# Fire Breathing effect for large dragons



## LXQuito (Nov 3, 2012)

Hi folks,

I'm looking for ideas for an outdoor show, specifically to make a large papier-mache dragon breath real flames. This is a one-off effect, and the dragon actually needs to combust as the finale of the effect (hence the papier-mache). I'm a little flummoxed as to how this should work, though. It needs to be relatively safe (so no hooking up a propane jet, which was my first thought), but bearing in mind that the whole thing needs to burn it should also be something a little more involved and long-lasting than flash cotton.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.


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## Goph704 (Nov 3, 2012)

This sounds dangerous. Very dangerous. Honestly, I think that any advice you are looking for in this realm is going to violate the forums rules on posting. Have you thought of any non flammable options such as confetti cannons, and fan driven streamers? Even hydrotechnics. ( think two High pressure streams of dyed red and orange water coming out from the snout) would have a pretty dazzling, and far less dangerous effect.


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## damjamkato (Nov 3, 2012)

LXQuito said:


> It needs to be relatively safe (so no hooking up a propane jet, which was my first thought), but bearing in mind that the whole thing needs to burn



It seems rather ridiculous that you're worrying about the safety of the fire breathing effect, and not at all about the fact that you want a large paper object to burn uncontrolled.


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## techieman33 (Nov 3, 2012)

If it must be real fire the only advise anyone here can offer you is to contact a licensed pyro technician.


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## porkchop (Nov 3, 2012)

First and foremost, call a licenced pyro tech and have them help you design this. If you can't find one PM me I could probably do some digging and find out who we use when we play Ecuador. 
Secondly, there are prepackaged flame projectors out there that would probably work for your initial effect, but you need the help of an expert to find the right ones and keep everything safe. As far as lighting the thing on fire at the end, It is probably possible to do safely, but again you certainly need the help of an expert.


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## LXQuito (Nov 3, 2012)

It's six of one, half a dozen of the other. I'm a licenced pyro tech for Ecuador, and the large paper object will be burning in a space that's surrounded by concrete for at least 100 meters on all sides, equally about 25 meters from the audience. So it's as safe as I can make it, but the director is insisting on real flames. I'm just looking for a way around it that will satisfy him without blowing me up.


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## Footer (Nov 3, 2012)

Lets all just assume he is doing this correctly and safely and all that fun stuff. 

Your biggest issue is going to be having something that takes fuel and then having that thing be in a structure that needs to burn as well... and I assume it needs to burn to the ground. So, I would first look at seperating your fuel source and the dragon by a decent amount... and putting it in some type of bunker aways away. Beyond that, you might want to make a call to a few SFX companies about some type of flame jet product that will allow you to run it that remotely and what you will need plumbing wise to make that happen.


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## ruinexplorer (Nov 3, 2012)

I know of a production which was based in a permanent venue that had a dragon breath fire every night. For them, they used something along the lines of a powdered coffee creamer and made it spray over a small flame with compressed air. The powdered creamer is only truly flamable when airborn and thus kept the unit fairly safe overall. In any case, I would have a secondary ignition source for the dragon itself.


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## Footer (Nov 4, 2012)

ruinexplorer said:


> I know of a production which was based in a permanent venue that had a dragon breath fire every night. For them, they used something along the lines of a powdered coffee creamer and made it spray over a small flame with compressed air. The powdered creamer is only truly flamable when airborn and thus kept the unit fairly safe overall. In any case, I would have a secondary ignition source for the dragon itself.



It always concerns me the number of food items we eat that are flammable.... I knew there was a reason I never liked powdered creamer.


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## zmb (Nov 4, 2012)

ruinexplorer said:


> For them, they used something along the lines of a powdered coffee creamer and made it spray over a small flame with compressed air. The powdered creamer is only truly flamable when airborn and thus kept the unit fairly safe overall.



I think very fine sawdust, flour, and corn starch would also work. Another safety factor doing it this way is that the amount of fuel in the system is limited so something can't fail and provide it continously like a failed valve on a gas cylinder.


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## chausman (Nov 4, 2012)

I'm sure somewhere one could easily find both the original YouTube video, and the full episode where they talk about all of the numbers for everything.


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## ruinexplorer (Nov 4, 2012)

Basically, what they (whom I referred to above) used was a Venturi effect. Interesting demonstration here.


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## gafftaper (Nov 4, 2012)

First off this whole thing scares me and I want to stress in big red letters: Don't try this at home kids! Remember that LXQuito is a licensed professional in Ecuador. You and I are not licensed anywhere, we don't want to go to jail, or burn down the neighborhood. Secondly my guess is you would break dozens of laws trying to do this anywhere in the U.S... except perhaps at burning man. 

Warnings completed, I have a fairly simple solution. Design the area around the mouth with some sort of a fire proof heat shield to protect the rest of the structure. Then make sure it's designed so that the rest of the head catches fire easily and then collapses fairly quickly. If there are flames all over the place and the head falls off while MOSTLY on fire, no one will notice that the inside of the mouth was steel and never caught fire. 

