laughingsquid.com: La Machine, the incredible machine art group based in Nantes, France, who previously built a giant kinetic Minotaur named “Le Gardien du Temple” (The Guardian of the Temple) and the enormous mechanical spider named “La Princesse”, have created “Le Dragon de Calais”. This gorgeous mechanical fire-breathing dragon, which requires 17 people to operate, was paraded around the streets of Calais from November 1-3, 2019 before becoming a permanent resident of the city.
4 comments:
Alright this is one of the coolest things I have seen in a while. Just thinking about the logistics of this project and all the different components blows my mind a bit. Not only that but the artistry is really stunning as well. Obviously I had to look into the other creature that they had made and none of them disappointed. As cool as the fire-breathing in the dragon is if I’m being completely honest I was most impressed with the spider that they created and installed on the side of buildings. It looked pretty incredible but what I’d really like is an ability to see their rigging mechanisms in place for that project as well as their connection points to the buildings themselves and what that entailed. To see more of the schematics for these machines would be incredible but I’m pretty sure short of working for the company I won’t be able to get any sort of look at them. At first glance at the title I initially thought that 17 people seemed like a lot but once you see pictures of the machine it because clear that all of those 17 people are going to be fairly busy to operate this dragon.
This machine is awesome! I haven’t seen something like this is a long while, at least not something to this caliber. Its large, heavy, does a lot of things, and looks awesome. It is these types of projects that make me want to do what I do. This is such a complicated thing. Just thinking about the structure of it is complicating. Imagine having to design a structure for this thing, it would have to meet so many different requirements, where to attach the facing that gives the dragon a look, what machinery is going to be inside, how much it weights and how much space it takes up. These are the kind of things that must have been thought about to create something like this and I would have loved to have been there for the process. Then getting it all to perform just right must have taken a good amount of time, working out any kinks between both the coding side and the machinery side of it. This thing just blows me away.
This puppet is phenomenal!! The creators did an amazing job of emphasizing the minutia expressions of this beautiful creators on such a large scale. It is really amazing how much life a performance object can suddenly hold when then right movement is pushed into it. I have seen this groups work before – I have seen videos of their minotaur animatronic – but I had not connected this group to the creations. Unlike Lauren, I was almost surprised that only 17 people are needed to operate this beast. There have to be so many moving parts in this puppet dragon, I can only imagine how much practice and training it must have taken for this 17 person team to be able to drive this beast at all, let alone near crowds of people. I wonder what kinds of blind spot removers and spatial sensors are embedded in this machine in order to make it safe to travel through crowds. I, too, would love to the inner machinery and rigging of this beautiful creature.
This Dragon is amazing, the way it moves and works and breathes fire.. just blows my mind. It reminds me of Bread and Puppet puppets! I wish we had an article on how it was made and how it works. It takes sixteen humans to make it work. I had to look up more information about it, it’s aimed to be part of a tourist attraction. Eventually people will be able to ride it, it can hold up to 50 passengers and rides will be about 30 minutes long. I am in awe of the artistry and the craftmanship they had put into making this dragon, which is apparently not the only big scale animal this company has ever built. However it’s the biggest! It holds the record of the largest attraction of its type. It’s truly a work of art and people seem to be enjoying it!
Here’s the article where I found more info:
https://www.eurotunnel.com/uk/holiday-ideas/the-dragon-of-calais-la-machine’s-new-spectacle/
Post a Comment