This morning I arranged with Mark, Assistant Curator of Invertebrates, to go across to Bug World to see the Antilles pink toed spider, after the section's morning tea-break. So prior to that I started looking at prepping for the next animal on my list - the Madagascan blue stick insect. Going through my reference photos I picked out the ones most useful to me for close ups on detail, overall colour, leg positioning etc. This species is sexually dimorphic, that is to say that the male and female look different to each other. In the case of this species the females are much bigger than the males and a uniform mottly brown. Whereas the flambouyant males have an incredible blue green body. At the time I took the photo's they were newly emerged adults and the female wasn't yet ready to be put with a male so I had to photo them seperately. Because they are sexually dimorphic I need to illustrate both. I did an internet search looking for photo's of the male and female side by side so I could get an idea of the actual size comparison.
Once I had a selection of about 10 photographs I printed them off ready to start the drawing, which happened just before the pre-arranged time with Mark. So I grabbed my paints and unfinished illustration of the spider and headed across to Bug World. Because the thorax of this spider is a metallic green the photo reference I have from my own photo's and off the internet all gave varying colours of white, green and blue. I needed to see the animal's colour in real life to get a better match for the illustration.
Sadly the spider was tucked up in her piece of cork, sat snuggly in a horseshoe shape wrap. As moving things about in her vivarium so that I could see her thorax clearly would be a little stressful for her Mark, quite rightly, didn't want to do that. And I wouldn't ask him to do anything that would be detrimental to the animal just for an illustration. So the plan was that if he saw her sitting out in good view over the next few weeks he would call me, so I could rush over to try and catch that vital looksie at her. Otherwise I would just have to paint on pure guesswork using what I had on my reference pictures and hope that I get somewhere near. If I don't, then it'll just have to wait for the spider to show herself.
Whilst there I talked to Mark about the next species I planned to do - the 'Mad blues' - and he told me he had no adults on show at the moment and wouldn't have for about 6 months. There were other species waiting who were on show, namely the Goliath stick insect.. so that was moved up a notch on my 'to do list' and the 'Mad blues' put on hold. Also he mentioned that he would be putting cave crickets into the nocturnal house in the next few days, so they would need a different sign to the type used in Bug World. He had pre-warned me of this move some time ago and I had the text already put on the sign. All it needed to complete it was a silhouette of the beastie.
So back in the studio I got the illustration that was done some years ago of this species and scanned it into the computer.
In Photoshop I changed the image to greyscale and tried the way I normally do a 'mask' with the colour range option so that I could make the shape of the cricket a solid black. But because there were so many fiddly little protuberances and thin lines, such as the long antennae, I couldn't get a good line around the shape. So in the end I resorted to using the pen tool and drawing around manually. I zoomed in very close so that I could see one pixel and worked my way around the legs and body carefully.
Once I had done that I then blocked in the shape with black and then using the colour range option selected the black area and inverted it (making the black areas protected) so that I could sweep across the image with white to clean up the background.
Ending up with this.
Then I opened the document with the text and, making the white area transparent, I placed the silhouette onto the sign. As the white background of the image was transparent and the sign background was black this meant the insect was 'invisible'. To adjust this I then had to change the colour of the image from black to white - with the insect shape being the only black in the image this now became white and visible on the sign. Tah dah! Just like magic.
To create this silhouette took me from 11.30am until 3pm (with an hours lunch in the middle). Once printed I then needed to track down some black insulation tape. The sign was a backlit one and was to be sandwiched between two perspex sheets mounted on the fake cave wall in the noturnal house. The tape was to put round the outer edge of the perspex to stop light showing. It took me over half an hour to track down some black tape. The electrician had some but he had gone home, taking his workbox with him. The Maintenance Department had other colours but I needed black so that it wasn't noticeable in the low light of the underground area of the noturnal house. In the end Kiri, the animal technician for the Learning Department, came to my rescue with some good strong black duct tape.
Now I had the tape I could put the sign up. All went smoothly and quite easily which was a relief. Just as I had finished Mark arrived with the tank to be put in the empty hole of the display. Perfect timing.
As I had been edging the perspex with tape I noticed the large tank in the recess had changed. It used to house a catfish but now there were two bags floating at the surface with lots of baby blind cave fish in and a pair of hands submerged placing the last of the tank decor. Then the fish were released and swimming in their new home. Just a week or so ago I had re-done the text sign for this tank, now it looks like it would need to be changed.
Jonny, Assistant Curator of Aquarium, appeared just moments later and explained that the adult blind cave fish were moving from their present tank, which was just to one side of us, to this lovely big tank, to join the babies later. The tailless whip scorpions were going in the space that the adult blind cave fish currently occupy. Time was pressing on and I knew I had to get back to the studio quickly so that I could get the sign done for the cave fish to replace the one about the catfish (Predator in the Dark) if I was to get it up on the wall before I go home this evening.
Back at my computer I opened up the old blind cave fish sign and copy and pasted the text across to the 'Predator in the Dark' sign shape. I had a few problems getting the scientific name to 'skew' so that it looked italic, (Scientific names have to either be in italics or underlined when put alongside the common name) but eventually figured it out. It was definitely a case of more haste less speed there for a few frustrating minutes. The software that is used for the signs in the underground area are still in old Freehand format, I haven't yet got round to changing the templates over to the Illustrator software, and as I don't use it all that often it can be a pain when I forget how to do a particular action.
When it was done, printed and laminated I rushed across to the noturnal house hoping I would get there before the keepers locked it up at 5pm. I got there in the nick of time! As I walked through to the underground area, the keeper went by on her way to locking the doors. It took just a minute or so to stick the sign into place and I was let out through the keepers access area as I left.
And so ended another day at the zoo.
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