Year’s planning behind landing castle dragon
THE blue dragon which has appeared at Cardiff Castle to celebrate the Champions League final in the capital may have sprung up overnight, but it certainly wasn’t an overnight success.
Matt Wild, owner of Wild Creations – who were famously behind the popular giant rugby ball that “crashed” into Cardiff Castle to mark the Rugby World Cup in 2015 – revealed work began on the project at least a year ago.
He said: “We sat down, we looked at loads of ideas and we wanted to steer away from the ball (in the wall) and do something quite different. It was fantastic but we’ve got to try and move on to something else. We then sat around with FA Wales and a representative from UEFA, we looked at various different things.
“The branding for Cardiff was the dragon protecting the trophy. What better place to put that than the top of Cardiff Castle? It’s the same reason we did the ball here. It’s such an iconic part of Cardiff, it’s great to do it here. We’ve been talking, planning, designing for about 12 months.
“We’ve been working on it in the workshop for about 12 weeks – it’s been about 15 people working on it. It’s been a busy few weeks.”
The project has been through numerous stages, from computer drawing and designing, to sculpting, hand-sculpting, robot work, metal work, to a team of artists painting the installation.