Endangered Animal
“The best way to predict the future is to design it.” — Buckminster Fuller
The Asian elephant is the largest land mammal on the Asian continent. Asian elephants are smaller(6.5–11.5 feet tall) and lighter(at about 11,000 pounds) compared to the African elephant. They can be identified by their rounded ears and twin-domed heads.
There are fewer than 50,000 Asian elephant, most of them reside in India and other countries in Southeast Asia. Most of the elephants feed on grasses, large amounts of tree bark, roots, leaves and fruits (around 330 pounds per day). Sources of fresh water are crucial to their survival as they need to drink at least once a day.
Fun Fact: Not all elephants develop visible tusks; in the Asian species, only some males have large, prominent tusks.
Asian elephants can be found in zones that range from open grassy glades to forest where they could find a great variety of plants and an immediate escape from the sun. They migrate as necessary to find habitat that contains sufficient vegetation and water to meet their enormous daily requirements.
Human is one of the biggest sources of conflict to the survival of the endangered Asian elephant. Human activities, such as agriculture, have made seasonal migration of the elephants difficult. Habitat clearance for agriculture and irrigated gardens removed elephants’ habitat and obstructed their access to water. The increasing pressures from climate change have also created habitat loss that led to the decline of the species. In 1992, it was estimated that there were more than 100,000 elephants in Asia, and this number has reduced to 30,000 to 50,000 now.
Asian elephants are known for their intelligence and social abilities. They typically live in small herds of related females and immature males and are dominated by a female leader. Elephant is also an important icon in many Asian cultures. In China, elephant is a symbol of luck and wisdom and has become an aesthetic element in many fabrics and interior decorations.
Why?
My family and I traveled to Xishuangbanna, a city located in Yunnan province, China in about 10 years ago and we came across a few Asian elephants in the Wild Elephant Valley, a national reserve for wild elephants. My feelings for this kind of human-elephant coexistence were complex — on one hand, I was glad to witness the human efforts to protect endangered elephants by providing a carefully-designed habitat with sufficient food sources and enormous scientific research for elephants’ reproduction. On the other hand, it was a suffering for me to see some of the elephants being trained for entertainment shows, no matter how well-meant the show was supposed to be. When I was looking at the list of endangered animals, I immediately chose the Asian elephant, which reminded me so much of the trip I spent with my family and the feelings I had being close to this giant species in the real life.
How?
Get Joanne Tang’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
I looked through the recycled materials I have been collecting for this class and I soon discovered many plastic water bottles and shipping boxes in my materials. I experimented with the texture of water bottles, thinking that the plastic could be a great material to replicate the elephant’s nose/trunk, which is the most recognizable part of an elephant.
The best design technique I have learned from the 50 shades assignment is of course, sketching. I bought a drawing pad with grids this time to sketch out my elephant, hoping that my drawing would look more proficient with the guidelines. I drew the front and the side of the possible prototype for my elephant and tried to match the different parts of the elephant to the materials I have collected.
I used two shipping boxes to replicate the head and the body of the elephant. I cut and reshaped one of the boxes to make the “head” of the elephant in a squared shape and glued them to each other using tape and hot glue.
Next, I cut and glued four water bottles into one trunk and tried to replicate the natural curve of an elephant’s nose by squeezing and twisting the plastic. The bottles were surprisingly easy to reshape, especially with the help of heat.
I was stuck at the step where I had to replicate the iconic twin-domed shape of the elephant’s head. I couldn’t think of any ways to create the arc with just cardboards and plastic. Therefore, I decided to apply a new material, clay, to my design.
It turned out I was terrible in manipulating clay. It was challenging for me to create a smooth surface with clay and to cover it around the “head” of the elephant so that the whole “head” looked more naturally rounded with two domes. The weight of the clay forced the head of the elephant to lean forward and separate from the body. The weight of the whole elephant also made it impossible for the body to sit on legs made of plastic, which I originally designed in my sketch. I was close to an mental breakdown at this point.
