#gold winglet

[killzilla]

when i first met the false dragonets, i actually really loved them bc they're all just sad kids yk? anyway, i loved Flame when i first met him and my heart was WRENCHED when he hugged Avalanche.

then when i saw his design in the graphic novel i fell inlove ALL over again.

i know there's really not much about him and he's more or less an asshole, but i am 100% a Flame enjoyer. that bein said, i also REALLY love the Gold winglet and no ONE FREAKING TALKS ABOUT THEM ENOUGH !!

[ninoxwof]

Tamerin the Rainwing

(Based on golden lion headed tamerins, hyacinth macaws and vaporeon)

[Image Description: A digital drawing of a blue rainwing dragon named Tamerin. She's short and youthful, with a small snout and little fangs poking out. Her frills are large and she has an extra one all around her neck similar to vaporeon's from pokemon. They have a gradient of oranges and yellows, as well as her wings. She has a yellow mask, underbelly, legs and tail. Her horns and talons are a dark purple, with her horns curving downward. She has scars on her wings, shoulders and stomach. She has light blue blind eyes. She's sitting with her back turned to the viewer, peering over her shoulder with a soft and gentle look on her face. /.End ID]

Hidden Kingdom Dragons are done!!! Woo!!

[wof-inbox]

to the Gold Winglet, How ya feeling about the school? any class your favorite?

“It was okay.. Except for Icicle..” -Sora

[ravewing]

thinking about how literally everyone in the gold winglet had beef with eachother except for tamarin . shes so iconic for that i love her

[ask-wofreimagined]

Jade Mountain Camp Winglets! This is pretty much everyone available at camp with just Starflight missing as he isn’t part of a specific winglet as camper or leader he’s chilling as librarian. 

[wof-animation-friendly-designs]

have one with no scars, burn scars, battle scars, and both

[2319-hgj]

MY FIRST POST!!!

Hello people of Tumblr! I just started and hope that I will get tons of followers in the future! Right now I am hoping to start drawing the wings of fire gold winglet. I hope that you guys will give me advice and suggestions on what I should draw next! Also beware that I am really, I mean really, bad at spelling. I also speak and understand little spanish so some of my posts might have a bit of spanish I have learned in it... Oh, before I forget I need to tell you guys it takes me about a month or two to draw the characters and post them and read your guys' suggestions. I also just draw on my cpu (since I don't have an IPad yet) so my drawings will either be photos that I took of my cpu drawings (not as good on pencil and paper yet either) or just sent to me by my mom. And, so, yea. Thanks for reading!!! 😊😊😊

[jflxwr]

need more found families that actually fucking hate each other, r very open abt it, would kill each other with no hesitation if they could and the only reason they stay together is because they're forced to

[shiftywing]

tamarin: is severely injured with painful long-lasting wounds due to a very traumatic event

her winglet:

[resident-wof-expert]

Pike: What do you have beating inside you?

Flame: Hate.

Tamarin: No, no, no, the thing that pumps blood through your veins.

Icicle: Rage.

Bigtail: No, it's a vital organ.

Sora: Vengeance.

[cometchasr]

gold winglet notice board: 26/7/2022

(may become a weekly series but on mondays)

Alright, just gotta say that exams for me are this week, at least some of them. (Math, English, Lit) All the others are like 1-2 weeks down, so expect slower updates. (Broken 6 still coming out though)

Oh, and for the like fourth time, Chinese compos suck.

[flawseer]

Jade Mountain Academy students

#3 - Nightwing chapter

The Jade Mountain Nightwing chapter, also known as "the part where Mightyclaws carries the entire weight of the Quartz winglet's canon characterization by himself". There are a bunch of wacky headcanons that have snuck their way on here. Shout-out to the deliberation on Nightwing powers by my partner @flamebringer0.

Moonwatcher

Tribe - Nightwing

Winglet - Jade

Color - Iridescent black and blue

Relatives - none on site

Clawmate(s) - Kinkajou (Rainwing), Carnelian (Skywing)

Favorite subject - Literacy

Least fav. subject - did not disclose

Physical characteristics - three prominent silver-colored scales on face (two adjacent to each eye, one in center of forehead); scale clusters of iridescent blue and green along neck, torso, and tail; small stature, round features with well-defined musculature

Other characteristics - socially subdued, quiet, mother reported history of migraines (suggest keeping stock of pain-relieving herbs on hand in medical cave, monitor hydration habits); appears ostracized from fellow Nightwing students (suggest communication seminar)

Bigtail

Tribe - Nightwing

Winglet - Gold

Color - Dark ash

Relatives - none on site

Clawmate(s) - Pike (Seawing), Flame (Skywing)

