Anatomy and Art

a blog by Sara Egner

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2015 AMI Conference

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photo - AMI talk

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending the 2015 Conference for the Association of Medical Illustrators in Cleveland Ohio.  These conferences are always jam packed with information and inspiration.  Lecture topics ranged from groundbreaking science and technology, to illustration and animation technique, to a history lesson in Leonardo DaVinci and all alongside a salon of submissions from students and professionals alike.  I cannot recommend these conferences enough to anyone invested in making a career in medical illustration, animation, or neighboring fields.

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August 9th, 2015 at 7:46 pm

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2013 AMI Conference

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Okay, so the last time I wrote in, it was a race to see how quickly I could get something coherent down before falling asleep.  Let’s see if I can slow down now and try to recap things a little better this time.

**note – A lot of letters that are meant to be printed after people’s names have been left off for the sake of my sanity in trying to get a recap down.  Rest assured we had a lot of degree toting folks out**

My coworker and I arrived in Utah last Tuesday to settle in to our room and be up and ready for an early Wednesday of workshops on ePMV and AutoPACK with Graham Johnson, and co-instructors Fabian de Kok-Mercado, and Merry S. Wang.  We use ePMV all the time at Sapling Learning to explore and illustrate molecules.  It’s a plug-in that works with the major 3D animation programs, and probably works best with Cinema 4D.  It reads pdb files, and when you pull them from the Protein Data Bank, they come chalk full of all kinds of information.  The polio virus molecule image that I posted last time was created using data labeled as 2plv. What was especially cool about this, was that we learned how to pull in a repeated portion of a molecule, undo the auto setting for it to center to origin, and then apply another setting that repeats the biological unit to fill out the entire molecule.

We also got our hands into AutoPACK which I didn’t have previous experience with, but I’m looking forward to exploring further now.  It allows you to pack molecules appropriately into spaces like in blood serum or cytoplasm.  Actually, it lets you pack any objects that you might want organically into any defined space.  It’s a cool trick, and one that I’m sure will come in handy.

We also had the big salon opening that night.  There were walls full of fantastic pieces, as well as those that needed tables, there were interactives, animations, all sorts of awesome.  I had “Translation” showing that I made last year with Sapling Learning.

The next day started up early with the mentor breakfast.  I haven’t participated on either end of the mentor program as of yet, but it seems like a nice idea.  Over breakfast, a man named David mentioned doing a little model sculpting on the side and he told me about this stuff, CX5 that sounds really cool.  I may have heard of it once before, but I’ve definitely never played with it.  I think I want to.

We then caught Dr. Roberta Ness‘s talk on Innovation.  She spoke a lot about frames, meaning expectations or what is conceivable from a particular mindset.  She spoke about the power of metaphors, and the importance of frame breaking.  And she reported that innovation and creativity has been dwindling in America.  And told us that creativity can be taught.  It was a good talk, and one that I have called pieces of to memory on several occasions since.

Then Jens Krüger spoke to us about 3D data visualization rendering systems that he has been working on.  I’m not sure I really got the full potential of everything he was showing us, but there were some really nice representations he had to show.  Seemed like he kept coming back to the notion of looking for more problems for all of these solutions they were developing. I think that they will do just fine finding ways to implement their technology.

We had the big business luncheon that day, and afterwards Chris Converse spoke about the future of web animation.  He showed us some fun examples of html5 simple interactives and spoke a bit about Adobe’s Edge Animate.  It is on my list of things to do, to explore that particular software, so the little tour was much appreciated.

After that I caught Tim Butler’s talk on past and present mobile technology.  Having grown up along side the advent of mobile phones, it was interesting going through their history, and I might someday have to make my own personal timeline of communication technology.  I’ve pretty well gone from corded phones and pen pals to Facebook, blogging, and a smart phone with a whole lot of steps in between, but even more steps outright missed, as Tim’s lecture really pointed out.

I also attended a workshop on improving one’s posture and work habits for healthier working with Esther Smith.  We went over some stretches and work station arrangements.  She recommended finding a MacKensie physical therapist to anyone looking for someone to work with them on improving their own work set up and personal habits.

Friday morning started with a talk from medical illustrator, Dr. Carlos Machado.  His work was beautiful.  And the only note I took, was reminding myself to never take up gouache.  Seriously, that stuff sounds like such a pain to work with.  But man, Dr. Machado has really mastered the art. The way he paints skin, just blew me away.

Next we had Andrew Hessel come out and talk about genetics, nanotechnology, bacteria, synthetic virology, and all kinds of teeny tiny awesome that could easily be imagined turning creepy, but his enthusiasm was contagious!  We learned about Project Cyborg, and iPhone controlled roaches, and how Kickstarter is becoming a good funding platform for scientific innovation.  He also brought up the new wave of kids working with Autodesk software, namely 123D.  I don’t know how robust the software they’re using is, but I can’t help but think that those kids will have such a great edge on understanding how to communicate in software, and understanding the inherent usefulness of geometry and physics as they go through their early math and science classes.

