It is flying!

Final day

It is not easy to carry a kite outside, it is constantly trying to run away from you. I already had some problems with that : two times my frame broke because of a very delicate frame and really strong wind.

We were going to a Selly Oak Park to fly our kites (20min walk). While it was raining in the morning, at 3pm we had a quite pleasant weather. 

I was worried that my kite is not going to fly, because of its wight. I didn't expect for paints to make it so heavy. Nevertheless my kite was flying really nicely :

This is my favorite picture, because it looks like a devil in the sky :

For my kite to glow you need a blind darkness, but park was surrounded with a lights. It was a bit disappointing that my kite didn't glow, however I was still exited about my kite actually flying.

One more disappointment was that paints from the tail dropped down. It happened because of a slippery material and acrylic based paints. 

All in all, I am really happy with my final piece. I wanted to make something scary and I accomplished that. 

Making the tail

I thought about my kite tail and what material to use - polyester or silver plastic material. I prefer plastic material only because its more shiny and waterproof.

It looked too simple for me, that's why I decided to add more details :

I cut some patterns out of the tail and glued the same shape polyester pieces on top :

In the dark you wouldn't see the tail and spikes (only the face) so I put glow in the dark paint on them too. I wanted to create an image of the drops ,like bleeding, so it would look scary :

And this is how it looks in the dark :

It is really hard to focus any kind of shiny objects in the dark. I don't have a holder for my camera and my hands where shaking when I tried to take a picture. I think pictures are going to be blurry of our flying in the night kites too, because kites are going to move quite fast.

Drawing face

I finally have Glow in the Dark Paint ! I wanted to try them out and see how it glows in the dark, but I ordered only 30ml of blue and 30ml of aqua  and I didn't wanted to waste them. That's why I decided to make my monsters eyes and paint the white parts with these paints :

They didn't glow as bright as imagined them to, so I had to paint 3 more layers for them to glow brighter.

This was not easy because the white spiral parts where quite thin and I had to paint them really carefully.

After that I started to draw the mouth with lots of teeth :

I used a black sharpie marker to draw the features of the face.

Then I painted with the glow in the dark paints. And again I needed to put a lot of layers for it to glow :

Finlay, after keeping my kite underneath the lamp for about an hour That's how it looks in the dark :

Frame

In the designs that I draw my monster has spikes on his head. I thought that I will make a small bamboo triangles with polyester on top and just sew the to my kite head. Something like that :

But after talking with Karl I had to change this idea. Karl said that because of a strong wind my spikes wouldn't be noticeable, they wouldn't stand like I want them to. So what I have to do is start spikes from the main part of my frame, that will support them:

  I sewed polyester material on the spikes too :

The most annoying part of using polyester is that it decays. I had to burn all the edges of the pieces that I have.  

Glow in the Dark

For my kite to be noticeable in the dark I will use Glow in the Dark Paints :

I ordered two colors online - blue and aqua. In the meantime, I was making my final kite frame from a bamboo sticks. Material that I am using is white Ripstop Polyester, I am sewing it on my kite and because of that my kite looks more neat and professional:

  I wanted to see if it can fly, so using a masking tape I sticked a tail that I made only for test purposes:

It was really windy outside and my kite flew perfectly. I left my camera at home so my friend took these pictures with my phone. It was already dark outside and that didn't helped with a pictures quality at all:

Is it going to fly?

I am so not sure if my kite is going to fly...
I made a small rough prototype and went outside. And of course there was no wind, but I really tried ( I was running to and fro like crazy) but it didn't fly!

I am going to make a proper kite (bigger and, of course, light) and  see if it is going to work.

Playing with Photoshop

I was wondering how would my kite look like coming from far away ...

Eyes

Idea - spinning eyes.

I am not really into mechanics and that's why I don't want to use any kind of propellers. They would also be heavy and as you all know kites have to be light.
Another solution - wind mills. I made a quick wind mill and tried blow wind straight into it but that didn't worked out.

My wind mill doesn't spin unless the wind comes from the side. 

Maybe I should try something like this:

If it's not going to work I will just create an illusion of spinning :

I really like the last (hypno circles) solution. It looks more similar to my final design.

Design

I started to think about my kite appearance. These are a few designs that I draw :

And the final ones (I believe I will make my kite like this):