https://www.sciencea-z.com/main/ActivityPreview/id/16394
500 word Day in the Life:
I woke up this morning to warm sunlight cast on my face. I was at my favorite resting spot, floating in a cove at Big Sur. I woke up with some relief because while sleeping I had a nightmare that that night I forgot to wrap my hind flipper in kelp, and then ended up floating away from my family forever!
It wasn’t long before some humans showed up hiking above us. They generally don’t disturb us or get too close to us, especially since the cove I’m in is hard to get to because it is at the bottom of a cliff.
After I fully woke up, I decided that it was time to go fishing. As a growing sea otter, it’s important for me to eat at least 20–30% of my body weight every day. I’m a mammal so I can’t breathe under the water, but I can dive for five minutes. On my dive, I had to dodge some fishing nets that careless humans left behind so I didn’t get stuck in them and drown. I still dove as fast as I could, and was so happy to find my favorite food: sea urchins! I picked up as many sea urchins as I could along with a few crabs and brought them back up to the surface with me. Some may think that I’m being greedy with my love for sea urchins, but I actually think it is essential for me to hunt them. As an otter, I am actually a keystone species; because I consume and control the sea urchin population count, kelp forests are able to flourish, offering shelter and food to many of my other sea creature friends who need them.
Once I got back to the surface, I first used some kelp to tie some of my crabs up so I could get to eating them one by one. I consider this quite an innovative method I have discovered of storing my food for later. I then pulled out my favorite rock that I keep stored in the nifty pocket under my forearms and used it to start cracking open the crabs and sea urchins so I could eat them.
After this filling meal, it was time for me to start grooming myself. Grooming is an important part of my day because well kept and dry fur is what keeps me afloat. Plus, it makes me look good too — and you know what they say, any otter that looks good, feels good. I worked to untangle some knots. I also like to blow into my fur to keep it dry. It is only with my thick fur that traps air that keeps me buoyant, so it was very important for me to keep myself dry. I also did a few somersaults to get some more air bubbles in my fur; they also help keep me warm in the cold northern Pacific Ocean waters.
After this long day of hunting and grooming, I was getting tired and returned to my favorite kelp spot along with some of my friends. Tonight, along with the kelp we wrapped around ourselves, I held hands with one of my best otter friends so we didn’t float away from each other in the night. (Hopefully I wouldn’t have a bad nightmare again!) We all watched the sun set past the horizon and then snoozed off.
The Assignment:
Research and select an endangered or extinct animal from the part of the world where you grew up. This animal will be your modeling example. As you consider different animals, think about one for which you feel an affinity. You might choose an animal with attributes you admire and are inspired by, or one for which you feel a strong sense of empathy. The choice is yours, but sorry: no insects. Begin sketching the animal, considering these attributes: shape, size, proportions, volume, behavior, movement, repetition of pattern and texture, etc. Use found and reclaimed packaging̖plastic containers you’ve collected ̖to create your animal. As you build, think about the characteristics and qualities that make your animal unique. Carefully consider how the various sizes, shapes, textures, and colors work together to create your particular animal. Proportion, scale, visual weight, line, curve, and color become critical in effectively representing the animal form. Keep in mind, your task is to represent your animal’s essence through abstract forms. You will need to interact with the animal you create. How is it manipulated to mimic the movements or behavior of the original animal? How does the movement emphasize the character of the animal’s behavior? How you achieve this is your decision, but keep it in mind as you begin designing and building. The packaging you collected can be deconstructed, but not heated to change the shape or colored. Consider their inherent shapes, graphics, and colors. Let association, imagination, and relationship guide you. Remember, the characteristics and attributes of your animal need to be present in the piece you create.
I chose to represent an otter through this project because I grew up in the California Bay Area, where there are many southern sea otters in coves along our beaches. As a child, I remember going to the Monterey Bay Aquarium on field trips and see otters, and there would be many otter plushies in the gift store. Then, as a teenager, I loved driving south to the Santa Cruz beaches or along Highway 1 to Big Sur, where there would be many otter preserves and coves under the cliffs.
I also think otters are just very unique animals. They are really intelligent and wrap themselves and their food in kelp so it doesn’t float away. Mothers also sleep with their pups on them to protect them, and some otters hold hands while sleeping so they don’t float away from each other. I aspire for that kind of affection in my life.
