The Crabingo

Happy to have my submission for the Crab Museum calendar be selected again this year with a piece that continues with the 'total crab-ification of nearby Margate locales' theme. After crabbing up the Lido and Arlington House in previous years I made a pincer move on the flamboyant sea front facade of The Flamingo arcade transforming it into 'The Crabingo' - do you see what I did there? I'd always thought the centre piece decorative canopy shape could make for a fetching moustachioed crab head on my almost daily walks past it and took on the challenge of building it in 3d. Using reference photography I drew around the tricky shapes in Illustrator and extruded them in Cinema 4d to carefully build the existing canopy sides. I then added dimension to the central head section before creating the essential crab pincer, eyes and leg elements. I'd selected the photo I wanted to use as the basis for the image and thought it easier to build the entire upper facade in Cinema 4d to place over the top of the existing one then edit window text and blend in with Photoshop as you can see above. Great fun to do and chuffed to be included with some awesome crab-tastic artwork in the coolest calendar around. The calendar is available to buy here and you can see this and previous crab museum work on the main site also here.