When this project was first being thought of, its original purpose was to help those in need – specifically children in wheelchairs, who didn’t necessarily have costumes that included their wheelchairs in its design. As my previous blog post has shown, there have been some costumes that are either cute, adorable, or a mixture of both, but this team aimed to create costumes that not only would kids want to wear, but would be cheap and easy to make.
What’s Happened So Far…
As of today, the “dragon” costume has undergone some drastic changes. The body of the dragon has been cut out and painted, and now we are moving on to the wings. It took about two and a half weeks for the body to be completed. Why? Because, in order to create the “illusion” of “real dragon skin”, the cardboard base of the dragon has had to be painted red (around one to two coats, in fact), painted again except with Elmer’s glue this time and pasted with crumpled paper on top. After this was done, the dragon body had to be painted again, with a deeper shade of red and black paint. This was done twice, and we still have to cut out the head and the wings.
What We’re Working on now…
Now, my team is working on completing the wings of the dragon. We are putting off the dragon’s head until later since we figure that this will be the trickiest part to finish since we have to make sure the face on both sides are fully identical (or as close as possible to identical as we can get using our drawing skills). We haven’t done any physical work on the wings yet although we do know what we are going to use to make them (PVC piping, Neoprene, and Gauze). We’re trying to decide if we want the child using to this costume to have the ability to move the wings using string, and if so, has best to go about structuring this part of the dragon. We assume the child will be pushed by an adult, so if this is the case, we also have to make sure the wings accommodate the body of whoever is pushing the wheelchair and that this structure won’t get in the way of this person. I never imagined that we would have to ask so many questions before we started building the wings, but hey, that’s what creating is about. Having one expectation and watching it be deconstructed and reformed into something new.
Our (Current) Future Plans…
We estimate that the wings will take around 2 weeks or less to complete (depending on how fast we can get our materials and how fast we figure out how to build it wheelchair-friendly). We’re trying not to plan too far ahead, since as I said before, expectations (especially regarding time) tend to be wrong.
StarPathDesign 
Que pasa? I’ve seen you two struggling and painting for a bit. You’ve made some decent progress, and my group with the Little Free Library can certainly relate to your experience with building (we now have one door instead of two for instance). I look forward to seeing how the wings turn out. How big are you trying to make them? Maybe you could try to make them glimmer or shine a bit.
– Zane Trevino