The Dodo Blog

This is the marvelous Dodo we are going to see on Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland in March. Even before this image was out, I knew I was going to love the film: it has a dodo and it’s directed by Tim Burton, what makes the story a slightly darker and twisted.

I found that image on this empire article: New Alice In Wonderland Stills And Video. Yes, there is one more featurette video on the site, with more new images. The tiny article also: Highlights this time include a look at the creation of Tweedledee and Tweedledum (both Matt Lucas) and art of the Dodo, the Cheshire Cat and another look at Anne Hathaway’s White Queen.

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Marcello Cazzaniga sent me a nice e-mail with 2 those lovely dodo images:

I am Marcello from Italy I always follow your blog, I love Dodo.
I play figure ice skating in Italy, with some other adults like me …we are not so artistic so we use to call us Dodo group, because we are near to the extinction
But our motto is “I can’t fly but I can slide”.
I send you some images of some dodos that I designed for some pins and cards.
I hope you will appreciate them.

Sure I did! And thanks for sharing them Marcello.

Beautiful black & white picture of a Dodo statue by David Champion, aka, biker500, with a pinhole camera.

Well it’s what they think a Dodo looks like round here. Pinhole image on 135 Rollei Retro 100. Six second exposure.

Hello Kitty cartoon also has its own version of Alice in Wonderland: a 24min. episode. The cartoon was uploaded in 3 parts by aayla666, and I made a playlist with it on YouTube. You can watch the complete episode below in sequence. (via the NSFW ofellabuta)

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Le dodo appartement by  Mai Kangas on Flickr. And now, thanks to Mai, we know where he is living in Mauritius. I should call him.

Conservation Status – Animals, Fantasy, Zombies T-shirt by Aled Lewis.

This design was originally based on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species but I noticed how many awesome creatures they missed out. So I added them in. I plan on screen printing these in the New Year and selling them via my website, so check back if you’re interested. Thanks!

I don’t care much for auction, unless is something really impressive, like the image above: A dodo. Yes, a dodo, but not a regular dodo image, a dodo watercolour from the Dutch School. The Dutch, the same people that colonized Mauritius, and a drawing is from the 17th Century, which means that the chances of that painting had a real dodo as a model were pretty high.

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The animator and designer Evan Boucher sent me a link to one of his old projects: DIGM 560: Advanced Applications in 3D Interactivity featuring Dodo’s Electrode Induced Behavior Study. You can play with the dodo checking his reactions when certain areas of his brain are stimulated, making him happy, angry, frightened or sad. Sad dodo is too sad, better keep only on the 3 previous emotions.

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I have no idea how or when did I found this, but probably a long long time ago a saved a link the following PDF: Fiches Thématiques De la Bibliothèque du MHNG nº2 – Le Dodo. The MHNG in question is the Muséum d’histoire naturelle de la Ville de Genève. I tried to find a page that links to that PDF without any luck, so I choose share it directly.

The thematic card is all in French, but if you already know the dodos history there are not many news on it. It tells the sad story of our so much loved bird, the researches all over the years, more ornithology info about it, suggestion of books, and 3 images. One is the cute dodo above, and the other two are:  Facsimile of Savery’s figure of the Dodo in his picture of the Fall of Adam in the Royal Gallery, Berlin and a dodo image from The dodo and its kindred by A.G.Melville (1848).

And the Dodo Award unfortunately had to choose one more winner last year. If you are following The Dodo Blog on Twitter you already know that The Center for Biological Diversity announced Michael Winer, portfolio manager for the giant real-estate investment firm Third Avenue Management, LLC (“TAREX”), as the winner of its third annual Rubber Dodo Award for : “His Wall St. Firm Pushing Largest Developments in California and Florida Imperiling Dozens of Endangered Species, Including Condors on Tejon Ranch“. Not an easy work, but there is always a monster to do such things.

Winer is deserving of the 2009 award for his leadership of TAREX, the largest stockholder in companies developing the largest pieces of private land remaining in Southern California and Florida. These regions are also home to some the highest numbers of endangered species in North America. In California, TAREX is pushing the Tejon Ranch Company to pave over thousands of acres of federally designated California condor habitat. In Florida, TAREX is pushing the St. Joe Company to flood tens of thousands of acres of the Florida Panhandle with high-end developments.

“Under Winer’s money-obsessed leadership, TAREX has become the poster child for unsustainable, endangered-species-killing sprawl,” said Adam Keats, director of the Center’s Urban Wildlands Program. “He specializes in finding massive, remote estates far from urban centers and turning them into a sea of condos, malls, golf courses, and resorts. There is good reason that even Wall Street commonly calls TAREX a ‘real-estate vulture’.” (more…)