Many of the medical animation studios are located here in the United States. That’s because demand for medical animation is higher here than anywhere else in the world. We can thank the big pharmaceutical companies and their deep pockets for that.
But today Street Anatomy goes across the pond to the UK to interview the owner and founder of the lead medical animation studio, Medi-Mation. I first heard of Medi-Mation after reading that they were chosen for the monumental task of re-doing Dorling Kindersley’s famous Human Body Book using 3D illustration. The book is gorgeous, well designed and gives a fantastic overview of the structure, function and disorders of the human body. Read about the process of creating the 900+ illustrations and animations here at Digital Arts.
In this interview Rajeev answers my questions about his business, how it came to be, the state of the medical animation industry, and gives tips to those interested in becoming medical animators.
Medi-Mation essential info Owner: Rajeev Doshi Specialties: Medical animation and illustration Location: London, UK
Can you give a brief synopsis of your background prior to Medi-Mation?
I completed a PhD in Cancer Gene Therapy before I realized that I would only ever be a mediocre scientist. A friend of mine had just opened an animation school in New York (www.3Dmirage.com) so he agreed to train me if I gave him a hand with the running of the business. Thus ensued an intensive 3 months whilst I filled my brain with all things 3D it was almost like a 3 month cramming session!
Anyway, I returned to the UK and eventually found a position to set up the 3D animation department for a medical agency. I subsequently ran that for 6 years before getting itchy feet, leaving to set-up Medi-Mation in April 2006.
How long have you had your business?
Just over 1 year
How many employees do you have?
3 including myself
What type of computer programs and equipment does your company use?
All powerful PCs (Dual core, 500Mb graphics cards, 22 monitors!)
Software wise we use 3D Studio Max, Brazil for rendering, Combustion and After Effects for compositing.
Do you incorporate real human data sets (e.g. MRI and CT scans) when building 3D models?
Our core anatomy model sets are based on those from Zygote (www.3Dscience.com) and which we’ve upgraded in-house. They developed some of the original models using real human data sets I believe. However one very interesting technology is a plugin for Lightwave called Volumedic it allows proper 3D manipulation of real human data sets and which we have played with, the possibilities are huge for this!
Medical animations are among the most difficult animations to produce.
Many beautifully rendered medical animations have been created in recent years with the evolving technology able to produce them. While these animations are entertaining and inspiring to look at, many fail to actually educate because they don’t tell an educational story. This becomes especially important when considering something completely conceptual, like cellular animation. An effective cellular animation engages the viewer, tells them exactly what is happening, and leaves them with a better understanding of a certain cellular process.
In fact, the most in demand medical animations are cellular animations and method of action animations (MOAs). Pharmaceutical companies have found the power of medical animations for marketing, educating physicians and patients, and of course selling their drugs. So who do the top pharmaceutical companies turn to when they need top notch medical animations? They go to Hurd Studios.
The president of Hurd Studios, Jane Hurd, co-founded her medical animation firm in 1998. Located right on Fifth Avenue in New York, her firm has quickly grown to become one of the most highly respected firms in medical animation. They received two Awards of Excellence and a Silver Award from the RX Club, have been featured in Fortune Small Business Magazine and on CNN, and have created animations for all of the top-ten pharmaceutical companies as well as PBS and WebMD.
No matter who the audience is, Hurd Studios creates aesthetic, simple, effective, and above all educational medical animations. Just take a look at this animation on how cranberry juice prevents urinary tract infections (UTIs).
Here are some more samples of their work.
And for those of you interested in going into medical illustration/animation, be sure to know the name Hurd Studios.
Well it has finally arrived. The full length version of XVIVO’s Inner Life of a Cell is available to watch, complete with narration and labels. It’s no longer just a beautiful piece of animation, but a complete educational molecular animation.
Take a look at the shorter, more dramatic, version here.
Most of the professional and young future medical illustrators that I know are very fun, quirky, special people. Since we usually have to research and illustrate very serious topics, any chance to do something creative and funny is a nice break.
Just watch this animation by Hurd Studios called the “Adventures of Bob and Sam,” two young eager British sperm.
New York based Hurd Studios is one of the top and most respected medical visualization agencies out there, so it’s great to see an animation like this come from them.
I had done a post a while back about John Liebler, the lead animator at XVIVO, who created the Inner Life of the Cell for Harvard University. Well here is an interview with David Bolinsky, the founder of XVIVO, giving us an update on what’s come about since the successful release of Inner Life of the Cell.
By Kim Zetter|
02:00 AM Mar, 14, 2007Who would have thought the inner workings of a white blood cell could be visually stunning? For those who fell asleep during high school biology classes, David Bolinsky’s presentation at the TED conference was a revelation.
Bolinsky, former lead medical illustrator at Yale, screened a three-minute version of a computer-generated film, The Inner Life of the Cell, that he and colleagues at his company Xvivo created for Harvard’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology.
The film animation, also shown at Siggraph last summer, has caused quite a stir, leading museums, universities and even Hollywood’s Wachowski brothers to come calling. Xvivo recently created all the animation in a one-hour pilot for the new PBS science show 22nd Century and parts of the company’s cell film may be used in a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Bolinsky, who was two years into a medical degree when he launched his first illustration company in 1983, has long wanted to use computers to animate science but says the technology only recently caught up with his vision. He spoke with Wired News about the discovery process.
Wired News: Warner Bros. contacted you, right?
David Bolinsky: A couple of days before TED we got a call from Warner Bros. Pictures. Apparently the Wachowski brothers, the guys who did The Matrix, are doing a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and they had come across our animation and they wanted to know if we’d be interested in re-rendering it at film resolution so it could be included in some way as (part) of the special effects they’re planning for the movie. So right now their lawyers are talking with the Harvard lawyers about the possibility of this. (Press reports say the Wachowski brothers, though not directors of the film, have been brought in to re-work the film’s ending.)
WN: So this entire 8.5-minute film depicts what’s going on inside one white blood cell?
Bolinsky: Yes. We needed to have a starting point. Something small enough so we could actually accomplish it and show it around and get feedback from the academic community — so we could see if it was a worthwhile direction and use it as a teaser to get funding so we could really do a proper job on this subject. So we decided on a cellular-motility theme and what happens to a white blood cell patrolling the capillary when there’s an inflammation outside the capillary.
WN: How did Inner Life of the Cell come about?
Bolinsky: (We) wanted to make something that would give people a strong sense of a cell — not as a list of topics to be studied, not as a compendium of tables and graphs and charts, (but) as a bustling, immensely purposeful metropolis populated very, very densely by these micro machines that do a huge amount of work at great speed and great precision and purposefulness.
WN: How did people outside Harvard learn about it?
Bolinsky: We unleashed it on the world for the first time by entering it … in Siggraph’s (contest for) the best animations of the year. Special effects from Pixar and Sony pictures and all the large Hollywood companies that make fancy commercials are entered.
Medi-Mation essential info
