More Squids Than You Can Shake A Stick At

Continuing my research into the wonderful world of squids: this week I was to search for various cultural images and references of my spirit animal, the squid, and break them down briefly. The interesting thing is that after watching and reading so much about real squids, it became very clear that the real thing is actually quite more magical and awesome than most of the cultural references aside, (except Squidward, perhaps).

Exhibit A

Exhibit A is one of the most interesting depictions of giant squids, since it is one of the earliest. Exhibit A is a pen and wash drawing by Pierre Dénys de Montfort. I had seen this image many times before in reference to the mythical, dangerous Kraken, but upon closer inspection, it looks more similar to an octopus. The funny thing is that when this drawing was made in 1801, hardly anything was known about squids (giant and not) and there was hardly a distinction between them and their octopus friends. However, because of the enormous, fanciful scale of this creature, it is important to think of this cultural reference as a sort of nautical archetype. The open sea was to be feared, as were the many dangerous denizens of the abyss. Now we have ROVs and submarines and can watch things that once were feared to be larger than massive boats on YouTube.

Exhibit B

Exhibit C-Taking down a ship!

Exhibit B + C are kind of a double whammy. B is of Davy Jones from the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, and C is of his pet Kraken, or giant squid. Both were feared and reviled by ordinary people and pirates alike in the movies. Jones had a telepathic link to the Kraken and could command it to sink ships at will, in order for him to ferry the hapless souls of passengers to the underworld. Jones himself is an amalgam of sorts of a squid and a man. He has all sorts of magical powers, but is a bit of a tormented soul, as his heart is separated from his body. This means he can live forever if it is safely hidden away, but if it falls into the wrong hands, he is at their disposal. Plot device if I ever heard one. Jones symbolizes a man long lost at sea and what can happen if you get too close to the secrets of the sea. The Kraken on the other hand, once again is the crystallization of our fears of things from the abyss, but this one is particularly heinous because it is weaponized via its mental link to Davy Jones.

Exhibit D

Squidward, on the other hand, hardly has a mental link to anyone in Bikini Bottoms. The poor guy in exhibit D has Spongebob and Patrick as neighbors, and is constantly irritated by their antics with Sandy the Texan squirrel. He is a bit of a know it all, and he loves to play the clarinet. He also works at the Krusty Krab with Spongebob, but he prefers to man the register, as opposed to cook like Spongebob loves to do. Interestingly, Squidward has such a salty temperament, it is ironic that he is the one who interacts with customers. Squidward is a fantastic cartoon rendering of an anthropomorphic squid, much like a Mindflayer from RPGs and things of that nature, but much less evil. Squidward is known the world over by children and adults alike, and because of his comedic neighbors and their agitation of him, Squidward is one of the few cultural references we have to a squid (giant or not) that is not something to be feared or mystified by. Instead, Squidward is the same height as the other characters and though he has a short temper, he hardly has the destructive power of his Kraken kin. From his design to his demeanor, Squidward is a thing of comedy.

As a bonus, please enjoy this fascinating video of the Vampire Squid. It predates both squids and octopi, and resembles a mix of both, but it gets better! Not only does it have light emitting circles on its head, it has proto tentacles to sense movement, AND it can shoot out bioluminescent particles at its enemies to distract them instead of messy ink. It pretty much shoots out GLITTER. How awesome is that!? We don’t need to find aliens in space, we have them right here under the sea.

Photogrammatically Correct

OMG Giant Nautilus Attack!!!!

My film photo class is turning out to be lots of fun. I like experimenting with the knowledge I have of digital cameras and manual exposure and applying it to film photography. This week we learned all about film development, which is kind of scary, but fun. My first rolls will be developed by my own hands tomorrow, so I am excited to see the results. I bought a film scanner to be able to digitize anything awesome from class, so I can’t wait until my film is developed. Terry, our professor was so caught up in the magic of film processing, that we didn’t go over our photograms and have a critique like we had planned. I was kind of upset, since I spent my whole evening on Wednesday making them. Apparently, we will turn them all in and discuss the results next week. I want some feedback on my more bizarre imagery, to see if it is something I could run with in future projects. I played around a lot with my nautilus shell, bubble wrap, and some small figurines that I have in my apartment, as well as old film I had laying around and zapped them under the enlarger in the darkroom to make these images. What do you guys think of them?

Enlightenment

Cosmic Nautilus

Enlightenment

Cosmic Nautilus

My New Best Friend: Canon 10-22mm lens!