Favorite subject - History

Least fav. subject - Science

Physical characteristics - nasal ridge sloped; large stature, uneven distribution of body mass; tail size and length medium to underdeveloped

Other characteristics - body shows signs of extreme long-term malnutrition (suggest dietary seminar and monitoring of food intake); caught bringing bottle of cactus wine into classroom (confiscated, reprimanded after incident but monitor future behavior)

Fearless

Tribe - Nightwing

Winglet - Silver

Color - Charcoal black and red

Relatives - none on site

Clawmate(s) - Sepia (Mudwing)

Favorite subject - History

Least fav. subject - Literacy

Physical characteristics - long dorsal spines; localized reddish accents; stature is noticeably small and thin

Other characteristics - body shows signs of extreme long-term malnutrition (suggest dietary seminar and monitoring of food intake); fixation on Nightwing culture (gently encourage diversifying interests)

Mindreader

Tribe - Nightwing

Winglet - Copper

Color - Charcoal black

Relatives - none on site

Clawmate(s) - Alba (Icewing), Snail (Seawing)

Favorite subject - Cultural Exchange

Least fav. subject - History

Physical characteristics - black teardrop scales adjacent to both eyes; size is average, features appear very gaunt

Other characteristics - body shows signs of extreme long-term malnutrition (suggest dietary seminar and monitoring of food intake); appears socially open and well-adjusted

Mightyclaws

Tribe - Nightwing

Winglet - Quartz

Color - Shadow gray

Relatives - none on site

Clawmate(s) - Barracuda (Seawing)

Favorite subject - Art

Least fav. subject - Anatomy

Physical characteristics - light horns, bent; prominent jawline; small stature with uneven distribution of body mass

Other characteristics - body shows signs of extreme long-term malnutrition, noticeably stressed during meal times (suggest dietary seminar, monitoring of food intake, and counseling); artistically inclined, has started therapeutic painting to cope with post-traumatic stress (at behest of staff)

[ninoxwof]

Anemone the Seawing

(Gave her a little clown fish friend!)

[Image ID: A digital drawing of a young light blue seawing dragon named Anemone. She has a short turtle like muzzle, pink rounded fins on her chest, ears, head, neck, front legs and tail. The fins on her head in particular start off as tendril like strands like an anemone. Her bioluminescent scales are a light pink and are rounded ovals like pearls. She has two circular shaped ones in particular on her face right next to her eyes. Her wings are also pink with the royal seawing wave markings. She's wearing a pearl necklace, a pearl earring and a bracelet, as well as a purple harness around her. There's a clown fish friend swimming right above her head. She is sitting up pouting. /.End ID]

[ranticore]

some harpies of kosa (a small human village on the edge of the plains)

Cuinn (as a king, white) showing the usual difference in body size between an eagle harpy king, a falcon pen (female), and a dove tiercel. the ear winglet position employed by Cuinn is a particular posture only used by kings, colloquially referred to as the King's Crown. it is an expression of dominance.

the 'King' terminology is borrowed directly from nearby human settlements. when doing trade and egg exchanges with humans, harpy kings demanded to be known by the same title used by the humans with the most authority (in other regions, they are called emperors, tsars, etc).

eyries in this region will not engage with humans or other creatures which they consider poor or lacking in power. human falconers who want to enter a hunting partnership with a 'wild' harpy first need to prove the wealth of their village/their lord. harpies do not use metals but do understand the value of gold to humans so they'll take a sufficient show of gold as a good enough marker of wealth. once impressed, they might join the falconers or, more commonly these days, give them an egg to raise.

[ravewing]

flame wings of fire headcanons because i am feeling silly .

