It's Like a Messenger Pigeon

I've recently been bitten by the muse with inspiration from a fellow artist and suggestions from another to create a steampunk flavored shoulder dragon. I'm headed to AnomalyCon next weekend and thought he would make a perfect addition to my day costume. To give you a little background, the character I've developed for design inspiration is something like a Pony Express rider. A messenger of sorts. I chose to make Victorian underwear into outerwear using faux tooled leather, and micro suede. This year I'm adding to the costume with a lace and leather dust mask, proper message tubes for my satchel and my carrier pigeon. I mean dragon.

Here's last year's rigg:

This year I've signed up for the whole weekend, including a grand ball so I wanted two costumes and more detail than I had time to come up with last year. I'm a bit of a snob in that I cringe at gears for purely decorative purposes. I'd really like for them to at least LOOK like they might have a purpose. Unfortunately, I am not mechanically minded.

Here's the inspiration for my dragon:

He was built by Dragontry- find more like him at http://www.dragontry.com/ She is a superb artist and her dragons are not only one of a kind but meticulously built and very reasonably priced. Alas, I am a die hard do-it-yourselfer possessed of a huge stash of fabric and minimal funds for bribing other artists to do work for me. So with a giant nod to the brilliance of Dragontry, I am making my own pattern and my very own dragon *crosses fingers*.

Here's what I've got so far:

I've already decided the tail portion of the pattern will need to be modified. I'm waiting to draft the patterns for arms and legs until I have the body sewn so I can see what shape will best help my dragon to perch securely and also so that I may have a better sense of scale. More updates to come!