As mentioned in my original post, the islands in the pond are the Hawaiian islands where Kira studied the Oahu Amakihi honeycreeper (perched on Oahu) and the disease ecology of malaria (mosquito). I couldn’t really figure out a good way to get a Plasmodium into the image…

Buy a print of this piece at the
Laughing Mantis Zazzle store
or buy fancier prints at the
Laughing Mantis RedBubble store.

Buy a print of this piece at the
Laughing Mantis Zazzle store
or buy fancier prints at the
Laughing Mantis RedBubble store.

Buy this T-shirt at the
Laughing Mantis Zazzle store.

Octopus vs. Velociraptor - on white

Octopus vs. Velociraptor - White T-shirt

Octopus vs. Velociraptor - Detail

You can get it in black or white (or multiple other colors I believe).

Octopus vs. Velociraptor - Black T-shirt

Octopus vs. Velociraptor - Black T-Shirt

It’s basically a re-rendering of my detailed digital artwork “Octopus arborealus”

Ocean Invasion #1: Octopus arborealus

A voracioius lionfish on the heels of a springbok in the African savannah.

This is the ninth in a series of pieces, “Ocean Invasion,” which finds ocean creatures living in absurd land habitats.

This piece was inspired by a marine biologist friend who is currently studying these invasive fish in Hawaii (Christie Wilcox of the popular “Observations of a Nerd” science blog).

Buy a print of this piece at the
Laughing Mantis Zazzle store.

Detail: (note – these are compressed jpeg files – the original is much higher quality and resolution)

Lionfish detail

Springbok detail

The piece was inspired by both the industrial revolution and it’s eventual hand in the oil spill in the gulf.

You can download this issue (and all issues) as a free .pdf file HERE.

Alternatively, you can read the magazine in online format HERE.

Feuturing “Out of Warranty”

When I originally uploaded this video to YouTube it ended up getting almost 500,000 views thanks to a feature on the front page. Looking back now, the original upload is barely watchable because the resolution is so low. I managed to dig up this higher resolution version and decided to upload it.

The song is “Moonbeam Death Ray.”

The band is “Bronze Fawn.”

Hopefully you can make the connection at the end

Still frame from "Moonbeam Death Ray"

Click for larger! Or Click HERE for super high resolution posters.

In celebration, I spent a fair bit of time getting back to my art roots creating the above cladogram in the sand of the Echinoderm phylum.

I spent a while trying to find time-lapses or animations of starfish development online, to no avail. Thus I spent a week of much needed downtime to create this computer animation using Blender: (note – you can also watch it in High Definition on youtube).

NOTE: The details of the actual metamorphosis of the rudiment into the juvenile are not accurate – it’s quite hard to animate these types of changes – and to be honest I had not actually seen these creatures in the flesh. But it’s good enough to get a good idea of how the whole developmental process occurs in this type of sea star.

Starfish Development Still Frame

Here is the interview:

Look for this behind Chris:

Squid tend to their paper nest amidst the Spanish moss of a southern bayou.

This is the eighth in a series of pieces, “Ocean Invasion,” which finds ocean creatures living in absurd land habitats.

Buy a print of this piece at the
Laughing Mantis Zazzle store.