Lagomorpheus is the Prince with a Thousand Enemies

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  Controversy: Lagomorphogenesis

The birth of a Running Bun Magazine rocker rabbit cover.

Here are some of the many image versions I worked on while completing this cover. The photograph is copyright © Rabbit Photog of Inspired By Paws Studios. Derivative versions strictly prohibited!

Here is the original photograph taken on this handsome rabbit's second birthday in the yard of Inspired By Paws Studios, also the offices of Running Bun Magazine. In Photoshop, I adjusted only the contrast on the photo in the area of his head.

© Running Bun Magazine

In this photo, I immediately noticed sun-enhanced markings which astounded me. I showed friends and family this shot and asked them what they thought he looked  like or who he looked like.

© Running Bun Magazine

I got many interesting answers from an Asian trader to a swashbuckler to an antique gentleman with an Imperial moustache. It's his moustache that really intrigued me. Below, I've only darkened the area where his moustache markings are by using the burn tool which simply makes what is already there, darker. I extracted the moustache marking with the select tool and put it aside, it reminded me of a question mark.

© Running Bun Magazine

For many months after spying these markings, I thought about 'what does it mean? How did this rabbit develop markings which appear to look like stage makeup? His emphatic Colin Farrell eyebrows, even with eye shadow in soft graduated tones of taupe on his Satin fur, even earrings hanging off his ears! And the markings being perfectly symmetrical on both sides of his face!

What caused this? I had never seen such markings on any rabbit before much less any animal. The closest in the rabbit breeds would be the gorgeous black eyerings of the Blanc de Hotot but this guy doesn't have anything like that. It was almost as if the spirit of someone was coming through his DNA to be seen to human eyes again, a haunting, as it were, in the form of a very well dressed rabbit.

This brought two things to mind: the research by Dr. Emoto on the effect of mental energy from a close by research assistant on ice crystals as they froze and the final works of mathematician genius Alan Turing on animal markings and morphogenesis.

Illustration from Turing's theory of morphogenesis

Some tiny fraction of the morphogenesis formula

Morphogenesis: the conscious moment

Alan Turing is best known to those not so mathematically enthusiastic as the guy who wrote the test to determine if a computer is aware. It stands as the standard test of artificial intelligence. He was a genius whose mathematical feats have touched all of our lives in some way although most of us don't know it.

When an animal embryo is at a very specific point of time and development, the markings that animal will bear all its life are affected by external forces in the form of thought energy and intent. This formation of the markings is called morphogenesis. Like Dr. Emoto's happy snowflakes whose beauty and delicacy is affected by the positivity or negativity of thoughts and feelings directed toward its formation by the external energy force of the researcher, Alan Turin's morphogensis theory explains the very similar formation of an animal's markings as it unfolds from the encoded DNA of its origin.

I realized also, that what was going on with this rabbit was then a very unique type of morphogenesis which occurred during the creation of this lagomorph, this rabbit.

Lagomorpheus

He became known to me as Lagomorpheus, a pirate rabbit whose markings happened to be formed during the crazy summer when the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out. Were his markings an expression of the throngs of pirate obsessed people passing near his mother who was impregnated upon arrival at a public animal shelter? Were they affected by me who cared for his mother there and whisked her away just before she gave birth? Did I have an inner pirate, which I know I do, who loves pirates for their parrots and who oodled some energy onto this little being as he blossomed into a baby? Or did he just look like the funky purple king of coolness, Prince Rogers Nelson, because I've seen him in concert five times and I still have Prince on the brain?

I didn't know but I wanted to paint out the undesirable parts of the photo so I produced the following digital painting so I could design an uncluttered Running Bun Magazine cover featuring this Prince with a Thousand Enemies (his band). And this is what I came up with. I was  happy with it.

© Running Bun Magazine

At first I wanted to simulate the Musicology cover by making the grass purple and the type slanted. The poses were so similar!

© Running Bun Magazine, Prince photo used conditionally

I played with different fonts for the headline.

© Running Bun Magazine

I went through a washed out, desaturated period and finally settled on typeface below.

© Running Bun Magazine

The Final Cover

The extracted markings became the symbol of the rabbit formerly known as the prince with a thousand enemies now known as Lagomorpheus. Appropriately, it looks like a question mark. Butterflies denote the butterfly effect which, if physicists can believe that, mathematicians can believe lagomorphogenesis. The three circles hint at a paisley pattern, beloved by Prince Rogers Nelson, but encapsulate the ideas of morphogenesis, and emotional energy with this symbol which looks like a question mark.

And there you have it.

You should be able to figure out the headline references if you're a Prince fan. I am. You can see other photos of this pirate rabbit hopping around during this same photo shoot in which you can clearly see his markings in the next post.

© Running Bun Magazine

 -Thumper S. Thompson

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