Friday 16 September 2011

Anatomy- Discovering my Animal

During our brief today, I randomly selected the animal 'Nautilus Pompilius'. On the bus home I made an attempt to decipher the Latin title. The only minor eureka moment I had after half an hour of solid thinking was "oh my god! 'Nautilus' is sort of like 'Nautical'!"This led me to believe that my animal was some form of sea creature. Eventually, I turned to the powerful super-being known as Google and discovered that it was, in fact, some form of sea creature!


Nautilus Pompilius


Nautilus Pompilius is also known as the Chambered Pompilius and is the largest, most well known species of Nautilus. It is a Cephalopod, similar to an Octopus or Squid, housed within a shell of logarithmic design (the design is somewhat similar to the Fibonacci sequence). 




The shell is an extension of the bone structure within Nautilus and is used to protect the Cephalopod physically and through deception by helping it blend in with its surroundings.

When drafting up designs, iconic aspects of the creature that will likely draw my focus include the colourful pattern on the shell, the spiral within the shell and the tentacles.
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3 comments:

  1. Oliver 'Lifeforce99' Fowls16 September 2011 at 14:46

    Hi Steven, I'm Ollie I'll be retaking 2 units this year so I won't be about till your next unit. Nice work so far, the Nautilus is a great starting animal! Don't be afraid to experiment with the tentacles! It can be quite distracting to focus on the largest part of an animal; the shell in this case, and forget about the smaller details!

    Just to add to your preliminary research, the shell spiral is based on the golden ratio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio as many things in nature are :)

    Best of luck
    Ollie

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  2. tutorphil16 September 2011 at 15:22

    and so it begins, Steven... Looking forward to it!

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  3. Steven Payne16 September 2011 at 15:54

    thanks ollie! i'll keep that in mind when i start to draft up my thumbnail sketches.
    i'm pretty pumped for this unit, it seems like its going to be a lot of fun (served up with a massive helping of 'stupid-amounts-o'-work', of course!)

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