Ocean Invasion #2: Nectar for the Orcas
Here is the second in my Ocean Invasion series:
"Ocean Invasion #2: Nectar for the Orcas"
"Ocean Invasion #2: Nectar for the Orcas"
Closeup
Previous works:
"Ocean Invasion #1: Octopus arborealus"
"K-T"
The Making of “K-T”
I know of at least a couple of people who were curious how I went about making my latest art, "K-T." Here is an abbreviated walkthrough...
First came the idea. I've had the general idea of the composition in my head sometime: a view from a mammal ancestor's burrow of the distant K-T meteor.
When I decided to actually make it with the free and open-source Blender and GIMP, I first made a very quick (like 5 minute) sketch of my idea layout (Note: You can click on all images for larger versions):
Hilarious sketch up of the idea. Looks like it was made by a two-year-old.
Next up: modeling the creatures. All objects are modeled as a 3D mesh, working with them and sculpting them at times much like clay - except it's all in the computer.
Velociraptor polygonal mesh
Velociraptor Model - color and shadow to help see curvature
Next up comes the coloring, texturing, and addition of fur.
Velociraptor Texturing and Fur - an early test
In reality, the coloring and texturing is done on 2D images (using the free photoshop-like GIMP), which are then mapped onto the 3D mesh:
Velociraptor Color Map
Next up: a poseable armature has to be made and applied to the 3D mesh. Think of this as an actual skeleton that the mesh will deform with.
Velociraptor Armature Rigging
The armature has to be tested with lots of poses to make sure the mesh warps correctly.
Smile for the camera!
Rinse and repeat for the other objects:
Mammal with fur
Your great x 10 to the alot grandpa
Now start putting objects into the scene:
Basic Scene
More detail
And finally we have everything in place
Scene Mesh
Scene solid objects
At this point alot of time is put into positioning lights and tweaking textures so that everything looks good. Lighting is probably the hardest thing to get right (especially with fur).
Finally, the image is rendered and the image levels and coloring and effects are tweaked using GIMP.
Note: you can get a super high-res large poster of this artwork here.
"K-T"
"K-T" Close-up
All in all, the entire process took 3 weeks. I could have easily spent another 3 weeks tweaking and fixing many aspects of the piece and adding more details, but I was pretty much ready to move on to something else. So, I got it to the point where I was happy with it as is.
I hope you enjoyed it!
Artistic Depiction of the K-T Extinction Event
Okay - so I've been "away" for a while. What can I say? I've been busy with other things.
However, one of them is now complete. I present for your viewing pleasure, my new paleontology-inspired artwork:
"K-T"
Sixty-five million years ago, a daily struggle occurs in the midst of the world-changing event that would result in the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs and the eventual rise of our own lineage of mammals.
If you or someone you know would like a poster print of this work, you can BUY IT HERE. Or you can browse a couple of my other pieces (more forthcoming).
Note: The poster is MUCH larger and higher resolution (these web images don't do justice to the actual level of detail). I can make other sizes available (or on other products). This took me three weeks to create, using the free and opensource Blender and GIMP software packages.
Here's a cropped piece to give you an idea of the true detail level:
Beach-Combing Emerald Isle and Topsail Island, NC
(Note: As always, click image for better versions - these are heavily compressed)
Emerald Isle, NC
Last weekend we had a short but nice going away get-away with some friends (psychology graduate students, a parole officer, and a lawyer/rockstar) in Emerald Isle, North Carolina.
My dorky goal was to find more fossilized shark teeth (see previous awesome finds here), in addition to the obvious general goal of having a salty time.
Unfortunately, a storm kept most of the cool ocean debris from washing ashore until Sunday morning. Nevertheless, I found quite a few interesting things.
First off: fossil shark teeth!
Fossil Shark Teeth
The Haul:
The Haul 1
The Haul 2
The Haul 3
Skate Egg Case:
Skate Egg Case
Unknown wicked fish jaw:
wicked fish jaw
Shell Fossils in matrix:
Shell Fossil Cast in matrix
Shell Fossil Cast in matrix
A cool fossil of what I think is a bryozoan.
Fossil Bryozoan
I found a nice piece of fossilized bone. Of what? Who knows? Probably whale or dolphin. Or perhaps mermaid.
Fossil Bone
I also found several chunks of what I believe is either anthracite coal, or the next metamorphic step - graphite (I'm no geologist - thoughts?). It's very light weight, very hard, and very faceted - which doesn't come across very well in still shots:
Anthracite Coal?
Anthracite Coal?
