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Wag
 
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| I made a raptorish dragon for Laberynth some years a go it used it's forelegs to operate wings and ahad a single operator (kind of like a fat suit), I created an illusion of length through coils in the neck and tail and the operater was hidden by the legs and shoulder hump- I think I charged about £1,000. If anyone wants to have a go I can send them some working drawings- if they want me to build one then get saving 'cos I don't come that cheap anymore.
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Wag
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Andy Rimmer (1/12/2007)
I made a raptorish dragon for Laberynth some years a go it used it's forelegs to operate wings and ahad a single operator (kind of like a fat suit), I created an illusion of length through coils in the neck and tail and the operater was hidden by the legs and shoulder hump- I think I charged about £1,000.
Cool! So basically it can be done on a cheap skate budget for a grand.
If anyone wants to have a go I can send them some working drawings- if they want me to build one then get saving 'cos I don't come that cheap anymore. But if you want to pay a professional today you'd need to pay more.
Again, purely out of interest Andy, if it was a project you found interesting for a LRP system you liked, how much would you charge today? I don't want to buy one (we're broke), but I think having ballpark figures for these things is useful to the hobby. It's all too easy to get caught up in "can't be done - unaffordable" but without vaguely credible figures on what these things might cost a professional and credible figures on what a professional might charge, it's really just unhelpful negativity. But a figure that a LRP group can aim at, is something useful to all of us.
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Knight
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| I would really love to be involved with a project like this but realistically I think you would be looking at £10K for a people powered version. (based on my workshop costs for a month, two labourers, one skilled craftsman and about £1200 in materials, obviously others cost their time and places of work differently). I recently made a couple of horses (ride on for jousting) and after working out all the workshop time and materials I soon went overbudget, they ended up costing over 2K without making any profit, me working for two weeks with no other assistance, and they were covered in costume so I didn't have to do much body detail. Although I would love to make something like this it would be beyond my sculpting skills and I would have to work with someone like Andy Rimmer to do it. My skills and experience are in the engineering side of the projects, I'm good at the structure and making it all work but not so hot at the surface and facial detail if you wanted it to look lifelike. I can do fantasy and scales OK but real skins....I'm not confident. Of course that would also depend on overall size for which you must also consider that once you've made it you've still got to transport and store it!
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Wag
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Seán M. (1/12/2007)
I would really love to be involved with a project like this but realistically I think you would be looking at £10K for a people powered version. (based on my workshop costs for a month, two labourers, one skilled craftsman and about £1200 in materials, obviously others cost their time and places of work differently).I recently made a couple of horses (ride on for jousting) and after working out all the workshop time and materials I soon went overbudget, they ended up costing over 2K without making any profit, me working for two weeks with no other assistance,and they were covered in costume so I didn't have to do much body detail.
Thanks Sean, that's terrific!
once you've made it you've still got to transport and store it! Heh that's my bit!! Ok folks assuming that the thing you want to move is something about the size of a large 4x4 then I'd recommend that you use a car transporter, essentially a large flat bed trailer. Decent ones go on ebay for about 1K. Do not buy a crap one, losing your life on the motorway is not worth the 300 quid you save. You can probably hire transporters for ready money, you can certainly hire standard trailers for the order of a few hundred quid for a weekend. Either way you need to make sure you have someone with a trailer license. Ideally someone with experience pulling a trailer. You will also need a vehicle with a tow-hitch, be warned that standard hire vehicles like transits don't have them.
For a smaller construction you could well get away with a transit or luton van. These are much easier to handle than trailers. Rental costs are of the order of £250 to £400 for a weekend/long weekend and depending on size.
For a larger construction you might want to go up to a truck. You can buy old 7.5tonne trucks for about 5K but be warned that there are complex legal requirements for the bastard things and again you need an old-style license like the trailer. Factor in at last 1K a year for insurance and another 1K a year for mots and maintenance (you need to test it every six weeks or so). Again, get a driver with experience if possible, driving a 7.5t truck is NOT like driving a large car...