After applying tape and hot glue for multiple times to re-balance the weight of the head, I decided to take a break from the body parts and moved on to coloring the elephant with a grey color paint I envisioned in my sketch. I painted a piece of recycled paper with grey color and cut them into the shape of an elephant’s ear. I then attached them to the head and color the rest of the elephant’s body. The color matched quite well with the elephant! The twin-domed head also blended with the head more naturally, which was a huge relief for me.
I was particularly amazed by how realistic the elephants’ trunk turned out with just pure plastic and paint. The texture and smoothness of the water bottles matched the elephant’s skin texture perfectly.
After the paint was dry, I added two tusks (also made of cardboards) to the elephant. Although tusks are not prominently seen in Asian elephants, I added them to my prototype as I think the humans’ poaching for elephant tusks has always been a major cause to the elephants’ extinction, and people should be reminded of that.
I finished my prototype by adding two painted caps of the water bottles as the eyes of the elephant. I looked at my final product and I couldn’t help but asked myself at which point did I start to recognize the prototype as an elephant instead of an assembly of trash? For me it was the color which gave life to my elephant. I could immediately tell my prototype was an elephant from a distance once I saw its color. And then I wondered — what impacts our perception of an elephant the most, the shape or the color?
I quickly rendered a few elephants in different head shapes and colors on Illustrator to find the answer. I first filled an elephant with the original colors of the recycled materials, and I could still recognized it as an elephant judging by its iconic ears and nose trunk. Then I changed the shape of the elephant’s head to a circle, and surprisingly, I did not feel much difference when I compared it to the square-headed one. I started to play with the color of the elephants and of course, I started with pink, my favorite color.
As I was looking from the side of the elephant, many existing or potential real-life products came into my mind, like the playground slides resembling the shape of an elephant’s trunk, which I have seen in many places. I was thinking about the possibility of turning my prototype into a functional object in my living room, so I decided to render it out in Blender to see how it could look as a cozy sofa chair with the help so many YouTube tutorials. I really loved how the final result looked in Blender. Maybe I could turn it into a reality by making my prototype a real chair/stool with a solid and flat surface (maybe with the use of concrete?) to sit on in the future.
Reflection
The process of ideating and prototyping the Asian elephant was an emotional journey full of frustration, joy and surprise. From the stage of researching to the final rendering of the elephant, I have discovered so much more about how they live and why their survival matters to us. I was happy to see how plastic could be turned into something that is so meaningful and I really started to reflect on how I should reduce my consumption of plastic in the future to create a more sustainable environment as it is so hard to be decomposed.
I have also encountered so many challenges in the process of prototyping it and I have had to eliminated so many designs like the bottom parts of the elephant because I later found them against physical rules in the real world, such as gravity. I wasn’t able to add hair to the elephant’s head as I couldn’t find any materials alike in my materials and I was hesitant to buy any fux fur to imitate the hair, which may create more waste. The biggest lesson I have learned from this is that I should take a more thorough study on my materials and keep in mind their measurements and details when sketching for prototypes.
The biggest joy I have gained in this process is my re-encounter with clay, which I am still very terrible at manipulating. When I was a child, I used to make so many different artifacts with clay, and all the happy memories building something as a child came back to me the moment I touched it (and I started to miss my parents so terribly). I am now feeling so empowered to create and build things even though I am not a professional designers. I think prototyping with my hands really has changed my perspectives of not only how different materials live, but also how much potential there is in my ability to create beautiful things and to change the world, even though the world is now just a tiny living room of mine.
References
“Asian Elephant.” WWF. World Wildlife Fund. Accessed September 25, 2022. https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/asian-elephant.
“Asian Elephant.” Smithsonian’s National Zoo, August 26, 2020. https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/asian-elephant.
“A ‘Complexity’ Approach to Human-Elephant Coexistence.” Open Access Government, May 11, 2021. https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/human-elephant-coexistence/106210/.
“Bridging the Gap between Public Understanding and Realities of Living alongside Elephants.” Open Access Government, February 11, 2022. https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/elephant-conservation-china/129491/.
