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Complicat3D

The entire world seems to be busting into 3D everything these days (can't wait for NFL 3D, by the way), and I am no different. Well, mine's not really 3D. It's 3D in 2D images. It's complicated...D.

But how does one begin making a medical/science 3D thingamabob? Let us see!

First, I opened up a hemoglobin protein model from the handy dandy protein databank.
And it looks...like absolutely nothing. Super. But don't quit! This is just the un-pretty, data-type stuff. We're getting there.

Looks more protein-y. Wait for it...color!
This is the "ribbon model" of the protein, but it isn't very exciting. To me, it looks like something that I curled with scissors for a birthday present topper. So I added some fancy pants lighting, atmosphere, speckles, and depth of field, movie style blurring to get this:
Looks a little more Discovery channel now, right? We're following a de-oxygenated hemoglobin in a red blood cell! Now if I could only animate...but 3D studio max is not so easy. Case in point:
This is what the screen looks like when I modeled a neuron from the brain. This is the screen where I continually claw at my computer, wanting to reach in and just grab the model and move it with my hands. Tony Stark, please get on that. From this strange wirey screen, I rendered out this:
Eh, not so exciting. Put some of that fancy pants lighting and atmosphere in there and you get something much cooler:
See those neurons zapping away, trying to figure out whether I should go to Subway or Chipotle for dinner tonight. Ok Subway, you win this time.

After my first few weeks of 3D class, I can see the merits of making a 3D illustration or animation. However, it is definitely not without its challenges. For example, you can't tell by looking at my finished pieces how many times I cursed at the computer and swore off art and grad school all together. Hint: the number is large. But somehow I end up remembering every Discovery channel doodad or Pixar movie that has me drooling and saying "I want to do exactly that," so I come back. I feel I need years upon years upon years of practice to even hold a tiny candle to the the entertainment industry regarding 3D. But God help me, I love the entertainment industry. And the entertainment industry loves 3D. So if a=b=c, then...

You should read my blog. I hear it's getting better.

Needless to say, these past 8 months have been completely crazy. Our schedule is not set up in semester form but more in "project" form, where each new project (usually lasting a few weeks each) is a class. I both love and hate this format: rarely do I get bored with a class, but a lot of the time I feel like I'm trying to learn stick and can't shift the gears fast enough. If you've seen me attempt to drive stick, you know exactly how frantic that looks. On the bright side, I produced a lot of work over the past few months! Also, I can watch Discovery Health and feel like a super braniac. There is nothing like watching Mystery Diagnosis and making the diagnosis before the doctors do. I only did it once, but my nerd-self was beaming with pride.

Speaking of oogles of work, I have a recent project to post! The concept was to design an editorial cover for a medical/science journal. I chose to illustrate a cover for this article about electronic waste in our environment. I have my full process, from my first daydream doodles to the finished product. I love putting my process up, but I kind of feel like a magician telling all the secrets. Like this fun show I used to love. In a way, I am the new Magician X.

The finished product:
The first stage was a doodle. I did this one very sleepy morning in the department. As you can see, it's rough. In doing thumbnails, I often ask myself if I can, in fact, draw.


Next step, a color comp from a beginning sketch. The idea begins to solidify a little bit, but it's clearly still a ghost of projects yet to come.


And now...my compulsiveness shows through. I've included oogles of wires, all of my old phone models, every piece of musical equipment I've owned (my favorite boom box) and every game console from N64 on. (This includes handhelds, minus the DS, Wii, and Sega Genesis. Throwing a Genesis away is blasphemy.) Find your favorite old piece of electronics (you may have to look at the pen and ink, it's more complete)!

Next, time to ink! This was the most experimental part for me, since I haven't properly comic book inked. I've always wanted to since I used to draw my own Sonic the Hedgehog comics. This is my favorite stage.
And from there, the photoshop coloring! ...which is the stage I'm going to abbreviate, since it's kind of involved. I have to say that I was inspired by (superhero) comic artist Steve McNiven. Oh, Marvel Civil War. So, once again, the finished product:

As you can see, the thumbnail is rarely like the original. This is not how I envisioned this would look in the end, but I am happier with this than the vision I originally had. (For example, the sky was going to be blue and the wires more black with light blue highlights. How weird!)

