"We had no blueprints for the Flying Machine. But our inspiration came from Leonardo da Vinci's drawings of a flying machine. We wanted to build something loosely based on that," explains Collin Niemi, the series' Production Designer. "We gave the design and construction team a lot of flexibility."

A flexible mind is also the key to finding treasures in scrap yards, according to Lanneuville.
"You have an object in your hand and you have no clue what you're going to do with it. But if you keep an open mind, very soon the object starts to tell you what it wants to be."

Another "Dragoneer," Special Effects Artist, Patrick Lee, agrees.
"When you're building a unique object you look at things differently. You might have a tool in your hand but decide to use it as a switch on the control panel of the Flying Machine."

Lanneuville says that he never finds what he is looking for in a scrap yard.
"I always find something else that is better than the original idea," he states.

Matt Faulkner, a designer and artist, worked on the machine's shell, which is a steel frame wrapped in syntra, covered with "reptilian scales" cut out from a piece of vinyl left over from the 1950s.

The Flying Machine is very industrial, he says, with its metal, vinyl, nuts and bolts but "it is beautiful because it is so organic." The machine evolved, and took on a shape that no one could have predicted.

Faulkner works anywhere from 3 - 9 months on film sets in Montreal but when he's in his own atelier, he creates unique, decorative lamps. He builds them from pre-1960s home appliances. His favourites are Electrolux vacuum cleaners, telephones, irons and blenders.