Character spotlight: Kuraokami, the Arctic Dragon- Lore and Design History
11 months ago – Wed, Oct 25, 2023 at 10:00:01 AM

To many, the Arctic Dragon is one of the more unique dragon designs out there, but many of you have probably seen at least one its previous iterations before. Read on as we take a deep dive into the design history and lore of this pivotal Cyberzoic character. 

 I just want to begin by showing off this epic new Arctic Dragon art, courtesy of comic artist Felipe Massafera! 

Lore

Kuraokami (named by human settlers after the Japanese deity of ice and snow) is the designated protector of Gaea 2 and last of his kind. Kuraokami has existed for over 1000 Earth years and his species' sole purpose is to protect and maintain the balance of nature on the planet. Though with the devastation of many Gaea 2's ecosystems by the Technologists, he has become weary and weakened. The life force of the planet provides him with his strength, and the Dragon War against the human invaders eventually took its toll causing him to retreat to the remote frozen north, a land too inhospitable for the Technologists to seek.  Few humans have actually seen this creature up close and survived, and the Tech Knight Argenteus is the only person known to have engaged Kuraokami in successful combat. Narrowly escaping with his life, he fulfilled his mission of extracting a sample of feather scales from the beast, thus securing the creature's DNA. 

After his retreat north, Kuraokami would eventually be confronted again by two more humans, Dragolina and the mysterious warrior known as 'The Ronin', who instead of seeking conflict, propose an alliance between the Earthlings and Gaea 2’s wildlife, to take it back from the Technologists. Time will tell if the animal leader can ever trust the humans in any capacity, but this may be the only hope left for is kind and for the future of humanity. 

Design history and process

The Kuraokami design journey is a very personal one which originated as far back as 2006 and has been evolving ever since. 

 Evolution one: McFarlane's Dragons- Series 6 Ice Clan Dragon (2007)

My introduction into the toy industry began in 2003 as a freelance designer for McFarlane Toys, and one of the first toy lines I had the pleasure of working on was McFarlane’s Dragons. By the time we got to Series 6 a few years later, I'd become a full time sculptor for them, but I was still able to contribute several designs to this series, and the one I was most excited for was the Ice Clan Dragon. 

While it was great to work on many of the other dragon sculpts, I was especially looking forward to tackling this one. However the final figure ended up being a collaboration between five different sculptors, my part being limited to a small portion of the face and neck. And while there is some resemblance to my original vision, I never felt the execution lived up to its potential. 

Despite my unique perspective on this figure, the fan response was still extremely positive. But I always felt that there was more to be done. This project wasn't finished, at least not for me. 

 Evolution two: the Arctic Dragon (resin model kit 2015)

Fast forward nine years- Creative Beast Studio has been established, specializing at this point in dinosaur model kits, and just releasing my Dragon vs. Raptors resin kit a couple years prior. It was time to tackle my second dragon kit and I decided to revisit this concept which I felt was left unresolved. My experience as an artist had grown a lot in those nine years, immersing myself not only into sculpting, but in comparative wildlife anatomy- extinct and extant- and I wanted apply that knowledge to a new version of the Ice Dragon. Thus an overhaul of the design began and the Arctic Dragon was born!

 Where the first iteration was mostly designed to look cool (no pun intended), I wanted to consider how such a creature might exist and how it could be shaped by a harsh frozen environment. Many of the core design elements were still in place, I just needed to make more sense of them. 

It wouldn't need to fly since it's prey lived in the water and it had no predators to evade. It would need to be bulky to maintain its body heat, and powerful enough to take down large prey. And it would need to be able to traverse the land as well as the water, thus having both the ability to climb and swim. It's wings would not only aid in swimming, but would also help regulate body temperature on land by absorbing any sunlight. 

The design would deviate even further from its source during the sculpting stage, with a more crocodile-like tail, lion-inspired body, and trading the fur for elaborate feather scales similar to that of a Bush Viper.  Even the head horns and wing ridge texture was inspired by Jackson's Chameleon. 

And let's not forget about those colors! I knew I wanted to incorporate blue, but it would be used sparingly in favor of mostly black and white similar to other arctic inhabitants like Killer Whales and Penguins. The African Fat-Tailed (Oreo) Gecko would serve as the main color inspiration which had all of the the colors I was looking for as well as interesting pattern ideas. 

 The original idea for this composition was that this was a rare undiscovered animal on Earth. Depicted as an apex predator, it has just dragged a narwhal out of the ocean for a feast. Eventually this would be reconned as an alien animal for Cyberzoic of course, but with so many Earth animals populating Gaea 2, this scenario could still be within canon for the story.