And that...is how this was made. Generally. Next time, some flashback artwork! Or perhaps, an entry on med school anatomy? The possibilities are endless.

Anatomical hiatus

So...I've been on anatomy hiatus for the past month. Longest month of my life? Yes. One more week and I'll be done. Look for a post all about it soon!

Anatomy, with help from Hollywood (PG)

A good summary of the past week would go something like this: Gross Human Anatomy at Johns Hopkins is no joke. It's the most interesting class I've ever taken, but I've never studied so hard or worried so much in my life. Learning anatomy is like learning a new language. Sure, the components haven't changed for hundreds of years (pollo still means chicken, right?), but that does not mean that it's easy to memorize hundreds of vocabulary words in one night. I mean, gastro-omental and pancreaticoduodenal are not excatly terms I use in everyday speech. Wearing scrubs does make me feel super official though.

Other than the intense terminology, class has been incredible. In our first week, we opened the thorax and dissected the pleural (lung) and mediastinal (heart) spaces. Cadaver dissection is not for the feint of heart. For example, here is a summary of how we excised the heart:


Ok, maybe we dissected more with scalpels in a lab than in the Temple of Doom with my fist. Still.

This week we are dissecting the abdominal cavity and, so far, it hasn't been quite so gruesome. We identified the inguinal ligament and the tendinous intersections of the recus abdominis, which are indicated on the living model in this photograph with red and yellow arrows respectively:

Ok, ok, so I didn't have to use a scene from Troy to illustrate my point. But why not? Plenty of people appreciate Brad Pitt's inguinal ligaments.

I believe that this class is transforming me into a new class of super nerd. Not that I needed any help from Hopkins. I am beginning to see anatomy in everyday life, which could be a direct result of how much I am studying everyday (let's just say a lot). I was eating a snack while studying last week and, upon looking at the remains of said snack, immediately came to this conclusion inspired by Totally Looks Like:


To answer your question, yes, I was so excited by the similarity that I took a picture of a grape stem. Notice that the right branch is indeed shorter and bigger than the left branch as seen in the bronchioles in humans. Clearly, I have moved beyond mere "nerd."

Tomorrow we move into the abdominal cavity underneath the muscle layers. I'm hoping we don't find something like this:

(This is the scene from Spaceballs because I thought the one from Alien was just a little too PG-13.)

Going through the cadaver is still fairly mindblowing. When I was little, I thought that my body was just magic. I put food in, it scrumbles around in there somewhere, and comes out the other side. I hear my heart beat faster when I'm scared and when I get cut, I bleed. If you had asked me to draw what my "insides" looked like, it probably would have been a huge cavity with teddy grhams and peanut butter sandwhiches at the bottom, one hole for the mouth and one for the "2." This class is systematically de-mystifying my own body. I'm still not sure how I feel about that because I still consider life miraculous.

Week Three into Four- Transition

Due to the new medical school curriculum at Hopkins, last week was kind of a hodgepodge of projects. We did not have time to make a second continuous tone (black and white) illustration, so we just ended up turning our hipbone drawings into illustrations. My illustration highlights the basic anatomy of the human hemipelvis and focuses on the three parts of the hip bone: the ilium, ischium and pubis.


It was a simple project to teach us about leader lines and basic layouts in illustrator. I think it came out pretty textbook/poster-y...so a success! Still strange to think that I drew that...

I much preferred the trip we took on Friday! We went to the Smithsonian Naturalist Center in Leesburg, VA, which is an incredible place (especially for artists and kids)! It's an overflow museum for the Natural History Museum in DC, so there are hundreds of specimens there. The good thing about this place is that you can touch and move the specimens to get a closer look. We took a class trip there to sketch the specimens all day (though I could have stayed and sketched for three days). They even have two polar bears and a bengal tiger. Super (nerd) cool.

