Awkward Moments

Meet this gorgeous flightless bird who really, really wants to fly. Her common name is the Flightless Orange Toed Green Billed Pootoo. Very social creatures that are emotionally dependent on their mother for the first ten years of life. If they become separated from her, they will try to bond with the next living creature they see. This young Pootoo, sadly, lost her way home, and is now attempting to find a new mother in the form of the young humans she has identified in the village below.

This image was inspired by another artist's image of a little man who was flying using two feathers in a very surreal and magical village.

It is also about awkward moments. Life is full of awkward, crazy and courageous moments. I love the idea of this big clumsy creature attempting to fly with a couple of flimsy feathers. So brave, and crazy. And the quaint village in it's trajectory below. Could be very awkward... even tragic.

Below is a detail of the bird. I created her with a variety of vegetables, as you can plainly see. The body was constructed with a pair and a pumpkin. I wanted to create a very awkward looking creature that was obviously not aerodynamic. The nose and arms are zucchinis, the spine and toes are tamarillo, and the spiky comb on her head are from the roots of spring onions.

All the components below were photographed separately. The coconut houses (re-used from another image), the grassy hill, the rocky path, the bonsai tree, the girls, the smoke - all individual elements combined in Photoshop. I create shadows for every element to give a more realistic look.

Below are most of the elements used in the image. The version of the Pootoo was before I added the arms and the moving left leg. The background image in the bottom left was constructed with 4 different photographic images.

I really struggled with the story for this image, as I had the visual in my head initially, and often the story evolves as I work on the image. Not the case with this. I have been battling a creative block, which is going on for way to long...