The Name (Yoris)

My collegue came up with a great name: Yoris.
It sounds familiar doesn't it.. The English equivalent is George. So it's Yoris the dragon..

Wanna know Why:

Yoris is the anglicized version of the Dutch name for St George (Joris), who reputedly defeated a dragon
Joris was a pet rabbit of my wife.

---NERD ALERT----
If you are not an extreme sci-fi or fantasy fan, don't read on and stick with the explanation just given. If for whatever reason you want more of the truth, read on..
---NERD ALERT----

The best science fiction and fantasy names in my opinion are Dutch words pronounced in English or otherwise anglicized.
The proof:

1. Darth VADER. "I am your father" translates to dutch as: "Ik ben je vader.."
2. Firefoot (one of the horses of Rohan, lord of the rings) is actually Viervoet(er) which means quadruped.
3. Balin (the hobbit), is "balen" anglified, which means "to be really bummed out".
4. Kalin Trose ("Star Trek: The Next Generation) "Kalen"= "the process of going bald".
5. Rok, the giant bird, means skirt in Dutch..
6. Kili, a name from Silver Surfer and also from the Hobbit, is what Dutch people will say repeatedly to a child when tickling it.
7.  Zeist is the planet the immortals came from in Highlander II, this surpised me, because it is a town near Utrecht. (I always thought those people were kind of funny looking)

I have many more examples, but I'll risk looking even nerdier than I am..
Now to drive the point home:

Dutch just seems a science fiction natural.
It is just strange enough to be interesting and it's just a bit familiar as Dutch has ties with many european languages. Dutch also is a relatively unknown language as only 22 million people speak it and they all live close together. Also Dutch people make a point of learning YOUR language.
I suspect this is something we picked up in the past, doing business in foreign countries. It is very handy to have a secret language during negotiations to be able to talk to your colleagues about what you think this yoyo is willing to pay.. And you can say, you are being polite at the same time, because you learned their language..
But Dutch local history gives us away. To hide converstations with colleagues in negotiations the fishers-language Krang was invented in The Netherlands itself.
Krang consists of the sounds of Dutch words reversed. So the sentence "Waar is mijn bril" becomes "Raaw si nijm lirb", which is unintelligible to a non-krang speaker, but easy to learn or reproduce, once you know the secret.
The english equivalent would read: "Where are my glasses?" becomes "Rehw rah I'm sessalg?")
My wifes grandmother was one of the last living Krang speakers, which is where I learned about the art.. She could instantly translate large sentences containing modern words like 'computer' without losing a beat.

So to conclude my advice to all wannabee science fiction writers (or dragon builders) is: BUY A DUTCH DICTIONARY (or wardenbook)

Fire and Smoke

I was wondering if we could make smoke come out of the dragons mouth and maybe even think of a way to make it breath fire (in a safe way!)
I started out thinking about smoke machines, but they are all huge (5 Kg and more).

 (http://www.s2store.be/store_shop/detail/led_fire_basket_led_effect/)

Then I looked at this thing. It uses 40 leds to get a realistic fire effect is only 16 x 16 x 12cm for a flame of 22 cm and it weighs 1,1 Kg..
This is still a bit heavy and it runs on AC, so it isn't perfect, but this seemed to be the way to go, with fire..
Then I came across this:


So I went to http://www.magicshop.nl/ in Haarlem and talked to Maurice. I got all the stuff I needed, flashpaper, flashcotton and a glow-plug. And a lot more, including a magic smoke machine that weighs only 200 grams.. And can produce a lot of smoke..
Great shop!

Then I went off to the hardware store for the rest. I created the fireball shooter, but I think I overused the flash cotton, it became a kind of canon, wow. It shot a pledget of flashpaper all the way across the room, without even igniting it. The bang deafened me for some time..
I think also my tube may have been a bit to long.
So, I tried a few other experiments. I'm not there yet..
After watching the instruction movie again, I concluded probably the secret is less cotton..



My fahter has been experimenting with making knee joints out of PVC-pipes, more about that later.

Scetch of the head

This is a scetch I made for the head of the dragon. Child1 came with the idea of making it's mouth dog-like in stead of reptile like. Reptiles don't seem so eager to bite, somehow. Maybe because we don't have any experience with them. So I went from a werewolf, added a little pokemon and then some komodo dragon.
Finally I decided on a cat's mouth and nose, because I have always thought a cat is a fat snake with paws, ears and fur.
Mariska and Tim both decided the dragon should be blue. It's a water dragon. I kind of like the contrast with the orange eye.
Well I did some material expression research, now I need to make this shape in 3D. Think I'll use organica, I'm one of the lucky few, who still has a copy.

We might have our first sponsor!

My colleagues and I were talking. If I get this to work, i'll be on the news...
So why not sponsor this project ourselves. Maybe I can get my material-cost back this way..
More details later.

But this thought just added an armor to the dragon, which might have the name of our sponsor on it.
Also in TV-interviews I would have to name ludatic a lot.

SLIGHTLY SPONSORED MESSAGE:

LUDATIC MAKES THE BEST DAMN INTERNET GAMES MONEY CAN BUY. They are fun and are suitable for the whole family. People will want to play them again and again!

