Sketching

These are some of the sketches. I'm trying to resolve how the slime mold would develop. Concentrating on shapes, also having texturing in mind.


A question, can artists be considered an audience?
Because that's what I'm thinking when I'm doing this project, as if it's for a competition where you are given scientific process and asked to make it graphically/stylistically appealing.

Slime molds...

Today I read a good new, that we can look to other types of slime molds ( myxomycetes, protostelids, not only dyctiostelids) so I had a look around.

What i found was a variety of them. One might look alien to another. There's a variety of shapes and textures as well as colours.

One interesting fact, Hieronymus Boch in his Garden of earthly Delights depicted 22 different slime molds ( try to find it!)

Also I looked at concept art of others. But just to see whats out there, not relating it with my work.

The Ways to Interpret Human Body: Fantastic Voyage, Nucleus, Futurama

At the time of the previous project (Unit 5: Animation), I've come across Nucleus company's animation and was just blown away, by the fascinating interpretation of biological processes they made.

Briefly about the company, Nucleus Medical Media is a U.S. business that creates and licenses medical illustrations and animations.
To add more, the company welcomes students showing their own interpretations and transcriptions of biological projects:
For a free proposal on your next medical project of any size, contact the company with the largest staff of graduate-degreed medical animators in the world. (for more information as well as for many more other animations: http://catalog.nucleusinc.com/nucleusindex.php?)






The animations try to convey scientific data as accurately as possible.
It might be said the audiences might vary from relatively young pupils to scientist's themselves. The process they are showing is never overwhelmed with environmental details, if it doesn;t contribute to the explanation ( like when they show spline structure) or oppositely, we see tiniest dusts and micro particles if that's taking a part in the scenario.

Also it seems that the artistic side isn't forgotten. To name in particular, lighting of the scenes or composition.

Another interesting aspect is the use of music and how it doesn't distract from the scientific side of the process, oppositely makes it more appealing to watch.

The way Company represents the scientific data, in a way, gives the cinematic qualities.

This is particularly true in Fantastic Voyage (Dir. Richard Fleischer, 1966).






How human body could look from inside were successfully interpreted by combining both, the scientific and cinematic sides. As there was written in the beginning of the film, it is hugely indebted to scientists' help.
the other side came from artist's mastery: the lighting, the use of colour as well as textures were impressive and believable.

Also, not to forget the soundtrack and sound effects.

Particular sound effects were chosen for different spaces of inside of human body.
For instance if the scientist ship was getting closer to the hart we'd be hear low frequencies.

But not always sound effects were heard. Sometimes it was mainly music. It depended from the story (where the sound had to be understood as a warning, no music covered it)

The film was awarded for Best Color Art Direction, Special Visual Effects and nominated for Best Color Cinematography, Editing, Sound Effects .
The use of these techniques made the transcription an exciting experience to see.

Other example how the human body was interpreted in mass media could be FUTURAMA ( season 3, episode 4)





Fry's ( one of the main character) body was interpreted as a factory, where worms and bacterias were the employees, that tried to improve his physical data.

The bacterias were given personifications of people . For example, there were lasy bacteria-workers or the king-bacteria responsible for the coherence in the system.

Unit 6: Commission.

The last unit of the year asks us to respond to a brief in a professional manner. We are given a task to make a 2 minute long animation of one biological process. The animation should transcribe the complex scenario accurately as well as dynamically. It has to be targeted to a specific audience so its asked to explore the ways how to convey scientific data engagingly to different audiences.



In other words (those of the brief), we are asked to demonstrate the ability to interpret, transcribe and represent complex ideas in engaging and dynamic ways.



Peter Klappa - biologist from the University of Kent, introduced the four scenarios: How the cell developed, other three were the life of: slime mold; mushroom, fern.




After choosing one scenario and the target-audience, then goes the research

of the topic ant the market.