Thread: Dinosaurs!

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I made this guy last year. He's a parasaurolophus.

When I put him out this year, the rain quickly caused some "issues."


So we pulled him down, gave him a museum-style stand, and re-painted him.


I also made this guy, a pteranodon, last year:



The hooks are still on the dormer to put him back up, but after building a 20ft tall, 40ft long, fire-breathing dragon this year, I'm a bit tuckered out, so he's going to hang from the garage header beam instead (this is a very old photo, before he was fully painted):

Wow. You have some serious "skillz" there. Its well done and creepy!

That looks amazing! A lot of work and detail definitely went into them!

Thanks! One really cool part about it all is that the budget was fairly small - 1 sheet of pressure-treated plywood per beast.

Those are great. A couple of people on here built similar props - they called them a Chinese puzzle or something like that. Bet they wished they could have picked your brain for advice.

There's not a lot of brain picking to do.

Basically, the steps are this:

1) Buy the model you want to enlarge. Something like this: http://www.amazon.com/uxcell-Wooden/...d=7I5YTSWD1YXV

2) Scan the board into your computer

3) Using something like Inkscape, trace the pieces.

4) Without resizing the pieces, rotate and move them until they are as tight as possible and seem to fit in a 4:8 rectangle.

5) Using a computer projector, project the arranged pieces onto a sheet of plywood, and trace them.

6) Cut with a jigsaw

7) paint

8) assemble

Step 6 is by far the lengthiest one.

Those are pretty cool. So you say you built a 20ft high and 40 foot in length fire breathing dragon?? That's intense. You have any pictures of it? I would love to see.

20 ft tall, 40+ foot long (including tail), FIRE BREATHING dragon...

https://picasaweb.google.com/1030476...1TharBeDRAGONS

I've got some high-quality photos of the finished product, but am waiting until after our party to post them anywhere.

I bet the kids love those!!!Very cool!

Was checking out your gallery the Dinos and dragon are both really cool pieces.

I started a commission for a big dragon awhile back but never got it finished...but I do have quite a few Dinos of my own :

Pteranodons :



Juvenile Parasaurolophus :


Deinonychus aka Jurassic Park 3 Raptor :



Juvenile Spinosaurus :