This Is What I Made For Myself This Halloween. A Dragon Lower-half-mask. With A Moving Jaw. What Do I

This is what I made for myself this Halloween. A dragon lower-half-mask. With a moving jaw. What do I call this sort of thing? Jaw mask? Snout? I'm not really sure. But it turned out pretty awesome, I thought.

I've already had a couple people say they wanted to commission one, so once I tweak and polish the design a bit I'll definitely be making more of these.

Oh, and I'm also wearing some dragon horns that I made around a year ago. I made them by taking a computerized 3D model of the shape I wanted, slicing it into layers, cutting those out of birch plywood with the laser cutter, and then gluing them together. Basically it's like 3D printing but with plywood.

This dragon tail is made with anodized titanium scales, which the commissioner special-ordered and sent to me. This is definitely the most beautiful material I've worked with. There were 5 different colors of titanium used here, but because of the way the anodizing works there is a good amount of color variation from one scale to the next, or even within a single scale. It gives the whole piece a cool iridescent appearance.

This tail also has a stainless steel underbelly, which will match with the chrome spikes that I'll be installing down the spine. But I wanted to get photos of it before I did that.

This tail has a lot of stuff going on. It used 6 different types and sizes of metal claw spike down the spine, with a big increase and decrease in size towards the middle. It also has a diamond-shaped spade tip that attaches to the tip, made of leather and painted gold.

I was prompted to design this mask by a vague request by a friend who's involved in running an ongoing live-action role playing game that happens out in the woods somewhere. It may at some point pop up as part of a costume in that game.

The design I did as a sort of reference to "The Tyger" by William Blake. It's got lots of little flame shapes cut through to make the stripes, and some stitching to pull it into the right shape overall.

It's available on my Etsy store!

Prototyping in paper with scissors and tape. Then I transferred that into a CAD program, cut it out of leather, and stained it. Next comes sewing everything together.

This dragon tail commission was pretty straightforward compared to others I've done recently. It's made of anodized aluminum, primarily green, with an underbelly of brown and a single line of brown down the spine. As always, the scales are linked together with stainless steel rings in a chainmail pattern. This one is 30 inches long, slightly smaller than my default length. Good for someone who's a bit shorter than I.

I had a lot of fun getting photos of it swinging around.

Daylight Savings Time meant that it was dark by the time I was able to get photos taken, but oh well. I'll be shipping this out to the commissioner tomorrow.