hii everypony .. welcome back to my quarterly tumblr post 

- piebald flame wings of fire . it would be so awesome it would be so cool - right handed BUT he would go out of his way to convince everyone else that he was ambidextrous . “noo ochre listen to me i can use my left hand i just dont want to . shut up ochre nobody asked” - transmasc and gay . im not wrong fellas - fatespeaker introduced him to coffee . he tells everyone he hates it but he doesnt - his mom is his best friend . he writes her letters from the hospital he works at - viper gaslit him into thinking that his eyes are slightly different colors . “oh my god pike shut up im serious my eyes are different colors LOOK CLOSER goddamn it” - speaking of pike they r 100% frenemies ,, they argue every night and then they play board games together - speaking of pike AGAIN because i love pike . flame was 100% an older brother figure to him - he probably envied carnelian for her confidence - when he and viper were dragonets they prolly had those dumb matching bff necklaces and then one time he gets pissed off at her and he throws it into the ocean (he cries afterward) - im 100% sure that he was TERRIFIED of onyx . imagine you go to school and then in your winglet theres this grown ass adult - pyrophobic after that one time the nightwings burned down the skywing guard post ,, - scared of being read because then people will think he is weak or sum . idk hes just like me ong - he and viper picked on squid ALL THE TIME . “hey squid truth or dare . i dare you to eat that pile of cow shit over there or we’ll tell nautilus that youre a pussy” - prolly hung out with tamarin a couple times . shes his therapist friend - DEATHLY allergic to red tide . the one time the talons of peace were camping by the ocean he was sneezing the whole time “flame go away youre sick we dont want you here” “SHUT UP OCHRE im not sick its my ALLERGIES” - 100% doesnt know how to handle emotions so he bottles ts up and takes it out on random ass people (usually fatespeaker) - he loves trinkets . when he was younger he’d probably scavenge for whatever he could find and then give it to his mom like those cats who bring you dead animals - cries a lot probably - shiftywing said that flame would wear an eyepatch this one time and i could not agree more - introduced pike to hot topic . “flame are you SURE i can wear a spiked collar in public . queen coral would pull out my teeth” “good i hope she does” - he used to have like one million piercings and then viper told him he looked dumb and then he cried - he was definitely a bug kid . “hey mom look at this cool beetle i found :)” “flame honey what is that get that away from me” - this goes hand in hand with the last one but ochre probably would kill bugs without thinking about it and then flame would get really mad at him and then cry - he blames himself for what happened with viper  - a kinkajou and flame friendship would be so funny . scene and goth duo fr - scared of the dark

ok thats all i have for today fellas ,, im going to seaworld tomorrow and its like a three hour drive so maybe possibly expect a flame doodle dump idk 

[runwayrunway]

No. 52 - Alaska Airlines Xáat Kwáani and Salmon-Thirty-Salmon Liveries

Did you think I was done with Alaska Airlines?

No, this is actually my last post about them for now (though, mark my words, you will be seeing a post about the Gold Nugget Jet in the not-too-distant future - I just feel like we need a break from nothing but consecutive posts about the same airline, and I have other things I want to cover). But it's something that's both requested and which I've wanted to talk about for some time.

In my last post I discussed the identity of the man on the Alaska Airlines tailfin. It wasn't a major part of the story, only taking up a small piece, but I did touch on how ChatGPT apparently will lie when asked about the background of the livery. Not only does it falsely attribute the livery to Fred Kabotie, who I'm sure had more important things to do, but it also falsely claims Fred Kabotie, who was Hopi, to be Tlingit. As it turns out, though, Alaska Airlines does have a livery designed by a Tlingit artist.

image: Brandon Farris

Crystal Kaakeeyáa Rose Demientieff Worl is a Tlingit artist known for large public artwork which heavily incorporates indigenous artistic traditions and visual motifs across many mediums. Some of her previous work includes large-scale murals in Alaska and throughout the world and guardrail panels at Juneau International Airport. She feels like the most natural choice possible to design an airliner livery, given the scale and diverse canvases she works with, and in May of this year the airplane you can see looming behind her was unveiled in a brand new livery that I, and a lot of other people, immediately fell in love with.

It's safe to say that this is one of the most ambitious and unique special liveries out there. Xáat Kwáani (which means 'salmon people' in Tlingit) is a beautiful and one-of-a-kind take on the often-noticed resemblance airplanes have to fish.

Salmon fishing is huge in Alaska, both now and historically. Today fishing is a major part of the Alaskan economy and something many people making a living off, but historically they were even more directly responsible for making the difference between life and death for those who lived beside them. A major source of food, they were literally life-bringing to indigenous societies, necessary to survival. Humans and salmon were part of the same ecosystem.

Independent of this fact, airplanes seem to lend themselves to comparisons to sea creatures. They may be called 'birds', but time and time again other people confirm that I'm not just imagining it, they do distinctly look like cetaceans and fish. Very early on in this blog the fact that 747s look like Humphead Wrasse was discussed. Amakusa Airlines, Japan Transocean Air, and Southwest Airlines have all leaned into this fish resemblance, and I'm sure over time my sea creature plane tag will continue to grow. This genre of livery will never cease to delight me.

I think it's fairly predictable that I always loved N559AS, the brilliantly named salmon-thirty-salmon plane. I was devastated when I learned that the livery was going to be removed. I mean...just look at her.

