Compound eyes

When visiting a stone trade show at Geomuseum Faxe years ago, I met Niels Milan. Niels works for LEGO and is an amateur palaeontologist and a very skilled model maker. He makes impressive dinosaur skulls from Worbla - a popular Cosplay material. I showed him a picture of the Laggania model we made many years ago - a Cambrian anomalocaridid. It had a nice compound eye. Compound eyes are insect eyes that consist of multiple lenses.

We made the compound eyes from Apoxie Sculpt - a chemical clay -  and tyl fabric to make the relief. In crystal clear casts of these, we had embedded a black core lying below the surface. We were pretty happy about the result. However, Niels asked us why we did not make it like in nature - with lenses leading to a cone that points to the centre of the eye and has a black photosensitive spot at the end! This way, we could achieve the natural effect of a pseudo pupil - an effect you see in some insect eyes. Well, this was an excellent question that has been bugging us for a long time. Niels came up with the idea years before we went digital. But when the technology allowed us to copy nature, Rasmus finally pulled perfect insect eyes with multiple “pseudo pupils” out of the mould.