#aquairium

[runwayrunway]

No. 52 - Alaska Airlines Xáat Kwáani and Salmon-Thirty-Salmon Liveries

Did you think I was done with Alaska Airlines?

No, this is actually my last post about them for now (though, mark my words, you will be seeing a post about the Gold Nugget Jet in the not-too-distant future - I just feel like we need a break from nothing but consecutive posts about the same airline, and I have other things I want to cover). But it's something that's both requested and which I've wanted to talk about for some time.

In my last post I discussed the identity of the man on the Alaska Airlines tailfin. It wasn't a major part of the story, only taking up a small piece, but I did touch on how ChatGPT apparently will lie when asked about the background of the livery. Not only does it falsely attribute the livery to Fred Kabotie, who I'm sure had more important things to do, but it also falsely claims Fred Kabotie, who was Hopi, to be Tlingit. As it turns out, though, Alaska Airlines does have a livery designed by a Tlingit artist.

image: Brandon Farris

Crystal Kaakeeyáa Rose Demientieff Worl is a Tlingit artist known for large public artwork which heavily incorporates indigenous artistic traditions and visual motifs across many mediums. Some of her previous work includes large-scale murals in Alaska and throughout the world and guardrail panels at Juneau International Airport. She feels like the most natural choice possible to design an airliner livery, given the scale and diverse canvases she works with, and in May of this year the airplane you can see looming behind her was unveiled in a brand new livery that I, and a lot of other people, immediately fell in love with.

It's safe to say that this is one of the most ambitious and unique special liveries out there. Xáat Kwáani (which means 'salmon people' in Tlingit) is a beautiful and one-of-a-kind take on the often-noticed resemblance airplanes have to fish.

Salmon fishing is huge in Alaska, both now and historically. Today fishing is a major part of the Alaskan economy and something many people making a living off, but historically they were even more directly responsible for making the difference between life and death for those who lived beside them. A major source of food, they were literally life-bringing to indigenous societies, necessary to survival. Humans and salmon were part of the same ecosystem.

Independent of this fact, airplanes seem to lend themselves to comparisons to sea creatures. They may be called 'birds', but time and time again other people confirm that I'm not just imagining it, they do distinctly look like cetaceans and fish. Very early on in this blog the fact that 747s look like Humphead Wrasse was discussed. Amakusa Airlines, Japan Transocean Air, and Southwest Airlines have all leaned into this fish resemblance, and I'm sure over time my sea creature plane tag will continue to grow. This genre of livery will never cease to delight me.

I think it's fairly predictable that I always loved N559AS, the brilliantly named salmon-thirty-salmon plane. I was devastated when I learned that the livery was going to be removed. I mean...just look at her.

The salmon-thirty-salmon was a very unconventional take on the fish-plane, using a much more realistic drawing than any other attempt. It doesn't even try to transform the plane itself into the fish, which I think is potentially a smart way of accepting the limits of doing so. Instead, it fully displays the honestly hilarious and adorable face that salmon have while providing a nice canvas, a bit of water for the salmon to be carried on. At the same time it incorporates thoughtful details like the scales on the interior winglets, and the way the salmon's body is aligned with the empennage and nose feels very precisely done. It can create a somewhat uncanny doubling effect from a few angles, but by no means is it enough to rob the livery of its charm or elegance.

The salmon-thirty-salmon gets an A.

I've lived near the ocean my whole life. I love fish. I loved this plane. I was heartbroken when I learned the livery was going to serve its final milk run before rolling into the hangar for the very last time, coming out repainted and lost forever. It's always a bitter pill to swallow when airlines retire special liveries, particularly when it involves the plane being repainted into the standard colors. A lot of other people were sad to see this design go too.

What we didn't know was that this was not the end of the salmon-thirty-salmon. She was not lost, but transformed. When she emerged from the hangar again she was not wearing Alaska Airlines' default colors but something even more eye-catching, a livery honoring the same fish but with extra layers of meaning added by means of an intricate and beautiful new design.

Costs, materials, and man-hours used to paint an airplane vary dramatically from case to case, livery to livery, model to model, airline to airline. The numbers in my description are somewhat conservative estimates used for comedic value. Alaska Airlines actually gave some numbers for Xáat Kwáani - twelve days, 117 gallons of paint. The colors used are Midnight Blue and Atlas Blue for the background, White for the fish themselves, and Pink for highlights, and a clear coat has been applied over the top in order to preserve the livery. Alaska Airlines has every intention of keeping it intact for as long as possible.

The use of colors is beautiful. The waves of darker and lighter blue keep it from ever looking too light or too dark, adjusting to the lighting in order to always remain saturated and vivid, and the irregular wave pattern keeps any part of the livery from looking static. The use of the pink as a highlight is sparing but effective. The white, though, is what makes this livery so fantastic. A central tenet of this blog is a disdain for the dominant trend of livery design in recent history, Eurowhite - that of an almost entirely white fuselage. And there is a legitimate sense of general derision for white, but it can be so powerful as a design feature. There is no contrast more powerful than a stark and complete absence, a space carved out fully from the world and color around it. It is the color of bone and snow.