Iteration 1:
There was a phase in my otter-making process where it looked a lot like a human/Wall-E figure. I also started to realize how the detergent probably wouldn’t be the best shape for my otter because was proportionately off: too wide and not long enough. Because there wasn’t a sense of order to the different body parts of the otter, it became just a random animal that had a head, body, two arms, two legs, and two hands and feet, which I guess our brains would randomly assign to humans.
Made of:
Torso: detergent bottle – I had thought the curve of the bottle would match the curve of the stomach of the otter, as well as lend to a neck shape.
Head: cereal container. I didn’t think about making a face because otter faces are generally really flat.
Arms: yogurt drink (like Danimals) cups cut in half
Flippers: scraps of plastic cut out to fit the shape.
Tail: half of a shampoo bottle with a scrap of milk carton attached.
I think what really made this animal some what resemble an otter was that I had it lay on its back. I also gave it a bottle cap shell. These two characteristics make the otter distinguishable, but the otter still does not yet follow the form of an actual otter well.
Iteration 2:
I borrowed the mechanism of Jess’s fox by cutting out the middle of a bottle, and then fitting the thinner piece into the wider piece. When the circumferences of the two pieces are different, one piece is able to sit in the other at an angle.
I also looked at Sam’s salamander head because it already resembled an otter pretty well. I wanted to use a method of combining many different pieces together to create a neck, skull, and face compared to my previous iteration where I made the entire head out of just one piece.
It look weirdly baby-like machine-like, which I realized was because I didn’t make many limbs. It just wasn’t very generally anatomically correct, so it didn’t look very alive.
Jasper also made a really funny point that if he didn’t what the assignment was, he would think the scale of my otter would be like 90 ft tall.
Giving off a lot of Wall-E Eve vibes.
Made of:
Torso: conditioner bottle
Hind legs: top of bleach bottle
Arms: Danimals bottle
Paws: mochi container
Tail: half of conditioner bottle
Head and face: yogurt container
I think in this iteration the hind legs obviously stand out too much because of the color. There is also a problem with the lack of joints and a really disturbingly circular face.
Iteration 3: Final
I decided to revisit the torso of the animal and chose a new piece of plastic: a milk jug, because I wanted to really focus on getting proportions correctly, and a milk jug would be long enough. It was difficult to work with at first because I wanted an edge to be facing up. My moment of realization was when I was able to invert and bend the bottom edge inwards so that the otter could still lay flat.
I also worked carefully with form, such as with this hind flipper, where the curve of the flipper matched with the curve of the milk jug.
I also tried to really take advantage of existing forms in the plastic I had, such as when I made this flipper out of the corner of a milk jug.
The interaction I had for my otter was for it to move its arms to be able to rub their faces. Otters often do this to get the water our of their face and eyes.
Made of:
Torso: milk jug
Shoulders: milk jug
Arms, legs, flippers: An assortment of different plastic containers, using the edges and corners to achieve a natural curve
Tail: Milk jug
Neck: yogurt cup
Skull: top of milk jug
The face was made of a round bottom of a container, with the cap of a shampoo bottle as the nose, two mochi container pieces for the chin, brads as eyes, and the very edge of a Danimals as ears.
I worked to put many more facial features and details into this iteration as a way of making it look more alive.
In the making process, I also more further studied the anatomy of otters. One key learning moment was when I found that all body parts of the otter connected to the spine, so I tried to have the joint of the hind legs start from “under” the otter near the spine; created shoulders for the arms; and had a tail that was connected at the bottom rather than top edge of the torso.
I also had many joints and more components to make each body piece, and instead of making body pieces three-dimensional through using bending them together or using whole pieces (like with the Danimal arms), I just found plastic pieces with curves. I realized that I could achieve interesting dimensionality through increased surface area, rather than volume.
I also gave this otter a gold chocolate coin as its shell.
Some critiques I received from Q for this final version:
“I think you well captured the characteristics of the otter. One tip would be your tail seems a bit like that of a bird, I guess it is because they are layered. Maybe the nose is a little larger than it is compared to its ratio compared to eyes?”
These are all valid critiques, especially about the tail. In a way, it could be confusing because it could come off so that there were two parts to the tail. A simple way to fix this would’ve been to even just fully detach the top half. I was also aware that the nose was proportionately a little too large, but because of the piece of plastic I had for it, it was really difficult to cut down to be smaller. In that instance, I had to sacrifice accuracy due to the limitations of my materials.
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