Merry Christmas! and Animation
Merry Christmas!
Here’s a short animation to inspire some holiday cheer, made in cinema 4D.
Merry Christmas, 2009 from Michelle Reinke on Vimeo.
Inner Ear in 3D
I rendered out the vestibulocochlear model and threw it into VRWorx, a simple little program that doesn’t offer the best interactive features, but is great for simply displaying a model or virtual scene.
Gow-Gates Nerve Block Animation
Inspirational Image Friday: multimedia presentation by Frans Lanting
Anyone’s work that involves “visualizing the story of life” has me hooked. Below is the Ted Talk presentation/ slideshow of Frans Lanting: “A Journey Through Time.” This multimedia work that premiered in 2006 involves great photography, dialogue/poetry, and music by Philip Glass, and aims to tell the story of life. It starts from the ancient alien-like world of earth and moves forward, successfully conveying the beauty of evolution and humanity’s place in it.
Unlike other largely inspirational visual & scientific works, this one succeeds in being nearly as informative as it is beautiful. Useful facts are cited throughout the journey, and there’s a great visualization tool of the photographs and their context in evolution on the www.lifethroughtime.com website.
Other Resources:
LIFE: A Journey Through Time – this includes a preview of the slideshow, and a unique interactive viewing method of the photographs in situ with their place in evolution.
AlloSphere visualization
There’s a Ted talk that describes the UC Santa Barbara based AlloSphere, an impressively immersive space for viewing scientific data. This 3 story sphere can hold about 20 researchers, all standing on a bridge running through the middle of this structure. It is connected to a super computer, and projects many data types, including visual sound mapping.
As one commentor put, X-men?
Some nice pieces of imagery are shown, but I’m curious what exactly they’re showing (and not showing) in the brain project. The cortex is displayed as an abstract cavernous space, but nature abhors a vacuum. The video said it was based on fMRI data, but is the positive space showing specific cell types, water density, etc? Or is it largely sound mapping? Maybe we’re getting a bat’s eye view of these structures.
Here’s a follow up interview from this speedy presentation: http://blog.ted.com/2009/04/allosphere_interview.php
The making of anatomical models
Check out this short Discovery Channel How It’s Made clip about anatomical models! The material process is pretty interesting, although I’m not sure I envy the artist that traces veins, arteries, and nerves all day long.
via Bioephemera, Morbid Anatomy
see also this interesting Revealed blog post about anatomical models.
World Builder – tasteful short CGI film
There’s a wonderful short film by Bruce Branit that has recently been posted online. It does a good job in showing both what can tastefully be done with CGI effects now, and in showing what may be the future of design software. On a more medically related note, it also touches on what may come of therapy.
Branit’s company website: branit|vfx
World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.
via Lines and Colors
Biological Architecture
Here are 2 examples of some surprising and impressive biological architecture, the ants at least put some human structures to shame.
Paula Scher on Design
“In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few.”
-Zen master Shunryu Suzuki
Paula Scher has a new video on Ted.com; she discusses the differences between serious design and solemn design. Serious is better, as she defines it – it’s when you’re not afraid to break rules and explore, largely because you don’t know any better anyways. Solemn design is when something becomes so familiar it’s an exercise, or so popular that it’s originality and playfulness is gone. Solemn happens when work becomes work, more a chore than a delight. This designer’s done some great (serious) work – it’s a video worth the watch.