The Grasshopper’s Leap, colored pencil on Dura-Lar film, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Animate

This is the poster I made for my class project from my previous grasshopper drawings. I wanted to focus on how the grasshopper jumps, because they have a secret: they have a spring in their legs! They can jump 20 times their length, which for a person would mean being able to jump the length of a basketball court. They also, at liftoff, feel a force of 20-times the force of gravity (20-g’s). For reference, the space shuttle lifts off at 3 g’s.

Their muscles alone are not capable of generating this force; this poster explains how a bendy cuticle in their leg makes their leap possible.

I also wanted to do something fun with the poster and make the poster come alive by connecting it to the web in some way, so I added a QR code that, when you scan it, takes you to an animation I made in Flash (via Adobe Animate) of the grasshopper leaping. (I also animated the inclusion/close-up.)