My biggest concern is the ability to test the rig for safety, reliability, and to fine tune the appearance of the effect. It seems to me that there is a fairly high chance of the whole thing catching fire at the wrong time.


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## What Rigger? (Nov 4, 2012)

ruinexplorer said:


> I know of a production which was based in a permanent venue that had a dragon breath fire every night. For them, they used something along the lines of a powdered coffee creamer and made it spray over a small flame with compressed air. The powdered creamer is only truly flamable when airborn and thus kept the unit fairly safe overall. In any case, I would have a secondary ignition source for the dragon itself.



That was a favorite of mine! The basement still looks the same, even now.


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## Brandofhawk (Nov 4, 2012)

I'd consider two different rigs which look almost identical. That way you can pull back the dragon which breaths fire, and insert dragon that can be caught on fire... 

Or you could pump haze/fog into the dragon and it could start to melt away as if it is on fire from the inside... so smoke kind of billows out of it and around it... 


This also makes me entertain the thought of how a dragon could catch fire. I'd imagine that a dragon wouldn't be able to easily catch fire in the first place due to it being a fire breathing beast and all... nature having designed it in such a way as to make it harder to do. But snakes and spiders are susceptible to their own venom, so I guess a dragon could catch on fire - of course thats REALITY thinking and not metaphoric / theater thinking.


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## LXQuito (Nov 4, 2012)

ruinexplorer said:


> I know of a production which was based in a permanent venue that had a dragon breath fire every night. For them, they used something along the lines of a powdered coffee creamer and made it spray over a small flame with compressed air. The powdered creamer is only truly flamable when airborn and thus kept the unit fairly safe overall. In any case, I would have a secondary ignition source for the dragon itself.



Ooooh, I hadn't even considered this! I like it, though - I can remotely activate the compressed air/powder mixture and use something like a small butane lighter as my flame source, then I can do a secondary burn with an installation underneath the dragon to provide the final combustion source. Soooo much safer - I hadn't considered separating the breath and the final ignition. I'll check the flammability options of various inert when massed powders, then, starting with coffee creamer and working my way along.... I'm sure that I'll find something that gives me an impressive poof of flame. (I did mention above that I wasn't so hot on using guncotton, which would definitely get me the fire breath, and that's mostly because of its instability - I love the idea of burning otherwise inert dusts.)

Provided that I insulate the mouth of the beast well, I should even be able to do fire-breath trials without igniting the rest of the head. (Or I can just build some trial heads and test with those - papier-mache is very quick to make and forgiving of this sort of thing.) Thank you all!

*To Gafftaper*: this whole effect _scares the living crud out of me as well_. I was originally pyro-licenced in Canada and the laws here in Ecuador are so much more lax, and with something as large as this there are so many possibilities for it to go wrong in very bad ways. I'm going to do some trials with the powder, and if I can't get it to go satisfactorilly, I'll be resigning from the show but not before I advise the other pyros in my area of exactly what's going on and exactly why I'm quitting. I'm known down here for being less loco than most other techs. Bottom line? I don't want to be in any way responsible for anybody getting hurt - it's fine to risk my own life and safety (since I know what I'm doing and can take precautions), but I ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT RISK THE LIVES OF OTHERS. On the other hand, if I can get it so that it works as safely as possible for this sort of thing, I'll post photos of the final effect for posterity's sake if nothing else.

And 100% agreed. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, KIDS. Even for a licenced pyro tech, what we're discussing here is VERY, VERY DANGEROUS.


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## LXQuito (Nov 4, 2012)

Brandofhawk said:


> This also makes me entertain the thought of how a dragon could catch fire. I'd imagine that a dragon wouldn't be able to easily catch fire in the first place due to it being a fire breathing beast and all... nature having designed it in such a way as to make it harder to do. But snakes and spiders are susceptible to their own venom, so I guess a dragon could catch on fire - of course thats REALITY thinking and not metaphoric / theater thinking.



In terms of the show, wizard's fire will be the agent for igniting the dragon - I had initial objections to this as well in terms of Reality thinking (since like you I initially assumed that dragons are fireproof by their very nature). Other than that, the only thing that makes any sort of "logical" sense (insofar as any argument on the flammable nature of fire-breathing magical creatures can be called logical) would be that only the dragon's own fire could burn it. Even then, though, I'd have difficulty imagining that a dragon could self-combust under anything but strictly abnormal conditions, like illness..... These things are said to live in volcanoes, after all, and those are the hottest conditions available on the planet.


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## porkchop (Nov 4, 2012)

Since we've crossed the point of no return, what occurred to me is to use powder flame projectors. Ultratec sells them, and I'm sure many other companies do as well. They are compact, predictable, the cartridge doesn't get very hot, and only send the flame in the intended direction. Some I've used come with a film lining so they are usable in any orientation. I've never used anything larger than a 100 gram load, but they created a very convincing flame. Also since the cartridge is made of cardboard they would probably burn up while the dragon is burning (the cardboard is treated for a few seconds of flame not a prolonged burn).
As far a the dragon itself, I would look at finding a fire retarding agent and then deluding it down so that rather than preventing the flames from spreading it just keeps the spread from getting out of hand. That would be easy enough to work with that you could do some small scale testing to find the right mix.

