Drachen

A story? No story, only a word: Drachen.

Take your favorite German to English dictionary to appreciate the coincidence. It can mean:

1 - kite
2 - spitfire
3 - hang-glider
4 - longship

and, of course...

5 - dragons

as the plural of "Drache".

__________________________

Two dragons make the dragon. Though he may look only Chinese at first, he must be German as well because of his name, and also because of the German colors, namely white, yellow, red, and black, the ones of the fire. The eagle may suggest that fire goes up and flies around.

As a matter of fact, the Chinese colors are also yellow and red. The Chinese flag shows stars made of pure fire. The tail and chin recall that.

So both flags refer to the same idea. The German flag colors may depict fire where yellow stands for the hotest part, then red, and then black for soot. According to gravity order (bottom to top), one can read a flame. The flags of the circus tent respect that same order from right to left, starting with white.

An eye-like shape seems to come out of the mouth of the dragon kite. His own shadow makes the eyelashes, and the rope ends the loop.

Maybe is he looking for his breath to set himself free.

The idea was truly NoClip, but Clipka decided to work on another entry. I still thank him for the overall inspiration, especially when it came to the German aspect. For sure I would have needed some help for posing a fire-eater and a better fire than this one. I actually like the fact that there is some black in the fire, blending photographs produces such artifacts, but it kinda fits the theme.

Just two quick points. The first one is related to yet another definition of "Drachen"... "vixen" (or "chipie" in French) which means a mean woman, actually pretty much like Stephen's dragon! So I wish to thank him for having completed the idea. And now we know where this "dragon" of his comes from!

I can confirm the definitions of "Drachen" through various online dictionaries, this one is rather complete. The word spitfire was in fact refering to a vixen, not a fire-eater.

One other point is: what do you think these feathers stand for?

Stabilizing the rotation to avoid the kite to get entangled and crash.

Not much else to say... the crowd took most of the rendering time. People are way too high-res for this distance. I actually have a mesh simplifier of my own that I expect to use sooner or later. It would not change the visual result, only the rendering speed. For now, I don't mind waiting half an hour for the final result.