Saturday, December 9, 2017

Creatures of the Deep: The Pop-up Book by Ernst Haeckel and Maike Biederstaedt and

Brace yourself because this gets a bit scientific.

It is foremost an art book based on art forms in nature in the sea. Here is Ernst Haeckel's Amazon page that shows his regular books along this same line. He is an artist and his prints and posters are sold all over the place. Here is Duckduckgo image page search result of his name that shows his artwork just like this book. If you click the "web" tab at top then you'll see where to guy them.

Apparently someone said, "Hey! You should make a pop-up book and have these as your backgrounds."

Then he goes, "But I don't know how to make pop-ups."

Then the first guy goes, "So what. We can find someone to do that."

The pop-up guy, Maike Biederstaedt, I think, has only this book on his Amazon page. And the pop-up mechanism are all rather simple. Most are a single mechanism placed directly on the central fold, with others cleanly displaced off the central fold by basic pop-up means, for example, the mollusk page uses a strap across the central fold in the shape of V, the shortest possible strap or bridge, providing two new angled side gullies to attach mechanisms. The whole book is elegant this way. The background art is important as the single specimen that is popped up.

This video shows the first page where presumably these species are identified but I cannot read it so I'll tell you what they are, a few are weird, and one is microscopic.

1) cephalopods, octopus and squid
2) asteroidea echinoderms starfish
3) acantharea Venturiaceae sea squirts
4) Jellyfish
5) ammonoids sea mollusks
6) anemones

The book is $21.50 on Amazon, reduced from $30.00, a savings of $8.50. With 6 pages that comes out to $3.50 a page.

That's not so bad. It's very artistic. Each poster or print would cost more than that. You could tear out the pages and mount them on mat board and frame them as pages popped up. That would actually be rather cool. There are several places online to buy metal frames of all types. You pick the style of frame that you want. You tell them the size of the sides and they cut them to fit your specifications. You must know in advance what you want or else you'll quickly become bewildered by all the choices. For a pop up page spread out and mounted, the frame will have to be thicker than normal for a sort of window box art display frame. Right there, one choice is made for you. You decide black, gold, bronze, silver, whatever. You decide the size of the mat that you glue the art to. One time I bought four segments for a poster. It's exactly like Frame I Yourself used to be. As a kit, they include the corner inserts too. And cable with insert loops to hang them. They're little pieces of metal that you screw into the track in the back of the frame that have holes in them for the cable to poke through. Like this.  Here's a 2-minute video of how to assemble a frame.

This book would be so easy to tear apart.

I'm trying to help you class up your place, alright?



Okay. Let's see on Amazon what people gripe about this book.

1-star review:

* Two mechanisms torn. Had to repair.

[Good for you. Try not to be so rough next time.]

2-star review:

* No words. 

3-star review:

* No words. Wants words or side stories in the margins.

[Words would ruin your art. These people have no appreciation for possibilities.]

5-star reviews

* Mother loved it and didn't care about it not having words. Thinks words would detract from the beauty

* Beautiful and informative

* For nephew. Instant hit with whole family. On permanent display on coffee table. Likes not having words. Instead they made inquiries into different organisms and made up storylines the whole evening.

* Grandson loved it so much she bought another.

* Beautiful pictures. 

2 comments:

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

A book without words. Best kind of book. ah.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

who needs science fiction when we've got science non-fiction.