All that assumes it weighs < 2t and is less than about 9ft high and 15ft long. Heavier than that and you'll need to look at more substantial transport, you won't legally get the weight into a 7.5t truck and you'll need a *serious* vehicle and a very heavy trailer to take a 3t load. Once you're over 3t you need a lorry to move it, I imagine. No experience there.
Don't store it in your house, your friend's house or your girlfriend's sisters garage. It will eventually become unwelcome and then you'll have to move it. The best place to find storage (I've found thus far) is often farmers. Given that nobody grows anything anymore in this country, some have barn space that you can rent pretty cheap. We pay £1200 a year for one of our barn spaces, but that's completely covered and large enough to put four trailers and more in. A smaller space should be available for much less.
So I reckon you'd need at last 1 to 1.5K of trailer to move your average 10K dragon and .5K a year to store him. So factor in 3K to the price and you're good for a few years.
Expensive, very expensive. But not hundreds of thousands of pounds expensive! It can be done!!
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Heroic Knight
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| I have an image of sean sat impatiently by the phone waiting for the first order!! There are some excellent big costumes/ creatures out in the lrp world as well as some crap ones, but how often are they used? say someone payed for a 10 grand raptor (i would put 15 to 20% on that price realistically) then the storage, transport etc. To use what twice a year, this doesn't make economic sense, but if you hired it out for another 4-5 times ayear to lrp events, perhaps hire it to commercial events (dunno what) you can perhaps start to draw some money back. Personnaly i would like to see 10 £1000 pound creatures at an event then one £10,000 pound one.
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Apprentice
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Matt,
If you can get a reliable quote, plus graphics and timetable for the making of a dragon to good standard I will provide £200 towards cost. I cant afford to do a whole project but I am willing to donate towards one.
Iain
--
I can be wrong, its just never happened yet.
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Wag
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Draconi (1/12/2007)
Matt,
If you can get a reliable quote, plus graphics and timetable for the making of a dragon to good standard I will provide £200 towards cost. I cant afford to do a whole project but I am willing to donate towards one.
Iain
Lol. The last Dragon I bought cost me £1700.... And he costs me a lot more besides every year just to move him and store him. I'm not looking to buy a second dragon, right this moment. But one day, one day! (My dream is a dragon that flies!).
I'm not interested because I want to buy one at the moment. My point is to that realistic ideas of what things might cost, how long they take to make and what the materials might cost by the sort of people actually experienced enough to know what they're talking about give us springboards from which our flights of fancy can take off. (Sorry for the puns). I think a good LRP project needs the right combination of hard facts and romantic idealism to accomplish something. You need ideas about what can and can't be done, how much it might or might not cost, how long it may or may not take to get the scope for your own plans right and just enough detail that you think "I can do better than that!" and not quite enough that you think "I could never do better than that".
Hence my prodding of Sean and Andy and the other "pros"!
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Knight
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| Actually a flying dragon isn't that far fetched and wouldn't be as much work as the big foam and latex dragon! I've thoguht about this one for many years but never had the time or the money to buy the first basic raw material i.e. a two man microlight. Consider taking a seconhand but airworthy two man microlight, the dragon wing structure is already there, consider that only one person will be flying it then you have the weight of one man to add detail to the structure. If you forget accepted LRP structure and ignore the heavy and clumsy foam and fibreglass think along the lines of Japanese fighting kite, they are very detailed and made of self supporting (inflatable in fact) silk. Add a long silk tube to the back end of your microlight and you have a realistic tail, add a thin carbon fibre framework above the front of the unit and build a hollow silk head, use some very light (styrofoam) detail to the body work and hey presto... a flying dragon. The aerodynamics aren't that difficult as you will be using kite technology. the basic materials would cost around £5,000 to buy a reasonable microlight and a few hundred for the silk. With a decent workshop and some experienced kite builders you're on to winner. Obviously you wouldn't be able to fight it as such but that could be an advantage as letting 500 LRPrs loose to pummel your hugely expensive dragon costume could be a bit awkward, but having a reasonably convincing flying dragon buzz the field and drop flour bombs or markers to represent range effect spells perhaps? Any thoughts people?
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