I treated myself to a new toy/tool last week, and bought an ultra wide angle lens. It is specifically built for APS-C sensor cameras, so it won’t fit on a full frame camera, sadly, but it brings a whole new set of angles to my photography that I didn’t know were there. It is not the fastest lens, so without a tripod it is not suited for low light settings, but because it captures such a wide angle, so much more can fit into the frame. This adds a sense of grandeur and large scale to even the most mundane things, like subway cars, or empty streets. It is freezing outside right now, so I won’t do too much outdoor photography until it warms up a bit, so in the meantime, I will learn to use it for portraits and fashion shoots to spice everything up a bit.

Check out some of the shots I’ve taken so far outside and in the train! You’ll see much more from this lens soon!

Squidtastic Model Sheet

For this week’s assignment in Animals, People, and Those In Between, we were to elaborate on our spirit animal from last week and create model sheets. Here is the model sheet for my spirit squid. I like how he doesn’t have a mouth or nose to complicate emotions, but rather a large eye, an eyebrow of sorts, and his arms to express what he is feeling at any given moment. He is quite large, measuring in at 30 meters. Ideally, his density can change, as he can go from sea to space in an instant, so I didn’t list a particular weight. I gave him color last week, but I want him to be able to change the color of his head at will, like a real squid. I am working on magical properties for his ink. I illustrated him being joyous in the bottom left, and in transit on the bottom right. The other emotions at the top may or may not be obvious without his arms to articulate in conjunction with the eyes, but I tried hard to get across an emotion using just eye and eyebrow with each. I want to illustrate him battling the great white starwhal next.

Animals: My Spirit Squid

 

The Squid is my spirit animal. Whales are my nemeses.

 

 

For the first assignment in my Animals, People, and Those In Between, we were to illustrate our inner animal, spirit animal, or familiar using our medium of choice. My spirit animal is the Squid (Obviously!) Upon first glance, people and other animals often don’t know what to make of us. However, with our keen eyes, we’ve already seen them and sized them up from a distance. We are extremely intelligent and move through our daily routines faster than most. Since we are uncommonly agile, our prey hardly knows what hit them, and this is especially true in arguments. Whales are our most bitter enemy, and the only time our kind works together is to take them down. Whales are sluggish and noisy. We are thoughtful and only speak when absolutely necessary. We are highly competitive. Sometimes we like to be very flashy when its dark, but more often than not this is to attract prey. Luckily we have many arms with which to keep tabs on all that are enticed by our unnatural beauty. In transit, we are quite sleek, but we hardly travel in numbers–we aren’t social with many. We are forever connected to the sea, and are almost mythical. Animals and people tell tales about us sometimes, and we kind of like that. We have one last interesting property: we can squeeze into just about anything, and still look good. Well, much better than a whale anyways.

This particular picture that I drew of my spirit animal was inspired by a faux commercial I had animated with a friend where a constellations of a squid and whale battled over cans of TaB in outer space. I like to draw all kinds of crazy animals on paper when I am bored, but drawing squids is more fun than drawing other animals because their tentacles never come out exactly the same. Their shape is kind of odd too, and takes time to get the proportions right. At any rate, over Christmas I had gotten a fancy new Wacom tablet that I hadn’t had many times to use as of yet, so I busted it out and looked back on the previous design of my StarSquid and decided to improve it by re-drawing it on the tablet (as opposed to a mouse like I did originally–aneurism!) and giving it its real home under the sea and in color. I drew everything in illustrator and then painted in the colors in Photoshop. Colors were kind of picked arbitrarily, but it is rare that anyone has seen a live giant squid  so I made some creative decisions. I included our nemesis in the background for good fun. If I were to do it again or improve on it, I would try and actually paint it, because I want to have cool things to put on my walls here at home. I’d find some way to layer the paint so that it could be semi-3D (since thats all the rage these days).

Back to Basics: Black & White Photogram

The hand of New Orleans

I am revisiting the basics and foundations of photography this semester by taking a photography course outside of my department. ITP is plenty entertaining usually, but I wanted to play with analog toys like film cameras, as opposed to digital ones (Arduino, cough, cough!) I had taken a film photo class way back when at Xavier, and missed being in a darkroom, so this class is a perfect fit. I felt a little clumsy at the enlarger today, but most everything came back very naturally.

For this first session, we brought in objects to make photograms—pictures without cameras. Essentially, you arrange your objects flat on your sheet of RC paper, and expose it under the enlarger for a few seconds, then develop the photo as you would any other in the darkroom. The space underneath your objects, that is protected from the light comes out white, and the exposed area turns out black. For such a simple process, it produces stunning black and white imagery.

My photogram from today is above, and I used the mold of my hand I made last semester in Materials, and some rosaries and a fleur de lis from New Orleans. More to come soon!