Bioaccumulation - The whale, squid and pollution illustration is to show bio-accumulation within the food chain. Pollution becomes mixed with zoo plankton, and small bits of weathered plastic are mistaken for food by fish and other marine organisms and animals. Because Sperm Whales are one of the animals at the top of the food chain they accumulate toxins eaten all the way up the food chain. A large whale may be able to cope with these toxins, but it is also passed to newborn calves through breast milk.

500 sheep! - as well as their spermaceti oil being valuable , a whales' meat is equivalent to around 500 sheep.

Brain – A whales' brain weighs approximately 20kg – about the same as a car tire or two year old child.

Mother and child – I was trying to demonstrate to children that Sperm Whales have similar birthing habits to humans and similar relationships for the first couple of years. The second drawing shows that, although very rare, they are also able to have twins.

Drift nets - Despite the EU ban on driftnets in 2002 making drift netting a seemingly minor threat to Sperm whales in the Med, I drew a diagram for it anyway, as French and Italian fisherman still use this practice illegally to catch tuna and swordfish in the Mediterranean due to an extreme lack of enforcement. This wasn't used in the end but I still have the subsequent illustrations.

Whale caught in drift net – These nets are almost invisible to marine mammals. If they become entangled they are likely to drown. If they escape with part of the net still wrapped round them this could make life very hard and cause abrasions, infections, and eventually death.

Human family - I drew this family in order to express to children that whales also live in families, although they have a different structure to ours as previously explained.

Heart - Visual aid to help children remember that the average weight of a sperm whales' heart is equal to that of two adult humans!

Educational Sperm Whale DVD

In order left to right: The size of a sperm whales' tooth is comparative to the size of a Chiwawa dog, and the biggest of all the animals.

This illustration of a circle of adult whales around a calf is to mirror the narration explaining how Sperm Whales' only natural predator is the Killer/ Orca whale. Although possible, adult sperm whales are often too difficult to kill due to their size, so Orca's try to seperate the calf from the group as it is an easy target. The correct terminology for this circle is a 'rosette' which is formed to prevent the Orca's from reaching the calf. This was actually used in the DVD in the end as we were making something more specific to the Mediterranean where there are no Orca's. Their only threats here are anthropogenic.

In order left to right: Whales teeth - The size of a sperm whales' tooth is comparative to the size of a Chiwawa dog, and the biggest of all the animals.

Rosette - This illustration of a circle of adult whales around a calf is to mirror the narration explaining how Sperm Whales' only natural predator is the Killer/ Orca whale. Although possible, adult sperm whales are often too difficult to kill due to their size, so Orca's try to seperate the calf from the group as it is an easy target. The correct terminology for this circle is a 'rosette' which is formed to prevent the Orca's from reaching the calf. This was actually used in the DVD in the end as we were making something more specific to the Mediterranean where there are no Orca's. Their only threats here are anthropogenic.

Echolocation - Diagram showing the process of sending out sonar waves to detect food and location (and threats).

Food - Showing how the sonar works, bouncing off an object and back to the whale, with the whale sometimes being able to tell what the object is from the pattern of the returning sound waves.

Whale pods - Male and female Sperm whales live in separate pods, and even in different geographical locations. The females help each other to give birth and look after the other calves when mothers have to leave the surface to hunt for food. When male calves reach a degree of maturity – after 4 years old – they join the male group. They return to reproduce when they reach their twenties, then doing so every three to six years.

Educational Sperm Whale short film 16.09.10

My most recent piece of work is this 9'00" film about Sperm Whales. I had one week to make this educational video for a school in Athens targeting 6-12 year olds.

Being told it could be whatever length needed I starting researching on Wednesday and by Friday had condensed the research, scripted it (to be child friendly) and done the shot list. This was then checked over by my manager, relevant changes made and translated into Greek.

While I was waiting for the script to be finalised I started gathering the footage on the shot list together from the media library and organising it into folders in the project window of Premier. I also started making graphic illustrations using Adobe Illustrator to help portray the information more clearly to children. It was good the DVD was for children and I could add these images as there weren't enough images on Creative Commons websites and we didn't have enough footage to cover all the relevant subtopics.

As the first time using Illustrator, and with the time constraints, the images I made were very basic. Drawing them freehand using the paint brush tool I googled photographs and cartoon images of the sperm whales and other things I was drawing for a guide/ inspiration.

When the script was finished I recorded the narration and started putting the non-fictional footage in the time line while my colleague started putting colour on the graphic illustrations to save time. Some of the illustrations I made were no longer needed because of the change in the script.

I had drawn human beings next to Sperm whales and things like this to help the children relate to whales being animals like us in order to create understanding of these sensitive and intelligent creatures. I made many references to people throughout the script and the drawings reflected this style. But when the script was translated and changes made this no longer applied in the same way, so some things were left out. When I have more time I may make changes to the illustrations which have been used so they are more fitting, as we will use this DVD for other purposes in the future too.

Because I had used quite an illustrative style – rather than graphic – I didn't want to use block colours or have anything too bold. In fact block colour, in my limited knowledge of this software, wouldn't be possible anyway, as none of the lines in the drawings were joined. Therefore we decided on shadowing, highlighting some parts in colour, and very occasionally colouring parts.

Monday and Tuesday were then spent editing and making any changes to graphics, including the translations as some of the graphics reflecting the size of the sperm whale had already been done by another volunteer for a previous project. Because graphics were used from a previous project this means the style throughout is inconsistent, and though this doesn't affect the fluidity or understanding of the piece it would be nice when I have more time to make it uniform. At 10.30pm on Tuesday night, after 15hours at the office, I was finally putting the music on after things taking a lot longer than I anticipated, in a chicken and egg situation of not realising how time consuming graphics could be...or rather, it was time consuming because of my lack of experience with graphics!

Anyway, it has now been sent to them, and I am generally happy with what has been produced in a week and with finally using In Design and learning a couple of new skills. I find the prospect of things you can do with this programme quite exciting and hope to use it for more elaborate sketches / sequences in the future.

I have included pictures of the basic original illustrations (above).

Archipelagos website media page re-design

Our current website is slightly confusing when it comes to media, with pieces spread around in various locations. Therefore a colleague and I have re-designed the media pages with new imagery, and a condensed, more simplistic layout, drawing out page examples on In Design with a written description to go with each. This re-design was a great opportunity to familiarise myself with a software I haven't used before.

We are now just awaiting our web designers to do the job!