The balance of each color is just perfect, the blue never overpowering the white, the white never fully blocking out the blue, the pink subtly adding depth throughout, and the shapes of the salmon are placed perfectly, not feeling cramped or confined. They are free to wander the fuselage and they have an amazing sense of movement to them, as if caught mid-leap. I've seen salmon swimming upstream to spawn, and they are so startlingly large and vivacious. The fish on this plane, though stylized, perfectly capture the way that these fish look in motion.

Formline is a style of art historically created by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast of North America. It was a common and versatile visual element, present in everything from painting to carving to weaving. It is defined by its use of continuous, curving lines which may change in angle, width, and direction but do not terminate. Though it was diminished in quantity by suppression of indigenous culture by US and Canadian settlers it never went away, and from the second half of the 20th century onwards it has been surging back as more and more indigenous artists are able to produce and display their work. Worl has worked with formline many times before. She is quoted as saying:

Every time I looked at an Alaska plane, I couldn’t help but visualize the salmon being in formline [...] I can’t help but look at things and see how to Indigenize them.

And the idea has now come to life in this absolutely unforgettable livery. I wish I was within the range of the 737-800 from Alaska Airlines' hubs so that Xáat Kwáani could pay a visit to my home airport, because this is among the most beautiful planes in the world right now. And beyond just nice colors and pleasing shapes it represents something important - indigenous artists being given a 40-meter-long flying platform on which to honor fish which have provided countless centuries of life to the people who live beside them.

Worl's work is above and beyond what I would have ever expected for a custom airplane livery. Even the 'Alaska' wordmark is neatly incorporated into the formline, blending into the background to the point it's hard to notice in a good way.

Most liveries are designed by graphic designers and branding firms. Landor Associates design liveries and logo, but they aren't building monuments or putting their work in galleries. I don't mean to diminish their work - obviously I'm passionate about it, I have a blog about it - but it's just fundamentally different from what Worl does. It has different priorities, a different philosophy, and a different level of personal investment.

From my perspective Xáat Kwáani feels less like branding material and more like a piece of artwork. This isn't something designed to go on letterhead, to be put in a press kit, to be widely reproduced. It's something to be looked at, thought about, and remembered. This is a mural that flies.

I mean...A+, obviously.

There is just about nothing else in the sky which has the same visual power as Xáat Kwáani. As far as I'm concerned, every gallon of paint was worth it to give us this flying tribute to the people and wildlife of the state Alaska Airlines takes its name from.

#tarmac fashion week #grade: a #grade: a+ #alaska airlines #special liveries #aquairium

[attorneys-against-court-violence]

So we all know Simon is a stoic son of a gun, right? Man just has a resting-state of mildly annoyed. But I think I just realised part of why that is.

It's his eyebrows. Or lack thereof, seemingly. The eyebrows are said to be the most expressive feature on a person's face - doubly-so for exeggerated fictional characters. Having them hidden hides a lot of emotion from ones facial expression. Simon not having visible eyebrows communicates just how little he shows of his actual emotional state, whether it be intentional or natural stoicisim.

As a bonus: him having his back turned to the Defence is so extra because no other Prosecutor intentionally obsucures their face like that (save for Godot, though the dude kind of has to wear a toaster on his face so that's a given). It's escpecially interesting to me because that's the pose he puts on when he addresses Athena in court for the first time.

It's like he knows he can't hide his reaction to seeing her stand in court (especially as an attorney, a profession he's come to loathe over the years) without hiding his face. And he's usually pretty good at that sort of thing (not reacting when she splashes him in Shipshape Aquairium, for example).

Point being, Simon is hard to read right down to how his character design hides key features of his face & further obscuring them by unprecedentedly hiding all of it from the defence. And I think that's neat.

#ace attorney #simon blackquill #simon soliloquys

[s0ckz]

This gorilla loves a good snorkel 🤿 🐠

Materials:

@arteza.co.uk pencils (72 set)

@winsorandnewton #promarkers (yellow, gold and lipstick red)

@copic_official markers (B04 & B16)

@posca_uk black 1M pen

#my art #gorilla #wildlife #traditional art #aquairium #aquatic

[animal-breeds]

STINGRAYS and SHARKS AQUARIUM TANK - Large Saltwater Aquarium

#fish #shark #aquairium #fish tank #stingrays #animals

[ttransthirteen]

ok fuck the shark tunnel at the aquairium and fuck anyone who thinks its cool. its the hellish creation of a madman and when youre all eaten by sharks dont come to me for sympathy.

#sharks #i hate that thing!!!!! #its the fucking worst!!!!1 #idk that theres glass there the sharks are strong and smart and if you waltz around like that theyre gonna see you!!!!!

[bettsfic]

will bellamy be writing clarke letters?? the bits when you wrote of him explaining the aquairium to clarke was so beautiful and heartbreaking

i really can’t say anything about this chapter at all. everything is spoilers.