These are just a few of my sketches from that day. They are all from taxidermied specimines, except the beetles, of course.

Their avian collection is wonderful.

I've always been fond of beetles. Drawing them. Not in real life. Eww.

I still preferred the birds.

These were just fairly quick gesture sketches, not final pieces. Still very fun.

I suppose I should get back to my notes on the Thorax for tomorrows lecture and dissection. Anatomy will be the hardest class I have ever taken (and probably will ever take). It's time for me to get my old AP History and AP Biology study habits out of the closet, dust them off...

Week Two Recap- Carbon Dust Method

And so, the journey continues. I think I'm finally beginning to find my way around the department, which is both good and bad since I will be taking a break from assigned projects for the next couple of months due to Anatomy! Before that, however, I have to tweak my carbon dust hipbone drawing.

I really enjoy carbon dust as a medium since it's like a combination between drawing and painting. We used chemical grade carbon dust (looks like fine black powder) for brushing on and Wolff's Carbon Pencils for touch ups and finer details. I was partial to the pencil, of course, since I love fine line art.

Without further ado, the process! I took all of my photographs at the end of the day, so each one represents a full day's work.

Day One: Background, background, background.

I used large complexion brushes and a Japanese Hake brush to lay down the background values first with the dust. It was a strange way of painting, since it takes a very long time to build up the correct value. The background alone in this picture probably took 50 or more washes with the brush. This is the most important step because if the value of the background is off, the entire bone and shadow area will also be off. It would still look good, but it would be a mistake that even an undiscerning eye would see as "just off."

Day Two: "sculpting out" the bone

This was probably my favorite working day of this project. Once I laid the shadows in, I went back with a kneaded eraser (And various other erasers. I cannot live without this Stanford Tuff Stuff eraser anymore.) and took out the highlights on the bone and in the background. This was the first time the bone started to really take shape. I call it "sculpting" because it really felt more like I was pulling the bone out from the paper than putting it on top. Philosophical, I know, but it's the kind of thing that makes me super excited. : )


Day Three: Refining

This was a dog day for me. I put much more detail into the area above the acetabulum (the big, dark hole) where there are a bunch of foramina (tiny,little holes) and also refined the blotches in the shadow. This day was all about transitioning from the general to the details. I'd rather not talk about it...


Day Four: Get your magnifying glass

Ok, so I didn't actually use a magnifying glass, but it was all about the details. As my teacher would say, this is the day it stops looking like "drift wood" and begins looking like a bone. This is where I got to use my lovely carbon pencils and Tuff Stuff eraser, my favorites!



Day 5: Critique Day

Here is the critique ready piece matted. I was incredibly nervous, not gonna lie. It's a little nerve wracking having all of the faculty, some of the most established and acclaimed illustrators in the country, looking at and critiquing your work. I survived though, with a much better idea about what I executed well and what I need to tweak (which thankfully isn't a lot!). Oh, in case you're wondering, I took this photo in overhead, florescent light, so it's not as good or dramatic as I want. : ( Still, gives you an idea though!

I just wanted to put this in here because I was thinking about it all week. I've been listening to Pandora radio stations all week (on my free Pandora app, which I love!) while I worked on my bone. By the end of the week, I actually found that I had different musical taste depending on which part of the bone I was working on...it was weird. I couldn't listen to the wrong kind of music or it would totally throw me off. So, here's the bone in terms of working music! Maybe you can tell which musical artist gives me the best inspiration. : )


As you can see, I listened to everything from classical choral ensembles by Eric Whitacre, to hardcore metal band Dragonforce to 50 Cent. So I have an eclectic taste in music...sue me. : ) There may also be some BSB featuring 90's pop in there too...guilty pleasure.

Next week, we will be oriented into the new anatomy building an laboratory. Beginning the last week in August it's goodbye studio, hello anatomy and dissection! But don't think that's the end of my drawings! I get to stick around at the end of class and draw from my cadaver. More to post on that later, I'm sure.