I started my research by looking at the definition of curiosity. Curiosity is a desire to know or learn.
To know about people or things that do not concern them, to be nosy. To be inquisitive.
Why is curiosity so important?
It makes your mind active instead of passive. Curious people always ask questions and search for answers in their mind. Their minds are always active.
Since the mind is like a muscle which becomes stronger through continual exercise, the mental exercise caused by curiosity makes your mind stronger and stronger. It makes your mid observant of new ideas. When you are curious about something, your mind expects and anticipates new ideas related to it. Without curiosity, the ideas may pass right in front of you and you miss them because your mind is not prepared to recognise them. You may miss out on great ideas due to lack of curiosity.
The life of curious people is far from boring. It's neither dull nor routine. There are always new things that attract their attention.
You should keep an open mind. Be open to learn, unlearn and relearn. Some things you know and believe might be wrong, and you should be prepared to accept this possibility and change your mind.
Ask questions all the time. Ask questions such as: What is that? Why is it made? When was it made? Who invented it? Where does it come from? How does it work? What, when, why, who where.
You should read lots and read a variety of books, not just the ones you feel comfortable reading. Step out of your comfort zone, you might be surprised at other things you might like.
Go travelling. See the world. Experience new smells, tastes, meet new people.
Images that resemble curiosity
Inventions due to curiosity
Money- Allows society to have a medium of exchange and value rather than bartering.
The printing press- Gutenberg 1440. A device that pressed ink to paper to create text. It ended up making knowledge easily accessible in day to day living.
Steam engine- Thomas Savery 1698. First transportation that did not require animal power.
Light bulb- Humphrey Davy 1809.
Telephone- Alexandre Graham Bell 1875.
Penicillin- Alexandre Fleming 1928.
Accidental discovery, saved more lives than any other drug.
First steam Automobile- Nicholas Joseph Cugnot
1769.
First Engine automobile- Karl Benz 1885.
RSA Animation Shorts
I watched some of the animation shorts from the RSA website and made a few notes about them.
The power to create
Block bolt colours were used.
Timelines to explain the history of writers and thinkers.
Used a jigsaw puzzle to show choice.
The muscle/ power to create was shown as being in the centre of the being.
Anyone can change the world
Power/ change was shown as being a superpower. Characters were wearing costumes.
Used animals to get the point across.
Showed a costume being stolen and used as injustice.
ABC'S Of PersuasionLine art in black and white.Whiteboard animation.Used the word sales as the main idea to turn it into sails of a boat on the ocean.
Growth is not enough Used a roller coaster to represent a scale for statistics. Also used a pie cut in to pieces to represent a pie chart. Used scrabble to show some main words from the audio. Snakes and ladders to show the economic system. Used block colours.
The power of empathy
The word empathy attracting colour and sympathy letting it go.
The colour symbolised connection.
Empathy was described and shown as a dark hole the character fell into.
Sympathy was shown as intruding, sympathy made a point of saying "at least" whenever a point was made and drew a silver lining around the cloud.
The silver lined clouds were turned into a heart to show connection between two people who had empathy.
Used animals as characters that fitted the audio very well.
How to find your element
Ink paintings in a sketch book with objects surrounding it, such as jewellery.
Stop motion/ frame.
Used the cats as characters with yarn.
The power of quiet
Used cats and dogs to show introverts and extroverts working together.
Does brainstorming work?
Stop motion.
"Don't criticise" was shown as throwing tomatoes at a brain storming book.
Coloured paper was used to show peoples ideas.
Yellow paper ball with pins was a light bulb to show good ideas.
A rubik's cube symbolised imagination and pegs and pins were people bullying and criticising the imagination.
Showed criticism as an exploding scrabble bomb then paper fire works as criticism created good ideas.
A new brief has been given out and I have to design a woodland creature that is suitable for children aged 5- 7 years. I decided to look into four animals, doing research on them to give me some ideas for my character and what I want them to do. The characters also have to have one main prop.