#training wheels #Anonymous

[andymiah]

The AquAIRium

#IFTTT #Flickr

[runwayrunway]

No. 20 - Amakusa Airlines

I read @sirigorn's request and immediately found my mood improved because of the phrasing here. There is something so delightful about the way you put this.

I was also very excited because this is an airline I've never heard of! And it's no surprise, since they, as you said, operate a fleet of just one ATR 42-600 (though I've seen inconsistent claims they have a second one on order), which makes them tied for smallest airline in the world by fleet size. They're a commuter airline based at Kumamoto Airport, which is technically an international airport but is still tiny, and mainly fly little puddle jumps between various destinations in Kyūshū (though they do have destinations in Honshu and a single one in Shikoku).

I wish someone had been around to hear the noise I made when I first saw her.

I love this plane. I love this plane so much I struggle to actually quantify the amount of love I feel for her. Just look at her. Oh my goodness just look at her. Look at this lovely blue girl. Not only is she smiling that delightful little smile and looking at me with those big ol' eyes which are shining with pure love, but so are both of her engines!! And the fact that they strategically drew her fins on by cleverly using the lighter color of the underbelly and the white of the empennage!! Oh my goodness!! Oh my goodness!!

A+

Thank you for this request. Knowing this airplane exists has improved my life. This is a type of joy I thought I wasn't capable of feeling anymore. This plane is a dolphin and I love her.

#tarmac fashion week #grade: a+ #region: asia #region: east asia #region: japan #amakusa airlines #commuter airlines #era: 2010s #era: 2020s #requests #aquairium

[nyatlien]

Georgia Aquarium

#Atlanta #Georgia #Aquairium #nature #photography

[andymiah]

The AquAIRium

#IFTTT #Flickr

[runwayrunway]

No. 32 - Japan Transocean Air Jinbei Jets

Over the past two days, @lillybean730, @whatmorecouldapoorboydo, and @fungaloids have all tagged me in this post, which contains this image.

The link beneath is broken, but based on the text below, I would presume it was posted in response to the introduction into service of Japan Transocean Air's two "Jinbei Jets". ('Jinbei-zame' is the Japanese name for whale sharks!)

That's right, there are two of them! The Jinbei Jet actually comes with a matching Sakura Jinbei! They're both Boeing 737-800s delivered new to JTA (a JAL subsidiary based in Naha which usually just uses the JAL livery, hence the vestigial Tsurumaru logo on the tail) in late 2017; the blue Jinbei entered service in September while the Sakura entered service in December.

These are adorable, there's just no way around it. The low-sitting eyes, combined with the existence of the cockpits, does make it look a little like the plane has two sets of eyes, or one real set of eyes and one set of false eyes to throw off predators, but just - just look at her!

Her little eyelash! The little sakura blossom behind her ear! AAAH!

The methods used here resemble those Amakusa Airlines uses for their absolutely darling dolphin plane. The whale shark design is centered at the nose of the airplane and then allowed to diverge from there, which allows for the general shape of the shark to be expressed well. Together with a very clever use of negative space on the bottom half of the plane, this also very easily renders a white underbelly. Blank space is then left above the dorsal fins to write the name of the airline, and the tail frames the tailplane really nicely.

They're both very well-drawn and pretty designs. While I do wish there was something other than plain white in the background, like maybe a wave design or even just a light blue, I understand the choice, and it's not really what the point is here. The point is the whale sharks. Still, the white feels very sharp as a contrast, and I prefer the way Amakusa Airlines used a lighter blue and limited the white space. The Tsurumaru is also a bit busy. It's a gorgeous logo but I think on a plane like this the whale shark should be the only thing that really pulls any attention. The viewer's eye should be drawn right to the airplane's eye (the drawn on one) immediately, without anything directing it to the tail, like a big bright red logo. While the sharks themselves are incredible, the rest of the plane isn't a particularly good vehicle to present them with.

Again in contrast to Amakusa Airlines, this design is much more realistic and much less stylized. I don't think that's a good or a bad thing. In fact, I think they're both wonderful. Despite both being sea creatures they are very distinct-looking, which I like. One is a very cartoonish and delighted dolphin with two smiling dolphin engines, and the other is a set of two very charming elegant whale sharks with delightful big round eyes. Both of them make me very happy when I look at them. I feel like my job here is slightly redundant because I think my reaction is completely universal.

These are just a pair of really pretty and endearing planes, and I could not adore them more. I think I prefer the vivid pink of Sakura Jinbei, but I also do love the classic blue color. And I think the knowledge that these two are a pair improves each of them even more. They're simply lovely.

An A for Jinbei and Sakura Jinbei!

#tarmac fashion week #grade: a #era: 2010s #era: 2020s #region: east asia #region: japan #japan transocean air #japan airlines #aquairium #requests #special liveries

[janus-borne]

AQUARIUM OF THE PACIFIC by Rosemarie.

#marine bio #aquairium #pacific #jellyfish #jellies #shark #sea stars

[andymiah]

The AquAIRium

#IFTTT #Flickr