The salmon-thirty-salmon was a very unconventional take on the fish-plane, using a much more realistic drawing than any other attempt. It doesn't even try to transform the plane itself into the fish, which I think is potentially a smart way of accepting the limits of doing so. Instead, it fully displays the honestly hilarious and adorable face that salmon have while providing a nice canvas, a bit of water for the salmon to be carried on. At the same time it incorporates thoughtful details like the scales on the interior winglets, and the way the salmon's body is aligned with the empennage and nose feels very precisely done. It can create a somewhat uncanny doubling effect from a few angles, but by no means is it enough to rob the livery of its charm or elegance.

The salmon-thirty-salmon gets an A.

I've lived near the ocean my whole life. I love fish. I loved this plane. I was heartbroken when I learned the livery was going to serve its final milk run before rolling into the hangar for the very last time, coming out repainted and lost forever. It's always a bitter pill to swallow when airlines retire special liveries, particularly when it involves the plane being repainted into the standard colors. A lot of other people were sad to see this design go too.

What we didn't know was that this was not the end of the salmon-thirty-salmon. She was not lost, but transformed. When she emerged from the hangar again she was not wearing Alaska Airlines' default colors but something even more eye-catching, a livery honoring the same fish but with extra layers of meaning added by means of an intricate and beautiful new design.

Costs, materials, and man-hours used to paint an airplane vary dramatically from case to case, livery to livery, model to model, airline to airline. The numbers in my description are somewhat conservative estimates used for comedic value. Alaska Airlines actually gave some numbers for Xáat Kwáani - twelve days, 117 gallons of paint. The colors used are Midnight Blue and Atlas Blue for the background, White for the fish themselves, and Pink for highlights, and a clear coat has been applied over the top in order to preserve the livery. Alaska Airlines has every intention of keeping it intact for as long as possible.

The use of colors is beautiful. The waves of darker and lighter blue keep it from ever looking too light or too dark, adjusting to the lighting in order to always remain saturated and vivid, and the irregular wave pattern keeps any part of the livery from looking static. The use of the pink as a highlight is sparing but effective. The white, though, is what makes this livery so fantastic. A central tenet of this blog is a disdain for the dominant trend of livery design in recent history, Eurowhite - that of an almost entirely white fuselage. And there is a legitimate sense of general derision for white, but it can be so powerful as a design feature. There is no contrast more powerful than a stark and complete absence, a space carved out fully from the world and color around it. It is the color of bone and snow.

The balance of each color is just perfect, the blue never overpowering the white, the white never fully blocking out the blue, the pink subtly adding depth throughout, and the shapes of the salmon are placed perfectly, not feeling cramped or confined. They are free to wander the fuselage and they have an amazing sense of movement to them, as if caught mid-leap. I've seen salmon swimming upstream to spawn, and they are so startlingly large and vivacious. The fish on this plane, though stylized, perfectly capture the way that these fish look in motion.

Formline is a style of art historically created by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast of North America. It was a common and versatile visual element, present in everything from painting to carving to weaving. It is defined by its use of continuous, curving lines which may change in angle, width, and direction but do not terminate. Though it was diminished in quantity by suppression of indigenous culture by US and Canadian settlers it never went away, and from the second half of the 20th century onwards it has been surging back as more and more indigenous artists are able to produce and display their work. Worl has worked with formline many times before. She is quoted as saying:

Every time I looked at an Alaska plane, I couldn’t help but visualize the salmon being in formline [...] I can’t help but look at things and see how to Indigenize them.

And the idea has now come to life in this absolutely unforgettable livery. I wish I was within the range of the 737-800 from Alaska Airlines' hubs so that Xáat Kwáani could pay a visit to my home airport, because this is among the most beautiful planes in the world right now. And beyond just nice colors and pleasing shapes it represents something important - indigenous artists being given a 40-meter-long flying platform on which to honor fish which have provided countless centuries of life to the people who live beside them.

Worl's work is above and beyond what I would have ever expected for a custom airplane livery. Even the 'Alaska' wordmark is neatly incorporated into the formline, blending into the background to the point it's hard to notice in a good way.

Most liveries are designed by graphic designers and branding firms. Landor Associates design liveries and logo, but they aren't building monuments or putting their work in galleries. I don't mean to diminish their work - obviously I'm passionate about it, I have a blog about it - but it's just fundamentally different from what Worl does. It has different priorities, a different philosophy, and a different level of personal investment.

From my perspective Xáat Kwáani feels less like branding material and more like a piece of artwork. This isn't something designed to go on letterhead, to be put in a press kit, to be widely reproduced. It's something to be looked at, thought about, and remembered. This is a mural that flies.

I mean...A+, obviously.

There is just about nothing else in the sky which has the same visual power as Xáat Kwáani. As far as I'm concerned, every gallon of paint was worth it to give us this flying tribute to the people and wildlife of the state Alaska Airlines takes its name from.