The Fox
Red foxes live around the world in many diverse habitats including forests, grasslands, mountains, and deserts. They also adapt well to human environments such as farms, suburban areas, and even large communities. The red fox's resourcefulness has earned it a legendary reputation for intelligence and cunning.
Red foxes are solitary hunters who feed on rodents, rabbits, birds, and other small game—but their diet can be as flexible as their home habitat. Foxes will eat fruit and vegetables, fish, frogs, and even worms. If living among humans, foxes will opportunistically dine on garbage and pet food.
Like a cat's, the fox's thick tail aids its balance, but it has other uses as well. A fox uses its tail (or "brush") as a warm cover in cold weather and as a signal flag to communicate with other foxes.
Foxes also signal each other by making scent posts—urinating on trees or rocks to announce their presence.
In winter, foxes meet to mate. The vixen (female) typically gives birth to a litter of 2 to 12 pups. At birth, red foxes are actually brown or gray. A new red coat usually grows in by the end of the first month, but some red foxes are golden, reddish-brown, silver, or even black. Both parents care for their young through the summer before they are able to strike out on their own in the fall.
Red foxes are hunted for sport, though not extensively, and are sometimes killed as destructive pests or frequent carriers of rabies.
More information about Red foxes can be found at other sites. click on the links below:
Originally I planned on making my fox a bit like Robin Hood then realised that Disney had already beat me to it and I did not even realise until someone pointed it out so whilst looking on the internet I stumbled upon a picture of a fox with a camera and straight away I wanted my character to be a photographer.
I looked into literature that included Foxes and folk lore and came across a site that included fox mythology as well as a few other things. It shows stories that include the animal from different parts of the world.
The fox is included in quite a few famous stories by well known authors such as:
Owen Davey- Foxly feast
Dr Seuss- Fox in Socks
Pat Hutchins- Rosie's walk
Roald Dahl- Fantastic Mr Fox
The symbolic meanings associated with the fox are:
Physical or mental responsiveness, increased awareness
Cunning, seeing through deception
Ability to find its way around, to be swift in tricky situations
I was looking for some information about the red fox and came across a site that has a lot of information about their habitat, characteristics etc.
There are a number of films including foxes such as:
Fantastic Mr Fox
The fox and the hound
The Fox
Robin hood (Disney)
I decided to look into different variations of how others people have drawn foxes from very basic designs to quite detailed.
For my fox character I really liked the image of the fox with the camera so have decided I want to do a fox photographer that takes pictures of humans without the humans knowing. He is a humanologist that hides to take photos.
The Deer
Six species of deer exist in the wild in the UK: red and roe deer are the only native species; though fallow deer are now normally considered part of our natural heritage, having been introduced in the 11th Century and possibly before. Sika, muntjac, and Chinese water deer were all introduced within the past 150 years. These six species differ in their geographic distribution, abundance, population growth rate, behaviour, and impacts.
It is widely accepted by government agencies, NGOs, and academics that deer are more abundant and widespread now than at any time in the past 1000 years. Deer populations have increased rapidly in recent decades due to several factors, including:
Milder winters;
Changes to agriculture such as the planting of winter crops;
Increased woodland cover;
Escapes and releases from parks and farms; and
Greater connectivity between green spaces in urban areas
At present, there may be as many as 2 million deer in the UK. However, accurate assessment of deer numbers is very difficult because deer are secretive animals and are free to roam the landscape. Evidence for increasing deer numbers is found in the expansion of their geographic range and the increase in deer impacts. Deer occurrence is not restricted to rural areas, and they are increasingly found in suburban and urban areas.
With a lack of natural predators in the UK, the role of human control becomes more important. An estimated 350,000 deer are culled each year. Road accidents are the second biggest cause of deer mortality. Despite this, deer are continuing to expand in range and have increased impacts, and it appears that current mortality rates are not high enough to prevent the rise in deer populations.
Here are some links to more information about Deers:
I looked at different types of Deer to see which one I would prefer basing my character on. To me they look very wise and majestic, especially the white tailed deer.