The basic design

Now to see how the legs work together..


I hope you have a good computer, because clicking here will ask a lot of your flash player.

After experimenting with muscle-skins, I decided, this is the way to go.
I made skins for my legs and put 6 of them together, plus an extra one for the neck!
Now I don't know what the tail is going to be, but I want it dangly. swinging.. Something with springs or a system like those wooden snakes you get..
This is fun, I stayed up way too late, tomorrow is another day of hard work.. (YES, making games IS hard work!)

Got the legs working!

I have been considering the movements of the six legs of the dragon:

I did the hind leg. The underside of the curve isn't flat, but I have decided I will try for a little wobble... (click on trace bottoms to show the curve)

A variant to the hind leg for the middle leg. This is a tough decision. I tried out the front-paw movement too. This just looks better.
No real 6 legged mammals exist, so it's guessing all the way.
This one isn't lifted as high. The first back leg I had was kind of like a chicken. It jerked its leg up and then put it down real gently. It looked a little silly. So I used the evolution (randomise button) on it.
This gave me the middle leg. I averaged (by hand) the chickenleg and the middle leg to get the final back leg.


Now the front leg was a little harder. I had to get the reverse motion from the same wheel. I have been practising this with my arms in the mirror, so I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted. This comes very close.
All done within a day, who would have thought.

Model made out of straws

I tried this model of TJ's leg.
I made it out of straws, which I ran a wire through.
I hade to put three straws together every time to get a kind of "hinge" but now it's working fine.


I have learned a lot from making this model. Especially that I don't think I'll make my final model's legs out of pipes..
The joints are the problem. My father is trying to find a solution. I'm exploring other possibilities.
For the physics models it's easy to test with sticks. But for my next models I get 'skins' on the sticks to mimic the muscle model of prototype #9 (the youtube movie I posted earlier).

My father is in!

Now I just know this is going to work..

Tested The physics of my engine, I just want to make sure. So I put Theo Jansens (our Dutch Leonaro Da Vinci) theories to work, as he did before me. The machine from his scetches comes to life on your computer if you click here:


Seems like my physics engine is working fine..
I did notice the flatnes of the underside of TJ's curve.. Let's see if I can't make my model do something like that. Although I'm apprehensive about making it totally flat. After all we might be getting some rough terrain and a 6 legged dragon cannot tilt that easily..

The realism of walking with dinosaurs

Roy also pointed me to Walking with Dinosaurs the live experience.. WOW!
I like the detail and realism in the skin.
I think it will be to heavy for me to use rubber-cement, so I'm thinking of a patchwork of scales now.
But this is a very inspiring example, thank you ROY!

I like this bit, where they take a baby-rex suit into a mall!
I want this kind of reaction for my dragon:


The promo-video:

Considering the wheel

I also showed the preliminary model to Roy Tanck and he suggested I think of wheels.



The construction would rest upon 4-6 hinges taking my weight and the constructions weight when I 'ride in'.. This seems a bit much. As I currently weigh over 100 kilo's and allowing 25 kilos for the construction made of pvc's That is a lot.

The biggest issue (my weight) is solvable, so I'm dieting again..

The wheel concept was a interesting diversion. It steeled me in what I want. I want paws! Wheels on a dragon are just a bit silly, no matter how good you mask it.

Model to prove the concept

To convince my father (and myself) that what I am suggesting is actually possible. I made a physics model in Flash. This was surprisingly easy. I only used physics for games until now. The physics in games are never the same as in real life, which was the goal now.

You can see my first draft here. If you click on this link:
http://www.snoep.at/buildingdragons/drakenpoot2.swf you can see a moving version.
Sorry, I haven't found an option to embed flash-movies yet, so I'll do it like this.
If you click on the 'no skin' button and press it down you see the physics model.

Building dragons

I had an idea in my vacation period. It was called in my mind: "The dragon project". That blogname was taken, so it has become "building dragons"


I wanted to 'ride in' on a mechanical dragon at the next Elf Fantasy Fair (haarzuilens).






Because I'm not very good at building stuff, construction has to be simple
(I'll try to get my father to help me, he has tools and a shed an is very handy and creative).
I can't wait to get home and do some research (NO INTERNET HERE!!), but the basic Idea is there.
It was inspired by looking at a lot of examples, of people making variations of Theo Jansen's animaris vulgaris (or walking mechanism) in the past. One guy made a model out of plywood that worked. He used plates to suggest muscles. In my head I combined it with a paper-kinetic horse I once saw, it had a carriage, you could stand on, if you were made out of lego.. I just full-scaled that model to begin with. Later I got the idea for a dragon-bicycle, but it will be to hard to build for me..

So my wish is:

• Ride on a dragon into the next Fantasy Fair at Castle the Haar.
• If that doesn't work, guide a cool, full-sized dragon into the castle
• If that doesn't work, maybe a baby-dragon is feasable?

We'll see what I'll be able to create..

Here is my inspiration for the project:

(The giants who's shoulders I'm willing to fall of:)

1. Paper Kinetic Horse
   
   
   
   
2. Theo Jansen
   
   




3. Theo Jansen Leg, prototype #9 (ten sixtynine-rik)