As a side note nondairy creamer is very delightfully flammable. We used to use it at the ski lodge as fire starter. That lasted until the boss yelled at us because it was a lot more expensive than newspaper.


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## tyler.martin (Nov 5, 2012)

The coffee creamer idea works great, but you need a way to keep the particles directionalized. If the "cloud" starts to move with the airflow in the room, you could lose control of it. BTW, the mouse uses coffeemate (Cremora) for their dragon effect at WDW, Basically it is an paint airbrust with the paint replaced with the coffeemate. 

Liquid Flame projectors would be a bit more of an issue if you want the whole thing to burn to the ground. Prism flame units are awesome if you want to "color mix" your flames with Isogel, but AFAIK they dont have remote nozzles


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## gafftaper (Nov 5, 2012)

Precision of delivery, quantity, and direction are critical with the coffee creamer idea. Watch the end of that Mythbusters video above carefully. The flame initially travels up the main column of dust in a huge fireball, but then it backs down and spreads out sideways to consume every last drop of creamer drifting on the wind. You can't just point it in one direction and expect the flame to burn in only that direction, it's going to burn anywhere the creamer goes.


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## LXQuito (Nov 5, 2012)

tyler.martin said:


> The coffee creamer idea works great, but you need a way to keep the particles directionalized. If the "cloud" starts to move with the airflow in the room, you could lose control of it. BTW, the mouse uses coffeemate (Cremora) for their dragon effect at WDW, Basically it is an paint airbrust with the paint replaced with the coffeemate.
> 
> Liquid Flame projectors would be a bit more of an issue if you want the whole thing to burn to the ground. Prism flame units are awesome if you want to "color mix" your flames with Isogel, but AFAIK they dont have remote nossels.



OK, with an airbrush-style setup how hard is it to direct the flow of the coffeemate? I'd assume that with controlled air supply I can control how much creamer is dispensed by this sort of setup, but this is an outdoor production (no way would I even consider a full burn indoors!) in an area that's fairly well sheltered from wind. Assuming an airbrush setup, (and of course I'm testing this today so long as it isn't raining) can I expect a more directed jet of coffeemate?


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## tyler.martin (Nov 5, 2012)

with an airgun/airbrush you can control the airflow, but usually also the angle of the jet with different angled tips.


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## LXQuito (Nov 18, 2012)

Just to update y'all - the coffee creamer in airbrush delivery system is working fantastically in the trials, and has required nothing more complicated than a double-lining of industrial aluminum foil in the mouth to prevent head ignition. (although I'm probably going to layer the whole head in the final dragon, just to keep it from going up prematurely and keep everything as safe as possible. The foil also disappears nicely in higher-heat burns, which means no glinty stuff in the ash to distract.) I've also convinced the director that we need some sort of extinguisher system to put out the dragon, so it doesn't just sit there smouldering and being dangerous to the actors. It probably means I'll be out there in costume extinguishing the dragon, but I'm more than willing to do so if it keeps everything just that bit safer.

At the moment, I've got a simple ignition system out near the tongue, which seems to be in the ideal position to light the creamer without lighting the head, and it's producing rather impressive fireballs. So thank you for this solution!

I'm going to have to pay very close attention to the breeze on show night, though, because even finely directed powder has a tendency to drift a bit.


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## ruinexplorer (Dec 1, 2012)

If you get to post a video of the performance, it would be awesome to see what your end result will be.


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## LXQuito (Dec 16, 2012)

It looks like Mother Nature just scuppered us. Volcán Tungurahua kicked off a major eruption this morning, and if history's anything to go by it will be raining ash here for the next month or so. There is absolutely no way we'll be able to run any of the effects, or really even the lighting instruments, in those conditions.


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## ruinexplorer (Dec 19, 2012)

Well that just figures.


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## gafftaper (Dec 20, 2012)

Bummer. I've been looking forward to the end of this story.


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## LXQuito (Dec 20, 2012)

I might just combust the dragon for my own personal enjoyment on the 31st, though. It's traditional to burn the old year in effigy, and it *was* the year of the dragon....


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## LavaASU (Dec 20, 2012)

As long as it's video taped for us .


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## LXQuito (Jan 3, 2013)

OK, folkies, I'm still editing the video of the final combustion (we ended up stuffing volcano-style pyro effects into the dorsal spines - when the show went sideways the dragon went to the community league for final say, and they wanted sparks to fly!), but here's a still from the fire-breathing effect. We had a slight breeze which carried the flame further than I'd expected, but all in all it was more than satisfactory. This is Coffee-Mate combined with a bit of propellant from the can of air I was using - obviously I wasn't about to rig a remote setup for this; with ash still falling it was safer and cheaper to do it manually.




For those of you who assumed I'm a guy - you were wrong, and that's me running the compressed air in the photo.


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## gafftaper (Jan 3, 2013)

AWESOME! Can't wait to see the video.


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