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Babel.03
Babel.03

Babel.03

Artist Rod Lord
Printer Pearce Studios
Date2004
Mediumpaper (fiber product); ink
DimensionsImage: 10 1/2 × 88 5/16 in. (26.67 × 224.314 cm)
Sheet: 11 3/4 × 16 9/16 in. (29.845 × 42.069 cm)
Credit LineMoPOP permanent collection
Object number2004.98.1
Text Entries
This graphic, multicolor line drawing by Rod Lord, the artist who created the graphic animations for the TV series version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy began as a radio broadcast and was later made into novels, a television series, a computer game, and a film. The artwork depicts the “Babel Fish,” which when attached to one’s ear and one can instantly understand all languages. The graphic is dated 2004 and may have been created for the 25th anniversary of the original radio comedy series by Douglas Adams. Originally the images were black Rotring pen drawings on celluloid which would be reversed in a darkroom to become clear outlines in black backgrounds. Some masks that could not be done by black card were traced and painted frame by frame on celluloid. Sometimes color filter gels would be cut to fit certain areas. After the artwork was created, the next step in the process would place the artwork pieces separately on a lightbox under the Rostrum camera, lowering the glass to keep it flat and shooting a frame, and then lifting the artwork and changing it with another piece, lowering the glass, and repeating.  

Art Print. Black rectangular background with rounded edges 10.5” x 14 13/16”. Large medium blue text at the upper left corner, BABEL FISH.  

Under a graphic which is the yellow outline of a fish with protruding lips, there is additional all capitalized text with the quote from the book, THE BABEL FISH IS SMALL, YELLOW, LEECHLIKE, AND PROBABLY THE ODDEST THING IN THE UNIVERSE. Between the two bodies of blue text is the line art outline with line art in Yellow for the outline of the fish body and the outline of the eye. Text in green with call out lines to indicate different descriptions of the parts of the body to indicate physical structures and/or functions of sections.  

The call outs indicated the various parts of the fish physically or by function. Left to right, the upper section identifies a circular dot near the front of the face as the olfactory bulb. The section above the eye is the telepathic excretor and to the side of the eye is the brain. Attached to the brain is the digestive nerve chord. Below the nerve chord and filling the center of the fish is the gas bladder, next to the bladder is the energy absorption filter. In the tail section it is the unconscious frequency sensors, and the lower fin is the conscious frequency sensors. Below the gas bladder is the digestion system. Next to the digestion system is the heart and liver. Toward the lower front of the fish are the gill rakers, and lastly the extendable nerve signal sensor. 

CopyrightThis Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). For more information, see http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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