One of the coolest things I found is a relation to organisms I will soon be working with in my new lab: starfish!!
I found two of these, both beautifully colored and still alive. They were washed ashore by the storm, so I tossed em back. I have no idea the likelihood of their survival, but I can say they didn't wash back ashore over the next two days. (I'm awaiting the expertise of Christopher Mah of the Echinoblog for species identification).
Update: it's a Royal Sea Star, Astropecten articulatus. Quoth the EchinoMaster: "Basically..they are your stereotypical "sand star" predatory on infaunal bivalves and pretty common on sandy-muddy bottoms of the Northeast US. Attractively colored animals to be sure!" Thanks Chris!
Starfish
Check out those details!
Tube Feet Alive!!
We also got to hit the NC Aquarium in Pine Knoll Shores. It's a pretty rad place, so I was way more interested in pointing my eyes at all the ocean wonders, rather than pointing a camera. But I did get this cool shot of a gator.
Gator
Ooh - and apparently someone else took a shot of us there - me and John playing with the rays (the ray touch tank was by far the coolest part!).
Petting the stingrays
Topsail Island, NC
A month ago, we also had the opportunity to hit Topsail Island, NC.
Fun was had. Things were seen.
Shark Teeth (Yes - I showed these before).
Great colors!
Ocean smoothed - but still pretty wicked
Mole Crabs (Emerita sp.)
Mole Crab (Emerita sp.)
Ghost Crab (Ocypode sp.)
Ghost Crab (Ocypode sp.)
And that's it - images are all I have for you at the moment. Enjoy.
I swear, I will have slightly more posts once I get moved to Pittsburgh and settled.
And just because I never show her (she's camera shy), I'm sneaking in this shot of my wife:
Three Psychologists
Grandpa’s Pet Therapod
nope - not a fake at all...
I hang out online sometimes with a bunch of like-minded fossil-enthusiasts (The Fossil Forum).
Tonight somebody posted this:
Just watched the new this evening and they were talking about a dig going on right now outside of Glen Rose, on the McFall ranch. The news showed the footprints of the therapod and the human prints together. It was interesting. For report go to cbs11tv.com
So I mosied over to the Dallas, TX CBS news site and found the article "Local City Known As Dinosaur Capital Of Texas, by Arezow Doost."
Sounds innocuous enough for a title, right? Then I read the first three sentences:
"Did you ever think that there were dinosaurs in North Texas?
As it turns out, this is one of the most prolific areas for dinosaur tracks in the state. One group of scientists have even found tracks dating back millions of years."
Read that last sentence again:
"One group of scientists have even found tracks dating back millions of years."
Cause, you know, all those other groups found tracks that weren't millions of years old...
(for those of you who missed out on elementary school, dinosaurs went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous sixty-five million years ago.)
Absolutely hilarious...and mind-numbingly maddening.
After reading a bit more, then you learn what it is really about:
"Scientists believe that one of the most unique findings is human prints dating back to the same period as the dinosaur prints. "We are looking for the truth," said Baugh. "We don't want anything else but the truth.""
I rolled my eyes. Obviously, I had a feeling what I would find out with a little search, but I decided to check out the scientist quoted in the piece, because I thought it was a bit odd that he said "We are looking for the truth. We don't want anything else but the truth."
You see, that is a very non-scientist thing to say in a media piece, and it instantly threw up a red flag to me. I say this because when one is actually in the practice of being a good scientist, a statement like that is like a commercial fisherman saying "no really, we're just out here to catch fish." What else would a fisherman be fishing in the ocean for? If you're a scientist, a statement like that is less than unnecessary.
Yeah this guy, Carl Baugh, is a young earth creationist discredited in the scientific community and with a questionable education. He is obviously seeking to prove his own wrong beliefs - not actually do what good scientists do, which is let the data speak for themselves. Check this out for some rather hilarious reading on Baugh: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Baugh
Sigh...it is Texas after all (I was born and raised in east Texas, FYI)
As an added moronic bonus, if you look at the url of the story you'll see that it's filed under "pets."
(http://cbs11tv.com/pets/Texas.Dinosaur.Capital.2.1069336.html).
What kind of of idiots are running that station?
One thing about the fossil record - it's insanely consistent across both time and continental space, if fragmentary. And it has consistently shown us that human and therapod existence is quite a few tens of millions of years apart.
Hell, mammals were barely existent back then, compared to today. But primates? LOL - no.
***
Side note: I'm going fossil hunting in Aurora, NC tomorrow and at Greens Mill Run in Greenville, NC on Saturday!! Shark teeth here I come. Please just let me find a megalodon.