found an inspirational speed painting of a dragons head

Dracorex Hogwartsia

I couldn't resist, I reworked my model in photoshop to fit the skull of the dracorex hogwartsia.
As a finishing touch I added hogwarts as a background. (The neck is a bit to wide for the actual skeleton, but hey, this is more dragonlike)

Now I know for a fact, that the Dracorex Hogwartsia was blue, but I might be a bit biased :)

Primeval dracorex

I saw a dracorex hogwartsia on primeval yesterday. I know a bit about dinosaurs and discarded it as fiction.
Today I searched in google because I rather liked the head they created.
It seems dracorex hogwartsia is for real. It has only recently been discovered by 3 amateurs. (2005). A dinosaur that looks like an actual dragon, but was an early stage of pachycephalosaurus (the thick skulled dinosaurs that used to ram their skulls together, probably in some mating ritual).
Because of the way it looks, they named it after Harry Potters school for Magic.
Here is the wiki link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracorex

It nicely solves my teething problem, by not having any teeth in the beak area. Also it was a herbivore, so that explains the small teeth. My dragon should have slightly larger teeth, but I see now that a dragons main weapons are not it's teeth.. Inspired by this I might add a few horns.

Aaargh, my laptop has crashed

I made a backup of everything except the frame. This might mean I lost it. Good thing I posted a render on youtube, because I might have to figure out some stuff again.

The body frame finished in concept

I went to the hardware store and got some measurements. Then I 'build' the frame considering the size of actual planks and boards I can buy. The I build the desired shape of the body in organica and simplified the model. In this animation you see how it will (hopefully) all fit together. My plan is now, to bind pvc pipes (at the right lengths) together with tape, skin them with chickenwire and put a thin layer of paper-mache and ultra-light clay on top of that for scales.
 As you can see I had to change some stuff around to fit everything in the desired shape. The cage-gear thingy that I copie from Leonardo da Vinci is no longer a cage, but more like an angled gear (I do hope this will be strong enough). However, this will be a lot easier to make and will cause a lot less friction (and weight) than the gears I had in the first attempt at making the frame/body..
The weight is distributed a little unevenly, but Yoris should also have a sound-device, and my smoke machine, so that will probably even things out a little.

Da vinci (and discovery channel) solved my gear problem.

I was watching Da Vinci's Machines for the first time and saw the Armored car (with canons, so I guess it's really a tank). The tank is driven by a very engenious stretched gear system, which is perfect for my dragon.

The principle is to build a cage, which will be rotated by the pegs in the big wheel. Another cage on the other side will drive another wheel. This way the rotation of the wheels is synchronised with a minimum of gears.
Da Vinci used this to transfer the movement from the middle to both sides simultaneously, but this principle will work in threefold for my dragon.