It’s an interesting read and I’m glad that Jellyfish Pictures has been so willing to share their techniques with the CGI community. Like I’ve said many times before, they’re definitely setting the standard high for medical animation.
Here are the 10 steps. Go to the article to read more details on each.
Step 1: Start with Good Reference Images
Step 2: Block Out Your Storyboard with Realistic Camera Motion and Angles
Step 3: Generate Flexible Organic and Accurate Models
Step 4: Use Cloth in XSI to Add Great Secondary Motion to Organs and Flesh
Step 5: Use “Handheld” Camera Motion to Block Out Your Camera Moves
Step 6: Paint Detailed Hi-Res Texture Maps from Real Shot References
Step 7: Generate Several Layers and Passes to Composite
Step 8: Shoot Real Elements You Can Mix with the 3D
Step 9: Mix and Double Up Passes to Help Achieve a “Wet Feel”Step 10: Use Lots of Blur and Depth of Field and Keep Your Colors Real
Jellyfish Pictures, an independent visual effects, animation and motion graphics studio based in London, has been raking in the awards for their groundbreaking visual effects on the BBC’s “Fight for Life.” The 6-part series detailed the dramatic story of how the human body triumphs in crisis, told from both the inside and the outside.
So far, the prestigious awards given to Jellyfish include:
Winner of the Visual Effects Society Award for outstanding visual effects in a broadcast series Winner of the 2007 Royal Television Society Award for best digital effects Winner of the New York Festival Gold medal for outstanding special effects
Phil Dobree, director at Jellyfish, accepted the most recent VES award on February 10th, at the Kodak Theater Ballroom in Hollywood at the Visual Effects Society Awards hosted in honor of Steven Spielberg.
Jellyfish faced a monumental task to create the photo real body interior shots of organs and babies, a believable microscopic world, and to seamlessly integrate the special x-ray “trauma vision” with real video.
Jellyfish faced a monumental task to overcome four different challenges when completing the animated shots for “Fight for Life.” First, they had to create photo real internal organ shots. This included buying and tweaking 3D models, studying and photographing pig hearts and livers, and developing new animation techniques for getting realistic movement.
Second, they had to create a believable microscopic world. By far one of the best microscopic animated worlds I’ve seen to date. What made the shots so effective were the added splats to the camera lenses, floating particles, and condensation. Everything combined effectively to make it feel as if you were submerged in the microscopic world.
Next, they needed to create the special x-ray “trauma vision” that had to be incorporated into live action shots of real patients and doctors. This required having 3D body models of all shapes, sizes, ethnicities and ages.
And finally, one of the most challenging parts of the entire production was creating a realistic baby.
Ultimately, Phil says that
“the end result is really the marriage of subtle and believable animation, good texture painting, and solid shader construction, believable yet well designed lighting, and again creative compositing of the 3D ingredients.”
“Fight for Life” has certainly pushed the envelope in terms of what medical animation can accomplish. Jellyfish Pictures looks to do more projects for the medical and pharmaceutical industry and I have no doubt that we’ll be seeing more incredible and limit pushing work from them in the future.
Harpo Studios approached Nucleus Medical Art for their animation of the effects of smoking. It’s a straightforward visualization of the progressive destruction of the alveolar sacs leading to emphysema.
Nucleus is credited for making the world’s most viewed medical animation on the Internet. They have a very clear and simple style that’s perfect for diverse audiences. It’s no wonder Oprah approached them for their animation. Congratulations Nucleus!
Here’s a great demo reel I recently came across by freelance medical animator, Mark Mazaitis. Be sure to turn on the sound and listen to the music on this one.
Visualizing childbirth has never been so exciting. Nucleus Medical Art, a medical illustration, animation and interactive media company, created this beautiful animation, which has quickly become the most popular medical animation on YouTube. Within the first day of being posted it received over 10,000 views. Since then it has been viewed over 670,000 times on YouTube and over 1,500,000 times on the company’s web site in the past year alone.
So what makes this animation so popular? Its simplicity and gracefulness. It focuses solely on the baby, the uterus, and the spine. And yet, you still get a sense of the struggle, the inherent pain, and the overall complexity of childbirth. I just can’t get broken down any further.
I asked the CEO and Co-Founder of Nucleus Medical Art, Ron Collins, if the popularity of the animation on YouTube has resulted in any direct business or if it has been a worthwhile marketing tool.
He says, “We upload animations to YouTube as part of an overall strategy of improving our web presence. We’ve tracked over 2,000 clickthroughs from our YouTube animations since we put them up six months ago, and at least one direct inquiry that led to a licensing deal. When you consider we’ve had over 1,000,000 total views of our animations, that’s only 2/10th of 1 percent.
Even though virtually all of the traffic has been from non-customers, there is a benefit to having a link back to our home page, and there might be a benefit to showing customers the number of views the medical animations garner on YouTube as a way to let clients see how intrinsically popular the animations are.”
Ron brings up a great point by mentioning that he uses the number of views as evidence of popularity when showing clients. If the general public on the web finds your animation interesting, you can be sure that your client’s audience will also find it interesting.
Placing your medical animation or demo reel on such huge social sites like YouTube opens it up to critique by the whole world. It sounds a bit daunting, but with so few medical animations present on these sites, you can be sure it will be viewed.
Hopefully there will be a YouTube-like site dedicated to medical animation someday. Maybe that will be my next project. Just a thought!
