A couple of weeks ago, I happened to exchange messages with one of my friends and was invited to participate in a drawing blog, Tablet Wars.
One of my reasons for joining was to practice sketching and keep my creative juices going, but of course I also joined because I knew it would be a lot of fun. I’ve been having a blast seeing everyone’s creativity and drawing styles.
Every week, one person chooses a topic for all of us to draw, while another person chooses a keyword we have to follow. For example, the topic for this week was “Cataclysm” with the keyword “Kawaii”.
I thought I would have more time to blog once school was over for the semester but I guess this thing called “moving”, “unpacking” and “organizing” takes up just as much time!
But in the chaos that is my life, I had to take a break to blog about today’s Google Home page.
www.google.com
I finding myself more productive in playing the Pac-Man game than unpacking
I also am sporting my Pac-Man earrings in honor of its 30 years (one of the two different pairs of Pac-Man earrings that I own)
As a final assignment for my Computer Visualization class, I have to design my first portfolio website.I’ll admit, I find the actual “putting” the site together daunting but I’m enjoying the research stage!
The first part of the research is finding inspiration. I realized that what I really liked about many sites was color, so for this blog post, here’s a little something about the color research I’ve done so far.
In 2003, graphic artist Tony Quan, aka Temptone, was diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
The disease causes cells in the brain and spinal cord to die, first affecting voluntary muscle cells and then involuntary cells. The symptoms of ALS start with slight twitching of the limbs, because motor neurons are dying, and then move into serious symptoms of paralysis.
For an artist, the inability to communicate through their work is devastating but for Tony Quan, he is going beyond the use of hands to draw.
Recently, my class was given a unique drawing assignment. We were to illustrate an anomalous left hepatic vein (from the liver) going straight into the right aorta, rather than the usual path into the inferior vena cava.
It was a hard assignment because for one, we were only given a journal article for reference of what the anomaly would look like, and two, this anomaly occurs on the posterior portion of the liver and there are really no good visual resources with that view.
Many of us were frustrated, some researched this project out for weeks and many, like me, stayed up late into the night making final sketches.
Despite the hardships and lack of sleep, I was really impressed by what my classmates created and the research they put into making an accurate image.
So as a tribute to their awesome work, check out their blog posts about the assignment!
Oh yeah, and here is mine (w/out labels).
I decided to take a bit of a different path with my drawing by creating a transparency to show how drainage changed inside the liver.
Pretty neat Styrofoam sculpture huh?
Truth is, it’s not Styrofoam but a marble sculpture created by Fabio Viale . The Italian artist exhibits such marble pieces as skulls, tattoo-sporting bodies, tires and a boat. Yes a marble boat. Pretty hott if I do say so myself.
(As well as his accuracy in depicting the human body)
After a few crazy weeks, I’m getting back into my old routine, so that means a blog update!
From October 22-23, UIC’s Biomedical Visualization department hosted the Frank Armitage lecture series.
The lecture series began in 2006 to honor the work of Frank Armitage and other great visualizers.
The keynote speaker for this year was David Bolinsky, co-founder of XVIVO, a 3D animation company.
Before David spoke, there were 2 other speakers.
The first was Noah Lowenthal of Abelson-Taylor, who gave advice to the students about the working field & spoke about his recent project for Kapidex medication. The project that he worked on looked fantastic & I found it interesting how his team used a Microsoft Surface computer.
Due to some personal reasons, I was really sad that I had to miss out on the second speaker, an Emmi representative. Emmi is a new interactive tool in patient engagement. The online program educates patients on the procedure they are about to receive, asks them questions and allows patients to flag their worries and ask different questions. It has a very friendly user-interface and the graphics are fun.
It almost made me want to go in for surgery, just so I could use the program, I mean…
The last speaker of the day was David Bolinsky. A Michigan State University College of Medicine graduate (!), he happened to stumble into the field of medical illustration while paying for his education. After some hardships surrounding his work at MSU, he fully immersed himself into medical illustration and was one of the first artists to use a computer to do artwork. He strongly conveyed to the young members of the audience not to give up on something because others think your idea is ridiculous, for others thought that he was crazy for thinking that a computer could help him create art pieces.
He and his team at XVIVO create science stories because they believe that cell & molecular biology can be taught better. The group is serious about the research into a project, and will only take some artistic licenses if necessary. The production team mainly uses XSI animator, but they use a variety of other programs as well. The team creates their own music and voice-overs.
I was really amazed at his presentation and his company. Even now as I try to figure out what I would like to specialize in within medical visualization, I have a strong leaning towards 3D-animation because of him and his work. His determination and passion for his work and the excellent quality of his work is something that I admire and find inspiring.
Here’s one of XVIVO’s animations, The Inner Life of the Cell. You can also view it on XVIVO’s website.
Funny enough, when I was in my Cell & Molecular Biology class two years ago, my professor showed us this video.