 Although a tough shot to take in my modest studio space at the time, I had to get a photo of both big dragons together.

 After it was completed, I also took a photo of the finished piece alongside the product of its origins.  It felt good to see the concept fully-realized visually, but there was still something missing... what if it could move?

Evolution three: Kuraokami- The Arctic Dragon; Cyberzoic (2021 design)

 As the story premise was coming together for Cyberzoic back in 2021, there was an opportunity to introduce alien animals into the mix. Articulated dragons are something that I've been wanting to do for a long time, and I totally understand why it's so rare that you see them. Large necks, long tails and of course, those wings- one figure can be like tooling two or three dinosaurs! So while I had initially wanted to do an entire line of dragons, it wasn't very feasible from an economic standpoint, but I still wanted to attempt it nonetheless. 

The Earth-like environment of Gaea 2 would provide the perfect home for these creatures, creating a worthy adversary for the armored dinosaurs. Plus, this allowed most of the line to consist of dinosaurs, with the Dragons being more sparsely represented, just as they are in the story. 

The original design was estimated at  22" long, but this ended up at 31"which is a nearly identical 1:1 recreation of the model kit.

 Sculpting

With Creative Beast Studio now transitioned from model kits to action figures thanks to the success of three Beasts of the Mesozoic Kickstarters, my responsibilities as an art director/ entrepreneur would end up keeping me from sculpting this new version. But thankfully, versatile paleo artist Raul Ramos was up for the challenge. 

 Using extensive reference of my Arctic Dragon model kit, Raul created a new, articulated sculpt from the ground up, and even improved it in several areas with thicker wings, a larger tail, and more refined overall detailing. 

 It was great to work with Raul on this as he brought his knowledge and experience of dinosaur anatomy to this project. It helped to bridge the visual gap between the speculative dinosaurs and the fictional dragons, thus blending them together seamlessly into the same world.

 As you may imagine, the neck was the biggest challenge with its horse-like posture and the added feather scale layers, so we worked on getting this as close as possible at this stage to a functional solution.

The main neck (yellow) will be a flexible plastic, with the disc peg at the center (teal) and barbell connectors for multi-direction movement of the head and base of the neck. 

The parts are with the tooling factory now and they're engineering the articulation for the fine cut model as I write this. I'm looking forward to seeing what tweaks they add to further enhance its functionality.

 Post print sculpting

One of the interesting things about digital sculpts is that they sometime look different on the computer screen than they do in physical reality. Part of my job is to make sure that the 3D printed parts match the expectations that I had in mind for the final sculpt, and in some cases, additional adjustments are needed. 

 When I began assembling this prototype, I noticed that the head and horns seemed undersized compared to what I'd anticipated. It wasn't actually an error, it just looked different in person. So instead of going through the process of resizing and reprinting, I had another idea- why not use this as an opportunity to tie it in with its model kit predecessor?

 I just happened to have a few extra castings handy of the parts I needed to accomplish this, and with a little additional sculpting, the head ended up being a perfect fit! Now I'm not one who's easily impressed with my own work, but this Arctic Dragon head sculpt is in my mind is the perfect depiction of the character, so I'm glad I was able to incorporate this into the action figure.

A  few other tweaks were made like replacing the scapula spikes with the model kit versions, and adding some beef to the legs to better balance the large front portion. I would also end up reducing the length of the heel sections later on as well.

 And thanks to the great molding and casting work of Jeremy Monz, I was able to finally assemble the prime example of this concept, translucent parts and all, the ultimate Arctic Dragon!

But wait, there is one more crucial step that we can't forget.

Paintwork

 While I had painted the original Arctic Dragon model kit shown previously, again my current duties at this stage the time prompted me to seek a suitable replacement to paint this particular version, and who better than the Paint Master himself, Matt Holt!

 He basically followed my paint design and took it up a notch, with more vibrant colors and contrast.  I made a few finishing touches at the end and voila- the culmination of the past 16 years was finally completed!

 And while it does stand out among the dinosaurs...

it has just the right amount of similarity to ground it our world, while still maintaining the differences that distinguish it as a dragon. I couldn't be happier with how this turned out!

And how could I not get this shot of the past two generations? Unfortunately by this point, I'd sold my McFarlane Dragons version, but perhaps it was time to move on.

And that is our look at the history of the Arctic Dragon, a.k.a. Kuraokami!  Thank you to everyone who took the time to read this long update, I hope there was enjoyment to be had. This is a very personal piece for me that includes countless hours of work from myself and my team, and I'm so grateful to have it fully funded here. 

We're getting so close to that Dilophosaurus stretch goal, another Raul Ramos masterpiece- let's make it happen!

Until next time!

-David