Progress Book Part 1

Asher Blackburn

Feb 25, 2017 · 10 min read

The Animal

We are tasked to recreate an endangered animal out of reclaimed plastics and other containers.

PART 1

01.17.17

Here are a few animals of Colorado I’m thinking about.

The grizzly bear:

The Bald Eagle:

The grizzly is the animal that attracts me the most because there are so many bears around my house. After doing some research here is what I found:

The Grizzly Bear:

The Grizzly is federally threatened and in the state of Colorado it is endangered.

Used to be 25,000 bears on BC when it was settled, now only 16,000 (2008), 15,000 (2012)

Only 1,500 are left in the lower 48 states of America

Grizzlies usually live to around 22 years

They hibernate for 5–7 months out of the year

Some drawings I did discovering form of the grizzly bear.

The next step, due in 2 days, is to write a short one-page story to help inspire and guide my process. Here are some questions I need to answer in my paper:

Whats the animal’s personality, 3–5 adjectives
What are some similarities and differences between the animals and my behaviors
What are the animal’s special traits and behaviors?
What factors lead to the animal’s extinction or endangered status?

A few things I am thinking before writing:

What drew me to the grizzly bear was the fact that I live so close to bears in their natural habitat. Through the years I have learned about how they act and why they act the way they do. Everyone thinks they are malicious beasts but in truth they are loving being that act out when an idiot stands between them and their child, who wouldn’t!

In this “sculpture” I really want to show the form of the bear in its true beauty and power, but not to the point of making it appear like a monster.

01.18.17

Here is my final writing:

The Grizzly Bear:

Asher Blackburn

The grizzly bear, also known as the North American brown bear, exists today in the western United States as well as Alaska and Canada. Currently the grizzly is federally threatened and in the state of Colorado (my home) it is endangered. In British Columbia, where these bears strive most, population size has been cut in half since the settlement of humans. A miniscule 1,500 are left in the lower 48 states of America. Grizzlies are a very special kind of mammal in that they hibernate for half of every year! Gigantic beings, grizzlies can weigh up to 800 pounds and live for 30 years.

The grizzly bear, and most bears in general are not ferocious contrary to popular belief. Part of the reason I chose this animal is because of the misperception that the bear is a dangerous beast. What drew me to the grizzly bear was the fact that I live so close to bears in their natural habitat. Through the years I have learned about how they act and why they act the way they do. Everyone thinks they are malicious beasts but in truth they are loving being that act out when a human stands between them and their cub or they want food from your trash can. Bears have a space around them that they want to stay theirs, a personal bubble. Problems occur when another being or human enters the space and make the bear act on it.

Brown bears are shy and calm, but very curious. Another misconception is a bears standing up pose. Most believe that this is an act of aggression when in fact it is only a way for them to enhance their senses (ie: see better, smell better, hear better) so they can inspect their environment. Always looking for items to either eat or play with.

I found many similarities between myself and this species of bear. First of all, these bears are curious and I value curiosity. I am always looking to discover what I don’t know in my surroundings, etc. Also I like my personal space. Bears are social beings as am I, but I also value my bubble. Finally, I think I share a similar personality to that of a bear.

As for the status of endangerment, grizzlies require a large amount of habitat and due to human intervention, numbers have decreased in the past century. Some factors include oil drilling, recreational habitat use, timber harvesting, and poaching.

Change of pace:

After thinking overnight about the project, I have decided to change pace a little bit. I have been looking at materials and have come to the conclusion that an eagle might have better impact given the plastics. I think it would be especially difficult to find the plastics to make a fur and feathers are a very intriguing thing to me.

The photos of the bald eagle above and this one in particular is amazing:

Here is a little background on the bald eagle and why it is especially close to me. but first a little GoPro footage:

The Bald Eagle:

Bald eagle species is making a comeback in the recent years. Placed on the endangered species list in the 1990’s, the bald eagle was just recently taken off due to large conservation attempts. In the early 20th century, bald eagle population ranged around 300,000–500,000 birds, by the late 1900s, there were an estimated 412 nesting pairs in North America. The staggering loss was due to human production of the chemical DDT. This made the bird’s eggs very thin so they couldn’t hatch. This and humans hunting the birds for sport led to its large decline. In the past 10 years, the birds recovery has been strong and promising.

The reason I chose this bird in particular is becasue of my past experiences with it. Two years ago I was on a kayak trip with my family in Teton National park for the 4th of July. On this day we had a 7 hour lake kayak to another island. Around midday, a bald eagle flew over our heads to a tree nearby. Never having seen a balf eagle in the wild before this was eye opening to me. What was even crazier though is that this bird flew over our heads again as if it was following us around the lake.

What attracted me to this bird is its true beauty. Making the biggest nest of any bird in the world this animal is truly gigantic. On top of this it is fast, reaching 43 mph and 100mph when diving to retrieve a fish.

Here are a few sketches:

01.21.17

today we went dumpster diving for plastics. We are looking for opaque colored plastic, which is actually rather difficult to find. The eagle is brown and white so I want to play off of those colors in the model. I was able to find a lot of black plastic so this will do. Also I found a tide bottle that is a bright orange. It will be perfect for the beak and tallons.

01.22.17

Today I started to experiment with the plastics. I started by cutting the materials that I had to see how they cut and what textures they made. Here is some of my exploration:

I really liked how stacking the white plastic looked wing wise. They must be much bigger but this was a good start.

Another good material was the bottom of the water bottle. These really looked like eyes when cut as shown above.

In class the other day, I was told that a very excellent way of making wing feathers is to use and stack knives. Today I collected a bunch of other materials from the cafe to use tomorrow:

01.23.17

After building for a few hours and really just looking at a photo and making shapes that look similar to the birds features, here is some of the progress:

And a bit of progress on the body:

And together

Tomorrow I will start designing the wings. I want the bird to be flying and for the moving part I think it would be really nice to have the wings flap somehow.

01.24.17

I got some feedback today about my eagle. I heard a lot of things that were working very well but there were a few things that could be good to have changed. Here are the notes I took and where I will go from here.

01.25.17

I wanted to start with working on the head. Now that I study photos of the bald eagle in more depth, I have noted it is a little off. I need more of a neck on my bird to make it more convincing. Here is what I came up with:

Im a little upset that I am out of that off white material that I used for the head and as I have been collecting trash, I cant find it anywhere.

This afternoon I went to the dump to look for more plastics. I wasnt able to find much but I did find a lot of black potting buckets to use for the bird’s body. On top of this I found a little yellow plastic box. I want to change the beak color from orange to yellow because for me color is very important.

Here is the final head:

01.29.17

Now that I have a final form for the head, I really need to start working on the body. I started with the body I made previously and added parts of the pots that I found for tucked wings. Here is the new form:

This is getting a lot closer to what I am trying to portray but its still not there. I feel like I am missing the whole part of the project which is to see the forms in whole pieces of plastics. Im cutting them up into small pieces and scluting a bird. Tomorrow I will try to find some more plastic and go from there.

Movement:

As far as the movement goes I am not quite sure what I want. Originally I wanted the bird to flap its wings but without wings I need to find another movement. The bald eagle has very fast head side-to-side movements when looking for food. If I could somehow make the head turn and quickly come back to its original position that would be perfect.