This blog entry is the final to introduce and summarise the chosen spider designs in the series of four for the Major Design project-it will be that of the Thiania bhamoensis which is another type of jumping spider-and is also commonly known as the “fighting spider” in South East Asia (Wikipedia, 2021). This spider was found out about through researching and ‘googling’ for ‘fighting spiders’ funnily enough! The artist was trying to find a variety of options where the certain spiders commonly fight one another, as the aim was to investigate fighting-spiders in general because the next god character to represent is Odin, a god of war. Mr Wednesday (see image 1 American Gods Wiki, n.d.) as he’s known as in American Gods (2017) has origins in Norse mythology, he features heavily as a main character, and is revealed during that he is the father of the series’ main protagonist Shadow Moon (see image 2, American Gods Wiki, n.d.). In the show he is somewhat the Anti-hero, and the main storylines are about him looking for holy weapons to win an incoming War between Old Gods and New, as well as his son’s spiritual journey (as a-believed-to-be human mortal).

    Mr Wednesday’s perpetuity to seek and create Wars, conjured memories of watching nature documentaries where spiders would battle snakes and scorpions etc. This is why again, spiders being the presentation of nature worked so well in conjunction of this project subject. The fighting spider variation of the jumping spider can also be presented differently to the ‘UV/Love jumping spider’ as the colours, staging and lighting will be completely different in the finished production. The idea is to create the 3D form of the jumping spider with the prosthetics and SFX make up processes, but to create the fighting spider colouration in normal lighting, and for the alternative UV version, the artist would change the ‘paint job’ to that of UV reactive properties and use the darker lit staging alongside UV lighting to show up the new details and the transformation of one genus specification to another!

    As this is an initial blog collection, there will likely be further research performed on jumping spiders and Mr Wednesday throughout this Major project that is not currently featured here, efforts to add and update this blog throughout the process will be made. 

The further detailed practicality of planning and creating this design will be covered in blog 8.

References

American Gods Wiki (n.d.) Mr Wednesday/Series [Online]. Available at https://americangods.fandom.com/wiki/Mr._Wednesday/Series (Accessed January 12th 2022)

American Gods Wiki (n.d.) Mr Wednesday/Series [Online]. Available at https://americangods.fandom.com/wiki/Shadow_Moon/Series (Accessed January 12th 2022)

Wikipedia (2021) Thiania bhamoensis [Online]. 15th February 2021. Available at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiania_bhamoensis (Accessed January 12th 2022)