Animals Week 2 Homework

For my second homework assignment, I wanted to see if I could do a lot with a little. I’ve always admired the way that great character designers are able to create expressive characters without leaning on any of the visual cues we use to read human emotions (think: the lamps in Pixar’s Luxo Jr.), so I wanted to see if I could do something similar with my octopus character design. Of course, in order to communicate emotion using a character on a static page, I needed to add something, so I chose to anthropomorphize my octopus enough to add a set of eyebrows. I am pretty sure that octopuses don’t actually have eyebrows.

This octopus lives on the ocean floor. While it leads a fairly solitary life, it interacts, from time to time, with other bottom-dwellers like eels, crabs, lobsters and other octopuses. While it is adept at catching smaller prey, it is equally adept at hiding itself from predators (like sharks and humans), using both camouflage and its ability to squeeze into tight spaces.

Animals Week 1 Homework

The blue-ringed octopus is a manually dexterous creature. It is able to easily manipulate objects with its eight arms and suction grip. Docile unless provoked, the blue-ringed octopus is a threat to any animal that would try to attack it: it produces enough neurotoxin to kill 26 adult humans. In captivity, octopuses are known to be quietly crafty—they will sometimes sneak out of their enclosure at night, devour animals in other tanks and return to their own tank without leaving a trace.