presence of a malnourished dragon.

He was whipped back to reality when he heard and felt her belly grumble.

He immediately noticed all her shiny gold scales and though of all the toys in the kingdom he could buy.

He jumped backwards. But as he looked into her eyes, he realise he had no reason to be afraid. She was too weak to move.

He suddenly felt very guilty about all his previous thoughts, and realised this magical creature had a soul and needed help.

He ran as fast as he could back to the kitchen and looked for food for the dragon.

But he didn’t know what a dragon would eat. All the knights had killed all the dragons long before he was born.

He decided upon taking chocolate cake and chicken wings.

Together they ate a feast fit for royalty and the little prince got all the BBQ sauce in his eyebrows!!

As he rubbed the dragons belly he saw her pearly white teeth flash in front of face and said:

‘Oh no this is it, the dire end!!’

He was a melodramatic prince, the dragon just licked his eyebrows clean!

As he left that night he vowed ever evening, he would take some of his tea to the dragon in the magical tree.

A few weeks passed. The little prince looked into the eyes of a chicken and realised this creature had a soul too, and it was unfair to be eating such a gentle soul and to not expect a dragon to eat him!!

By now, the dragon was no longer malnourished. She was almost as big as the castle itself! One false move and the dragonslayer blood in the townsfolk would be reignited.

But she surprised them, even the little prince when she flew round the castle and clipped all the flowers,

bluebells, irises and forgetmenots,

and showered them all over the townsfolk.

She granted the little prince one wish for making her better, she shined better than any toy he’d ever owned and he asked for them to stay together forever.

So together they went away and travelled to lands where dragons were accepted for safe refuge.

The little prince met a lovely princess with skin that oozed the scent of chocolate. And all together they settled on an island they called Paradise. 

My responsibility would be limited to designing and constructing the dragon. The responsibility for the other characters, sets, storyboarding et al. would lie with others also working on the project. I began by experimenting with ways in which I might be able to create stop motion dragoon, covered with golden scales.

        The technique which I experimented with initially was creating the scales from thin cereal card, covered by gold chocolate foil, and layered together. While aesthetically I feel these tests were successful, practically they may not work. The samples came out quite stiff and rigid, which would cause problems when the dragon moves, particularly on the neck and tail, as the scales may catch. This issue may be lessened by attaching the scales one by one to a more flexible material, which could be laid over a padded armature, but to to this would be rather fiddly and time consuming.

        A key feature of the story is that the dragon changes from being thin and malnourished to being plump and healthy. While this change could be achieved through the use of multiple puppets of varying shapes, I had the idea that if the dragon's underbelly were knitted, and capable of being opened up (say with button fastenings) then stuffing could be added or taken away as necessary. There could even be multiple rows of buttons along the stomach, to allow it to expand beyond the natural stretch of the stitches.

Initial scale tests and knitted underbelly samples.

         Having already experimented with knitting in this capacity, why not take it further and use knitting for the sales too? There are an infinite number of knitting stitches which produce beautiful and interesting textures, some of which (berry and moss stitches) are bumpy and bobbly and may be able to emulate the texture of scales. Lace patterns with delicate and decorative eyelets could be placed over the foil to allow glints of gold to show through. Cable patterns too could produce an interesting effect, if laid along the length of the dragon's body. I was quickly becoming enthused with the idea of covering the whole dragon with a variety of knitting stitches.

Unfortunately, when I experimented with the lace knitting laid over
gold foil, the foil did not show through clearly. This may be due to the knitting
being too tight. If I repeated the pattern on thicker needles, the eyelets
should be larger, and the foil show through better.