Dragonfly Research

As I am positive I am using a dragonfly in my film I am concentrating on it's design and looking into the anatomy and the way dragonflies move and live.  One of the perfect reason I choose a dragonfly is that it only spends 5% of it's life as a dragonfly, the rest of the 95% is underwater.  So I feel it's life story goes well with my creature also, that even though it's brief it leaves it's water and lives it's life.

I first watched a little documentary of dragonflies that touched upon their lifespan and their characteristics.  I looked at two David Attenborough  documentaries, one that specifically looked at dragonflies and damsel flies, 'Dragonfly - Beauty or Beast.  I also looked on some clips from 'Life in the Undergrowth', both very helpful for reference and the behaviour of Dragonflies.

I noted all useful information to see if I could apply it to my film.




I then did a reference study into the anatomy of dragonflies,  most bodies were roughly the same, nothing as different as the frogs I was studying earlier on.  Only slight differences in the tail length, colour and head shape.  I think I will be designing my dragonfly a bright aqua colour to stand out from the dark greens, but I need to play with in environment concept before I know what will work or not.



I then looked into how I might stylalize the dragonfly, but so far just concentrated on the wings, as that is one of the key aspects the audience will notice.