Joe Caleno's Blog

  After the opening of the factory

 

 

  How dark subjects are presented in The Rolling Stones’ songs.   In a lot of their songs, The Rolling Stones sing about and mention dark, touchy subjects a lot of singers and bands would avoid. They sing about such things for a few reasons. One of those reasons are, that they want to get a reaction. Since a lot of singers would rather not sing about the Devil, death, war and murder it makes them unique. They do not shy away from those sorts of subjects; they are not scared to write songs about them. Another reason is, during the 60s, there was the Vietnam War, drugs, racism and a generally a lot of conflict.   A lot of people during that time used music to escape from reality. The Rolling Stones found a way of connecting with those types of people. By singing about these sorts of things, the listener felt as though Mick and the band were singing to them. This is apparent in 1969’s Gimme Shelter, which I will be speaking about later. Another reason is, The Rolling Sto...

 

 

 

 

 

  Morris covered in soot.

 

  Lepidopterology  is  a branch of entomology  concerning the scientific study of  moths  and the three superfamilies of butterflies.  Someone who studies in this field is a   lepidopterist or, archaically, an  aurelian. Lepidoptera specimen drawer in a museum collection in Poland.

RS Edleston was an English naturalist who studied insects in the 1800s. In 1848 he recorded an unusual discovery in his journal. “Today I caught  an almost totally black form of Biston betularia (peppered moth)   near the centre of Manchester.” This is the first  recorded sighting of a dark peppered moth. To get a better understanding of the location of my animation I decided to do some research on 19th century Manchester. It said that the factories  provided the most visible evidence for Manchester’s economic growth.  Factories needed their operatives, but they also had to be built, their machines had to be maintained and their warehouses had to be organised. It all amounted to a steady stream of employment for those who flocked to the cities.   I then had a look at some images of factories back then. The air was thick with black smoke, chimneys towered above houses.

 Drawing Morris Progress:

 I want my animation to have have a particular style. I have been looking at A Bug's Life. I really like A Bug's Life's style of animation. It was made in 1998 so it does look outdated however I really like the way the bugs look. Most of them have big bulging eyes and overall just a very cartoonish look. I think that this style is more appealing to children too who want to learn about the evolution of peppered moths.  

  Majerus's  experiment From 2001 to 2007, Majerus carried out experiments in Cambridge to resolve the various important criticisms of Kettlewell's experiment.  During his experiment, he noted the natural resting positions of peppered moths.  Out of the 135 moths examined over half of them were on tree branches, mostly on the lower half of the branch, 37% were on tree trunks, mostly on the north side, and only 12.6% were resting on or under twigs.   He then added an experiment to find if bats , not birds, could be the main predators.  He looked at a number of species of bird actually preying on the moths, and that differential bird predation was a major factor responsible for the decline in  carbonaria  frequency compared to  typica .  He described his results as a complete vindication of the natural selection theory of peppered moth evolution, and said "If the rise and fall of the peppered moth is one of the most visually impacting and ...

  Kettlewell's experiment The first important experiments on the peppered moth were carried out by Bernard Kettlewell  at Oxford University.    Kettlewell started an experiment where which moths were released into a large aviary , where they were fed on by great tits .  His main experiment  involved marking, releasing and recapturing marked moths.  He found that in this polluted woodland  typica  moths were mainly preyed upon.    Kettlewell repeated the experiment in 1955 in some unpolluted woods in Dorset  and again in the polluted woods in Birmingham.  In 1956 he repeated the experiments and found similar results. In Birmingham birds ate most of the moths (75%), but in Dorset most of the dark moths (86%) were eaten.

My animation is going to be set at some point prior to 1848. This means it was before the field collection in Manchester. The main character moth (the first moth) will be called Morris and his friend (the second moth) will be called Miles. Morris was a common name back then and so was Maurice, both names also both begin with the letter M. The other character is the bird, who's looking for food. He isn't named. The bird is going to be a  great tit as they were mentioned to be a predator to moths. There are also a lot of them in Manchester. It is going to be set in Manchester  because the frequency of the variety was found to have increased drastically here.

My idea. I want to tell the story of two moths. At the start, both moths are light coloured moths. The first moth (the main character) decides to move away for a while. He flies to a forest and to a tree where a factory is about to open. After the factory begins to operate and as time goes on, the factory's black smoke covers the countryside. The moth watches as the once beautiful countryside is turned into a dark, depressing place. That night, the moth is very sad. His new home is now ugly. Just as he is about to fall asleep, he spots a bat looking for something to eat. His is terrified. He thinks he is going to get eaten! However, the bat doesn't notice him. The moth is very confused. The second moth decides to visit the first moth a few days later and is horrified to see what a horrible place his friend has moved to. He decides to try and find his friend but he can't! The first moth is blending into a tree. He shouts his friend's name and he gets a reply. He has no i...

The first dark moth was recorded in 1848 in Manchester. By 1895, this variety accounted for 98% of these moths in the city.  The evolution of the peppered moth is an evolutionary instance of directional colour change in the moth population because of the air pollution during the Industrial Revolution. The amount of dark-coloured moths increased at that time. This is an example of industrial melanism. Later, when the pollution reduced, the light-coloured moths again predominated. Before the Industrial Revolution, the black peppered moth was rare. The first live specimen was caught by R.S Edleston in  Manchester, England in 1848.

 Overall, I have really enjoyed this project. It was fun creating a story and a character to go with that story. I also enjoyed modelling the scenes in Maya. Making animations in Maya is very fun however I am annoyed that I ran out of time and wasn't able to finish it. 

 Unfortunately I was only able to animate a few scenes.