Dragon-shaped aircraft flies, breathes fire

[frameacloud]

[Video description: live action. Illuminated by spotlight in darkness, a flying dragon circles a castle, spitting a firework. It looks pretty realistic.]

Trigger warnings: Fire, mildly spooky imagery.

Excerpt from article about this dragon on io9: “Disney World constructed a life-size, fire-breathing dragon and flew it around the Magic Kingdom.” The io9 article shows the patent illustrations for the dragon-shaped flying machine. See the DisneyDragons Tumblr blog associated with the dragon project, where they presented the performance as a hoax, complete with footprints and eggshells, which the more in-depth article by Gizmag explains was part of “a small viral marketing campaign” to promote the ultralight aircraft in question.

- O. Scribner
(Originally posted by O. Scribner (frameacloud) on Tumblr on 2012-12-16.)

Comments

[arethinn]

Um but bats have membrane in the place I'm talking about too. Look at this shot:



Compared with:




It's the piece across the top of the arm, the leading edge of the wing, that I'm talking about. This dragon seems to have this sort of design and it never made sense to me.

[zeeth_kyrah]

The wings are also detached from the body, with a trailing spike at the elbow, suggesting a nonexistent rib/finger there. The overall design wouldn't work anyway; Disney's designers were probably relying on the parachute to make up for any airfoil problems, and in fact I doubt that dragon could have flown as built without a jet engine, not just a big fan.

In a cartoon, you can animate the smooth motions of a creature. In the video, that head was jerking around like a simple pneumatic system under medium pressure and the wings barely moved (if at all). Anyone caught up in "Wow, Disneyland!" was going to let it be a dragon, everyone else gets to see it for what it is. So in this case, it's all about imagination taking over where realistic design couldn't go.

[arethinn]

Yeah, elbow spikes are always a peeve too.

So in this case, it's all about imagination taking over where realistic design couldn't go.

See "yeah, like wings this size would work on a body that size anyway, I know, I know." Point being, the lack of membrane in this spot is hardly the only problem, but it's just a theme park and I should really just relax. (It just irritates me to see wings drawn this illogical way so often.)