Scruffy looking birds

Today it was my good fortune that two crows came and sat in a tree in front of where I ate my lunch.












... And, a gull. The gull was not in a tree

It's been a while

I guess maybe I ought to post some new stuff here.

style?

Thinking about style of execution, I went back to this. Just a one-off example and certainly no crow content here, but the style may work with the story.

This is not how I envisioned it to begin with, but change is good.
At times.

Just sitting with it for now.

This sketch is is a little old. More breakdowns are being drawn though.

The design will be minimally anthropomorphic.

The Extremely Brief And Premature Synopsis

At a laboratory studying bird behaviour, it is observed that a crow is able to make a hook to get at some food in an awkward location. It is soon discovered that Blackie's tool making abilities are much deeper than this. He has for some time been getting out of his cage after hours to tinker with the lab equipment and had learned how to use a computer. A chimpanzee may have taught him to read, and write. quietly watching scientists and lab techs at work has taught him other useful things.

The story of Blackie:

Characters:

* Blackie: Amazing crow... A Wondercrow
* Scientist One: Who is on to Blackie. both foil and antagonist to Blackie. protective of Blackie's secret, (secret being how smart he really is).
* Scientist Two (Three, & etc.): supports scientist one - all scientists are like clones of one another
* Lab Tech: bright guy (or girl) - a little subversive. Only human with a face. (???) Side Kick)
* Lab "boss": admin type. spoiler. Outside world - to be kept at bay.
* Press: Press - radio, newspaper TV - cliche reporters
* other birds & animals.
* online community - a bird fancier website with a very active forum.

Blackie finds out about an evil plot to upset equilibrium
becomes centre of plot.
acts with help of lab tech (sidekick) to save the world.
Scientists, press, Lab Boss and all others some what hapless and uncomprehending of Blackie's heroic adventures.

Story so far:

* A Lab is studying animal behaviours. Crows in particular.
* Blackie is observed solving a problem of how to get some food by making a hook out of a piece of bent wire.
* There is some fuss about this.
* At the same time there is something funny going on with the security system.
* The alarm goes off and is then disarmed.
* A security camera is installed and it catches a grainy image of a large bird flying around in the lab.
* Scientist figures it out and confronts Blackie - They work something out. Mutual self interest -
* Blackie helps with research...
* Blackie gets run of lab and spend his evenings causing mischief on the Internet.
* Discussions about difference between animals an humans (aim at undermining classifications) - meaning of tool use, their production - Evolution, Blurring of lines.
* Blackie designs and builds very complex tools for obscure tasks. Has a Bat Man like arsenal of weaponized paperclips.
* Leaves lab from time to time (scientific conferences, press briefings, super hero missions, etc.) always stops along the way for a bit of road kill, shiny objects or pointless mischief.

Et, Deja la.

no birdbrains

More snippets for the background:

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Crows prove they are no birdbrains

Excerpts: The crow is putting our closest cousins to shame.Experiments show the humble bird is better than the chimp at toolmaking. British zoologists were astonished when a captive crow called Betty fashioned a hook out of wire to reach food. It is the first time any animal has been found to make a new tool for a specific task, say Oxford University researchers. They believe the bird shows some understanding of cause and effect.

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Birds may have a basic understanding of physics, recent research by Oxford zoologists suggests. (…) the researchers report the findings of an experiment in which New Caledonian crows bent wires to make hooks appropriate to retrieve food from a cylinder. This is the first time any animal has been found to show some understanding of cause and effect, and to make a new tool for a specific task. The experiment built on a chance observation, when a captive female crow spontaneously bent a piece of wire and successfully used it to lift food from a vertical pipe.

the birth of Blackie the Wondercrow

It all started with a radio inteview about a crow that bent a wire to get at some food at the bottom of a jar. This video from the article in Science Magazing Magazine, (quoted below) shows the crow in action.








"Shaping of Hooks in New Caledonian Crows A. A. S. Weir, J. Chappell, A. Kacelnik Science 297, 981 (2002)

In the Brevia section of the 9 August 2002 issue of Science, Weir et al. report a remarkable observation: The toolmaking behavior of New Caledonian crows. In the experiments, a captive female crow, confronted with a task that required a curved tool (retrieving a food-containing bucket from a vertical pipe), spontaneously bent a piece of straight wire into a hooked shape -- and then repeated the behavior in nine out of ten subsequent trials. Though these crows are known to employ tools in the wild using natural materials, this bird had no prior training with the use of pliant materials such as wire -- a fact that makes its apparently spontaneous, highly specific problem-solving all the more interesting, and raises intriguing questions about the evolutionary preconditions for complex cognition. The crow's behavior was captured on an unusual video clip, available on Science Online."

Shortly there after, began designing a crow to be a lead character in a graphic novel. the ultimate plan is rather grand.