Anatomy and Art

So I recently learned about some very cool things.  First off, there is a site out there that catalogs neurons  http://neuromorpho.org/  It’s great, you can browse them by brain region, by species, by cell type, and pull up and view a vast assortment of known neurons.  So that’s pretty awesome on it’s own.  But I was lucky enough to learn about this site in connection with the work of Nick Woolridge, who has been writing code to make the data found there importable into Cinema 4D or ZBrush.  This is his video on Vimeo explaining the process of using this data in Cinema 4D and where to find his script.

Using the NeuronBuild C4D script from Biomedical Communications on Vimeo.

Some of the larger neurons can bog down the computer, but I had good luck trying it myself, and I’m really excited about having this available.

I’ve had a merchandise link here for a long time now.  At the time that I first created the store, I put a lot of thought and effort into designs and set up a store on Cafe Press.  And early on I sold a few things.  I still have my sliding filament gym bag, and mouse cochlea mouse pad.  But I didn’t really keep up with the store, or promote it over the years.  You don’t make very much from your sales on Cafe Press, so you have to sell a lot before you actually see any money from any of those sales.  But my impression was, that those commissions (as they call them) would stay put and continue to add up if I ever got back to promoting the store again.  So here I am, years later, looking to come back to it, and I find that I have zero dollars waiting for me.  Zero.  Apparently, if you let things sit for a while, Cafe Press has the policy of taking all of your earnings and telling you that you’ve paid it in fees.  They basically have a fee of however much you have with them that you pay in the event that your store sits for an extended period of time.  So, I’ve closed my account with them and I’m not going to work with them anymore myself.  And I wanted to say something here for any artists who might be thinking about starting a store with them.  I may start up another store again somewhere else sometime.  But it’s never been intended as a primary source of income for me, so for me, I’d like to work with a company that can handle the lulls without cleaning out all my earnings.

I can’t believe I didn’t update here, but I did wind up finishing the new painting.  I’m calling it, “She Wades In” and I’ve been really happy with the response I’ve been getting for her.  The canvas has already been sold and shipped off to Oregon, and I am in the process of selling prints now.