Inspiration – Koda Creative

Beautiful geology at Canal Rocks, Western Australia

We are always looking for strange or amazingly beautiful rock formations on our travels and we were not disappointed with this find. Following a tip off from a friend, we drove our rental car north from Margaret River, Western Australia and turned up at Canal Rocks near Yallingup. Here we found a very interesting granite formation with some out of the ordinary features. Canal Rocks has very unusual fault and strata lines and intense colours giving it an almost human made appearance in places. Also some areas of very attractive wind erosion (scroll down to detailed pictures) makes this lump of rock a must see on the Western Australia geological trail.

Canal Rocks is in the Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park, about three hours drive south from Perth. Aboriginal name for Canal Rocks is Winjee Sam.

Amazon waterfalls

The image below is a photo of a small waterfall we made in an amazon themed aviary. The trees to the left are 7m high supports for the stainless steel mesh structure and inspired by buttress trees Ceiba pentandra. The buttress trees and rockwork are made from steel, concrete and shotcrete. The brief for this project was to imagine what a small Amazon Rain Forest tributary waterfall might look like.

Artificial waterfall in amazon aviary — Amazon aviary waterfall

To make this artificial environment, we searched on Flickr for ‘amazon waterfalls’ and the following images are amongst what we used for artistic reference. I wanted to post these pictures to show part of the process we use when researching a zoo enclosure project. I hope you think we faithfully reproduced our little imaginary part of the Amazon Rain Forest.

To recap, the image above is fake and the ones below are real.

The smiling Buddha faces of Angkor

Often a client will ask for a reproduction buddha head in the style of the stone carvings from the Angkor region of Cambodia. These iconic heads with their mysterious smiles have long been copied in zoos, aquariums and theme parks world wide. The oldest reproduction I have seen is in Rotterdam Zoo and very recently I made one in De Vogelkelder, Netherlands.

The project I am researching now is a bit different as it is in a private home. I gathered these images to use as reference for this next job and to inspire me in the meantime. I have never been to Angkor Wat (yet) so I am thankful of the people who have and documented it with these amazing photographs.

If you feel like digging deeper, click on each image to find out more about the photo and its photographer.

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20 inspirational images of temples and tombs

Stone forest research trip

Just recently, I visited the geological wonder, Pobiti kamani, otherwise known as ‘The Fossil Forest’ or ‘Stone Forest’

This natural phenomenon consists of many stone columns spread over a large area in the hills above Varna on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria. The limestone structures do indeed resemble a fossilised forest and no one knows exactly how they were formed. There are many theories regarding their formation but it is likely that they were created by gasses seeping through the ancient ocean floor and depositing calcium as they escaped.

As a rockwork artist and creator of imitation geological artefacts I was interested in collecting some reference pictures and getting an idea of how I could recreate parts of The Stone Forest artificially.

The following images (iPhone HDR’s) are a selection of the pictures I made on the trip. I hope they give an idea of how wonderful and inspirational the Stone Forest is.

20 inspirational images of temple ruins and tombs

Quite often we have to make architectural style rockwork with a temple ruins, Indiana Jones or Tomb Raider theme. The following 20 images were compiled whilst researching such a project. I have left out the obvious head carvings in this round-up, this compilation is all about mysterious entrances, spooky passageways and wondering what is around the next corner.

There are plenty of images from Cambodia here and some others from India, Egypt and Indonesia. Clicking on an image takes you to its Flickr page and there you can find more information about the picture and its photographer.

Ten inspirational natural rock formations

As rockwork artists, we often find ourselves searching the web for reference pictures. Matching a habitat to an animal is usually the first stage when developing a project. Matching a species to a geographical locale is a high consideration as is rock texture, form and colouring. Nobody wants to see animals kept in concrete cages anymore and thankfully, forward thinking zoo’s now invest more time and money into species specific habitats.

This early research also works for other artificial environment reproductions wether it be an aquarium, theme park attraction or whatever. Often the client doesn’t know exactly what he or she wants. Gather a collection of reference images and it will prevent a lot of grey areas as the project develops.

The following ten images were accumulated whilst researching a project which required heavily stratified rock formations.