Giant Octopus Deadly Art

My name's Steve Backshall and this is Deadly Art.

I'm lucky enough to travel the world, tracking deadly animals.

But in this show, my team of artists take my killer moment...

..and turn it into art.

And we'll reveal another unique creation.

Along the way, you'll get to pick up some tips, tricks and techniques

so you can make some art yourself.

This is no ordinary art show. This is Deadly Art!

'Coming up on Deadly Art... I meet a real giant of the Pacific Ocean.'

It feels like it could rip my arm out of its socket!

'The Deadly Artists get in a tentacle tangle.'

BOTH: Octopus attack!

'And grab your pencils for another Deadly Doodle.'

So what are we looking at today?

Today's deadly animal is a giant of the sea.

With cunning camouflage, strength that's second to none,

and because it has no hard body parts,

the ability to cram itself into the tiniest of spaces,

the Giant Pacific Octopus.

This is the largest octopus on earth,

and they can reach an enormous size. Three times longer than I am high.

So who's taking on the Deadly Art challenge today?

I'm Michelle and I just love working with different materials.

I'm all about getting stuck in.

I'm Nicola. I'm a power-tool queen.

Nicola and Michelle are representing the Deadly Art team,

who are always up for a challenge.

Here's our killer moment, to inspire their art work.

The Giant Pacific Octopus is the largest octopus in the world.

-This needs to be our biggest art ever.

-Absolutely.

With giant tentacles and huge suckers.

How are we going to make this piece of art?

With the deadliest power-tool of all. The sewing machine.

This is going to be interesting.

We're going to make a massive inflatable for our octopus,

which means we need loads of material.

There's going to be a lot of sewing.

Our suckers have been drawn out on the computer

and will be printed off on to fabric.

I'm going to show you another technique to create the same effect,

that you might possibly want to try at home. Stencilling.

Every octopus needs its suckers and to make those, I'm creating stencils

by drawing a series of circles, like this,

a smaller one in the centre. And now I'm going to cut those out

and that will enable us to spray those suckers on.

While Nicola and Michelle get on, in British Columbia,

the Deadly 60 crew and I were on the search for a Giant Pacific Octopus.

I think through this hole... Oh, my goodness, yes! I see one!

Oh, wow!

Now that is a big octopus.

Apparently, these octopus are so curious

that if they sense the warmth of your hand,

they will actually come out to try and get a closer feel of it.

I just hope I don't get introduced to its vicious biting beak.

Oh, wow! Its tentacles are gripping my fingers. That's amazing!

Come on, then. Wow! What a grip!

That's phenomenal!

They have amazing suction power.

Woah! Oh, my goodness!

It feels like it could rip my arm out of its socket!

Join me later,

on my second attempt to get closer to one of those giants.

Over to Nicola.

These suckers look amazing already, don't they?

Now it's just about spraying over the top of it

to give that natural, shaded effect.

Because spray paint can be toxic,

Nicola is wearing a protective facemask when she spray paints.

It's good to see how other techniques can work too.

These spray-painted suckers look just like

the professionally computer drawn ones. Over to Michelle.

This piece of material has been put facedown on to another piece,

and they've been attached together with pins.

Next, I need to sew all the way round the edges

and once that's done, I can pull the material the right way round

so the suckers are on the outside.

Later, when we inflate the tentacle, no air will escape.

While Michelle gets on with the sewing sections,

it's time for you to get involved.

Nicola is taking time out to show you a Deadly Doodle.

This is the Deadly Doodle of the octopus.

I'll show you how to draw it.

And as usual we start with some really simple guidelines.

Begin by drawing a big oval at the top of your page.

Just below that, add on a slightly smaller circle,

and in this dent here, you need another oval for his eye

and a second one right in the middle, just there.

Now it's time for his legs.

He's got eight of them so it could get a bit complicated,

we'll take it one at a time.

Starting here, just below his eye, do a big wiggly line

and then double back on yourself,

getting bigger as you come closer to the body.

The next one, right the way around, same again, double up and back.

A third one just here.

As you go behind a leg, just skip over the line

and join it back to where it comes from.

We'll add two more down here,

filling the page as much as you possibly can

to make it look really dramatic.

Now, he needs three more

and they can just fill in any of the spaces you've got left.

And finally, we'll slip one right in the back, just there.

Now it's time to take the marker pen and define those lines.

From the top of his eye, go all the way around -

you may notice there's a slight dip in the top of the octopus' head.

Now we'll fill in the eyes.

Go all the way around the eye, and then draw in the number six

for his pupil, with the same again on the other eye.

Now we'll fill in the legs, and that's very easy,

you just go all the way over

all of those lines you've already created.

That's all of his legs done.

Now he just needs some suckers and for that I'm going to change pens,

because they're quite fine details, so I'm going to use a fine pen.

