Her Majesty’s Royal Squid Air Battalion

Tentacled and golden eyed
Patrolling the ocean skies
Protecting us through the nights
From unpleasant surprise

They’re…

The ten armed terrors
Fierce air sea dwellers
Feared and revered throughout the land
Her Majesty’s
Royal Squid
Air Battalion
Is overhead

Protecting against evil from the deep,
Deadly robots, and giant things that creep
Keeping you safe from harm
Sleep now, there’s no need for alarm

Because…

The ten armed terrors
Fierce air sea dwellers
Feared and revered throughout the land
Her Majesty’s
Royal Squid
Air Battalion
Is overhead

Hear their water jets splash
As into the fray they dash
With terrible beaks they gnash
With sharp tentacles they slash

The clouds grow dark, stained with ink
You smell calamari in the air
And your heart begins to sink
And fill with a deep despair

But…

Don’t panic…

Because…

The ten armed terrors
Fierce air sea dwellers
Feared and revered throughout the land
Her Majesty’s
Royal Squid
Air Battalion
Is overhead

The ten armed terrors
Fierce air sea dwellers
Feared and revered throughout the land
Her Majesty’s
Royal Squid
Air Battalion
Is overhead
And will fight again

——

This piece was inspired by an interesting tidbit of scientific news that caught my eye a few weeks ago. Apparently squid can fly. I know, right? Just when you thought squid couldn’t get any more awesome, they pull something like this.

I couldn’t just leave such a wonderful image without a song to go along with it, now could I? Alas, I’m not at all experienced in the music creation part. If anyone out there with a better sense of music composition than I would like to devise a tune for this song, I would dearly love to hear it and you have my full permission to do so.

For author, fellow podcaster and friend, J.C. Hutchins. Why? Because he’s awesome, plus not anyone can pull off the double kitten hat stack.

OK. So, there’s a bit more of a story to this piece than that.

Once upon a time…
Seriously though, I think it was something like January when J.C. made a comment on Twitter that he felt/looked like a hobo. As I’m not one to let such a fun image slip quietly into the night, I mentioned I’d be interested in bringing the aforementioned image to life. Following a brief exchange of DMs (or direct messages for you non-Twitter folk), the idea was agreed upon with gusto.

Fast forward a few months… er… half a year later. While I had been poking at the image off and on during the interim, I had a vague notion that it had been a while since I had last touched the piece, but I didn’t realize how ridiculously long it had been. I made it a point to finish. Needless to say, looking back at the start date, I’m a bit embarrassed. I’m a slow worker, but definitely not THAT slow. It was mostly due to procrastination on my part. At any rate, it’s done and I love how it turned out. It still makes me giggle when I look at it, and in my books, that’s a job well done.

And that is why Twitter rocks, because without it, this probably would have never happened. The end. :)

—

Technical Details
Medium: Pencil (2B, HB)
Paper: Bristol
Physical Size: 8.5in X 11in

Mmmm… tasty sea kitten sushi. It looks nice and fresh too.

—

I started out drawing the big round one in the center without anything particular in mind (as I tend to draw fish when I can’t think of anything else to draw). It was about this time I saw a reference to sea kittens on Twitter (thanks @scottsigler!) and thought that would be a fun title for this sketch. I had been wanting to sketch some different fonts for a while and this was the perfect opportunity. A handful of fish later it looked complete enough. If I get ambitious I might try out some watercolor on this as well.

I think I’ll keep the theme going by drawing some sea bunnies next. ;-)

—

Pencil

Viva la robots! A pen sketch out of my notebook. I drew it while I was flying somewhere over the Atlantic at the end of December.

The tweets from Twitter that go along with this image are to many to post here. It was more of a “you had to be there” sort of thing. At any rate J.C. Hutchins (of super rad 7th Son book fame) was the victim of above mechanization (observe his brain hooked up to bot). As far as I know, fellow author Mur Lafferty still has the remote to this metal monster.

This came from the following tweets from Rae:
2007.09.25: Raeski @minitotoro. Firstborn son flavour seems to be sold out.
2007.09.25: Raeski Roast Ox is quite a biblical flavour of crisp. Along with donkey flavour and locust and river of blood flavour.

You can read more of her thoughts on the matter here.

Sorry, but I Americanized it a bit. Your extra vowels and alternative word for chips confuses us. ;)

This first (-ish) image was inspired from the following tweets.

2007.09.07: mightymur The robots! They’re swarming!
2007.09.07: mightymur the robots! they’re eating pie!