Wikipedia helped me to look at different types of deer, their species and habitat.
For my character design I decided that I wanted to do a wise gentleman Deer that keeps the younger animals well behaved. Teaches them manners and how to use them correctly.
The Dormouse
The Dormouse is one of Britain's most endangered mammals. This is because much of its habitat of deciduous woodland and hedgerows has been lost. Competition by Grey Squirrels for food may also be a contributing factor.
This small attractive woodland rodent is mainly nocturnal. It is arboreal, spending its active time in shrubs and trees where it searches for food. Its diet consists mainly of fruit, berries, flowers and insects. In the autumn hazelnuts can be a very important source of food as they have to build up their fat reserves as they hibernate overwinter. In fact the Dormouse can hibernate for as much as three quarters of a year if the weather is bad. They hibernate on the ground, rolled tightly into a ball in a nest of leaves and grass. Their body temperature and heart rate are lowered and they become torpid and cold to the touch. Hibernating enables them to survive by "shutting down" during cold weather and they can even do this in spring or summer. Thus they have long periods of inactivity which probably contributes to the long life span of 5 years.
Dormice breed once or twice a year usually producing 4 young which are independent in about 2 months. Their nest are often built of grass interwoven with honeysuckle. The nests can be anywhere from a few feet above the ground in brambles to high up in the forest canopy. Their colour is light brown with furry long tail and prominant beady eyes.
Dormice are found mainly in the south of England particularly in Devon and Somerset. Other favoured areas include Kent and Sussex with sporadic populations elsewhere. They are largely absent in the north of England.
Dormice like to eat hazelnuts and if you examine a hazelnut shell it is possible to tell for certain whether it has been eaten by a dormouse. Look at the picture of the hazelnuts on the left. Both have been eaten by Dormice. The characteristics are a neat smooth circular cut to the inside of the opening and tiny radiating teeth marks on the outside. Woodmice also like hazelnuts and eat them in a similar way but the inside of the cut shell is not smooth as woodmice gnaw across the cut. Squirrels just crack the nuts open with their powerful jaws.
For more information on the doormouse visit these other sites:
They are called bats, megabats, fruit bats and flying foxes – it’s all the same animal. This is confusing because they are no relation to foxes, fruit is not usually their main food, and they are very different from other members of the bat family. The bat family can be divided approximately into two groups: the megabats (flying foxes are megabats) and microbats (the little ones that are talked about in stories from Europe and USA). Flying foxes do not occur naturally in Europe or USA, so all those spooky bat stories have nothing to do with our flying foxes.
In many ways flying foxes are more biologically similar to monkeys and humans than they are to the microbats. They do not use sound, or, echolocation to “see” but have excellent eyesight like ours in daylight and they see better than we do at night. They do not hibernate in winter, as is common with microbats. Most of them prefer to roost in trees and avoid caves and buildings, so will not come into your house, as do micros. They are principally vegetarian, whereas microbats commonly eat insects. They certainly do not suck blood like the “vampire” bats that are found in Central America. There are more differences but these are some of the obvious ones.
Maybe they are called fruit bats because they look like dark fruit hanging in trees. Unfortunately this name gives the impression that they are big fruit eaters but in fact these in Bellingen concentrate more on nectar and pollen. People are just more likely to notice what they are eating when it is fruit, because we like to eat fruit too.
Most of the flying foxes on Bellingen Island are the species called Greyheaded Flying fox, and these are found only in Australia. However the numbers of Black Flying foxes is increasing. Ten years ago Black Flying foxes were rare summer visitors from their more northerly range but now you can always find some of them roosting in Bellingen. This is part of a general pattern of the Black species spreading southwards.
Little red Flying foxes visit occasionally in summer when food supplies are short in their inland range. Australia’s fourth main type, the Spectacled Flying fox,is never found naturally this far south of its North Queensland range.
Three species: Greyheaded, Black and Little red Flying foxes.
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