Add on some really small circles,

all the way along the base of each leg, or tentacle.

You might see the entire circle

and sometimes they might just be poking out the edge.

The last thing to do is rub out those pencil lines.

And there he is, your Deadly Giant Octopus.

What a magnificent octopus!

So how did some of you get on, drawing this doodle?

We went to Glasgow on a Deadly Day Out

and here's all the action from the Deadly Art tent.

ALL: Deadly!

I'm Ewan and this is my Deadly Doodle.

ALL: Here's our Deadly Doodles.

I don't normally do doodles like this at home

and I think I will try to do more.

Let's get back to the Deadly Art studio.

We've got so much material.

I'm just attaching one of the tentacles to the rest of the body.

This octopus is going to be massive.

Imagine, this is just one of his tentacles

and there are eight of these bad boys.

It's not long now till our Giant Octopus comes to life.

Can't wait to see it!

But for now, it's back to British Columbia,

and our Giant Pacific Octopus.

Look at the way the mantle, the head,

bubbles up with these tiny projections and changes in colour,

so that he blends in with his background...

..moving across the bottom,

with that beautiful stretching out of the tentacles,

just feeling his way through his environment.

He is the weirdest,

most majestic creature I've seen in these seas.

He is utterly phenomenal.

At first it's kind of tentative,

but the power when they actually pull back

and decide to really pull towards their beak-like mouth parts,

it's actually very frightening.

Particularly when you consider

that this is actually quite a small Pacific Octopus.

I mean, they could get to be, wait for it, nine metres in width.

So if you could try and imagine

an octopus that has an arm-span like a truck,

I think you'll have the idea.

Such a breathtaking experience.

Now Michelle's got a super fun inspired DIY for you.

I'm going to show you how to make this Giant Octopus

using an old umbrella.

Now, an octopus has eight tentacles

and an umbrella has eight segments, so it's perfect for this make.

I want to give my octopus a lovely bright blue colour,

so for that I'm using some blue foam.

You can get this from any craft store.

What I've done here, is cut out a large triangle,

and you'll see that this fits onto a segment of the umbrella.

You need to repeat this all the way around,

sticking it down to each segment. Let's make the tentacle now.

Again, I've got a large piece of blue foam

and I've just drawn a tentacle shape on it with a black marker pen.

This is almost like a wavy row that tapers at the end.

Once it's drawn on, you just need to cut it out.

The foam's really easy to cut through.

Take care when you use scissors!

There we go, one large tentacle.

Now for the inner part of it, I've just drawn the same shape,

but slightly smaller, and I'm going to stick the two together.

Now that's all stuck down, I'm going to move on to those amazing suckers.

All I need to do, is draw some large circles on top of the foam.

Once you've got your circles, you just need to cut them out.

The suckers look great because they pop out against the white tentacle.

To create this effect, all you need to do

is draw a line from the centre of the circle to the edge,

and then just snip into it with your scissors.

As you can see, I'm just folding one side over the other,

and it creates a cone shape.

Next, all I'm going to do is stick these two sides down,

so it's nice and secure.

I've got a load of suckers here,

and I'm going to start sticking them all over the tentacle.

This is the fun bit.

That's my suckers stuck on,

so now I'm going to start building up the umbrella.

As you can see from this one we made earlier,

there's one last tentacle to put on,

on one last segment of triangular foam.

I'll just bring it over, it's pretty big.

First, I'll attach that last segment of foam at the top.

That looks brilliant!

Next up, the last tentacle.

I'm just going to put some glue along the top of it here, and stick it in.

And for the finishing touches we need some deadly eyes.

For that, I've got a polystyrene ball and cut it in half,

and then I've got some black foam and cut out the number six

for the pupils, so I'm just going to stick these on.

There we go, my new umbrella. And he's an octopus!

He doesn't mind getting wet.

Brilliant brolly, Michelle! Back to the Big Art

and it's inflatable time.

Isn't it amazing that a lot of material,

stitching and a load of air, can make a creature come to life?

We've had so much fun making this one and it is just so big,

it literally takes over the whole of the Deadly Art studio.

He is incredible.

You definitely can't argue with the scale of this, he's awesome,

and I think the entire Deadly Art team deserves a big congratulations.

-They really, really do.

-What do you think?

BOTH: Octopus attack!

I asked the Deadly Art team to recreate this killer moment

and turn it into art.

So let's take a look at the finished work of art.

This is great!

I cannot think of any more perfect way to represent an octopus.

The way the body and arms move, is just perfect.

There are no hard parts in an octopus' body, apart from its beak.

And you can't think of any better way of representing that

than in this kind of model.

Nice work, team. Art doesn't get any deadlier than this!

What an incredible creation!

Make sure you try the doodle and the DIY

and we'll see you next time for more Deadly Art.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd