Another scene for The Music of the Spheres completed. This one features our first glimpse at the hybridized crustaceans who have inherited the post-human Earth. Even though it’s a brief scene with only a rigged lobster puppet and spinning golden haloes, it’s one of my favourites thus far. The doily-looking background upon which the hybrid lobster sits is, in fact, an altered scan of an early 20th-century Catholic “paper lace” prayer card. I just love the intricate, cut paper borders.
Below are a couple of examples of paper lace prayer cards found on Pinterest. No information found on their origin.
Finished scene 14 at last. Animating water is a challenge. Not going for high realism here, so happy enough with this. Above is a short clip. On to scene 15.
Lobsters walk on the ocean floor, but they can’t walk on land. Their spindly legs can’t support the weight of their heavy exoskeleton. I wanted a scene with a lobster walking on the beach, however, so I devised an insect-like walk that isn’t technically correct for a lobster but does the job. SO MANY LEGS. Not finished yet, but it’s coming along.
I wasn’t expecting a lobster to emerge as the main protagonist of my latest animation The Music of the Spheres, but there you have it. Also, lobsters are rather fun to draw.
Fun fact: it was once believed that lobsters were “biologically immortal”, meaning that they regenerate throughout their lives rather than die. This isn’t true, though they can be very long-lived. (There are jellyfish that are biologically immortal, however).
This scene — and by expansion, the film — is inspired by the traditional iconography of the moon card from the Tarot. A card from the Major Arcana, the moon card typically includes imagery of a full or crescent moon, two towers flanking a body of water, a dog, a wolf, and a crayfish. Not all versions of the moon card in the various (and numerous) Tarot decks include all of this iconography. Many edit out the dog and wolf, but include the crayfish.
I’ve changed the crayfish into a lobster, simply because I think they look better.
“The card depicts a night scene, where two large pillars are shown. A wolf and a domesticated dog howl at the Moon while a crayfish emerges from the water. […] According to A.E. Waite’s 1911 book The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, “The card represents life of the imagination apart from life of the spirit… The dog and wolf are the fears of the natural mind in the presence of that place of exit, when there is only reflected light to guide it… The intellectual light is a reflection and beyond it is the unknown mystery which it cannot reveal.” Additionally, “It illuminates our animal nature” and according to Waite, “the message is ‘Peace, be still; and it may be that there shall come a calm upon the animal nature, while the abyss beneath shall cease from giving up a form.’” — from Wikipedia.
Lady Lazarus 