Peleg Top was next on the stage to talk about the importance of marketing and how marketing is more than just advertizing.  At the time, I didn’t feel like I was that in to all the marketing fervor, but while he was talking I scribbled down a couple of good ideas, so maybe it was a more effective talk than I’d realized.  One was for Sapling Learning, and the other was a website design strategy for selling my paintings online.  Here’s hoping I can follow up on them.

After lunch, we reconvened to hear Brian Dunham discuss his strategy for improving the surgical atlas.  He was bringing work to a digital format, and emphasizing more of the routine surgical steps that accompany the surgical cuts and maneuvers themselves.  It sounded like he was doing good work.

And the next one I’m still pretty excited about.  Brandon Pletsch, who I had met earlier and gotten a little mini view on what he would talk about, and Adam Pellerite spoke to us about Autodesk’s 123D Catch application.  It’s a free app for the iPhone, or a desktop app if you use a PC.  It lets you take a bunch of photos of something, or someone holding very still, and the software weaves the images together ala stereophotogrammetry to create a 3D image that you can look at from different views, and even bring in to your 3D software as an obj file with a photorealistic texture map.  So far I’ve managed to capture a moderately good 3D image of my co-worker Alex but I’m not sure if she’d want me to post that attempt on the internet, so I’ll just snag the shared image of this guy from the website to give you an idea.

They were using it mostly for capturing dissections.  I can only imagine having something like that to study from when you’re trying to memorize the spacial relationships in anatomy.  And I am excited about finding ways to use this one in future endeavors!

After that I caught Tonya Hines (our new AMI president)’s talk on Open Access publishing and contract dilemmas.  After so much attention at work lately on the various kinds of licenses out there, this was especially interesting.  I honestly had no idea just how varied people’s perceptions were on what the expression “commercial use” means.  I may have even submitted my animation to the salon incorrectly, I was so convinced that anything that was sold was commercial.  But apparently a lot of people take more the advertizing definition of commercial when deciding what is or isn’t a commercial use.  And people put out creative commons licenses without realizing just how varied that label is.  I’ve always found contracts and permissions to be difficult terrain, but this talk definitely made me take note of a couple pit falls I hadn’t yet thought of.

That night we had the awards banquet.  My animation didn’t take any awards this time, but one of my teachers from grad school, John Daugherty, was recognized for his long time legacy of fantastic work.  I’m glad that I got to see that.  I learned a lot from him in school.  He’s pretty much the guy in charge over at my old biomedical visualization department as I understand it now.  Go John!

Then Saturday morning, people were thrown to find themselves eating breakfast to Fredric Hellman’s talk on criminology and solving violent crimes.  I heard a number of people lament not having been ready for some of those photographs over their morning coffee and bagel.  But he did present an interesting area where medical illustrators could conceivably go and be of value.  It was also interesting to hear a little about how these violent murder cases are worked out.

Christine Young then delivered the presidential address, and we were then off to the tech showcase.  These are generally a fun opportunity to walk around and check out all different sorts of expertise.  I know I learned a little about Zbrush, picked up a few C4D tips, was introduced to VMD, but I was probably most excited about the guy making guitars using autocad software and a CNC milling machine in his basement.  I mean come on, that’s just awesome.  It also plays into my dream of just being able to just make everything I need rather than getting stuck in so many shopping loops as seems to so often happen.

The event ended in a final speech from Carl Zimmer, who has some really interesting work on evolution and all kinds of crazy creatures.

After his talk, the AMI presidential gavel was passed from Christine Young to Tonya Hines.  And then a good portion of the conference attendees landed in the hotel bar to unwind a touch after such an educationally packed event.

 

 

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July 27th, 2013 at 1:52 am

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from the 2013 AMI Conference

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Enjoying Salt Lake City, Utah for the 2013 AMI Conference.  We’re only 2 days in so far, but I’ve already learned a lot and met a lot of people.  Yesterday, my coworker Alex and I attended workshops for the epmv (embedded python molecular viewer) and auto pack plug-ins.  Graham Johnson was leading the workshops and we learned a lot about the capability of pdb files, and how to work with selections, we explored a lot of the hierarchy within the way molecules are expressed coming through that program and how to manipulate those settings, how to work with repeating biological units in molecules, and it was really my first foray into using auto-pack at all.  I kind of liked my polio virus molecule render.

And then today we heard a variety of speakers, starting with a talk on innovation by Dr. Roberta Ness, new manners of data visualization, and the future of web animation and even a talk on good healthy working posture and habits.

I am on the verge of falling asleep here, otherwise I’d say a little more about it all.  These medical illustrators seem to get up early though, so I’ll have to try and say some more about it all later.

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July 19th, 2013 at 1:17 am

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AMI Upcoming

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And as of tomorrow, I’m off to the AMI conference in Utah.  I leave my fellow local ladies to storm the capitol for healthcare rights without me.  And I’m off to learn from epmv’s creator Graham Johnson about the awesome workings of that plug-in and how I can get the most out of my molecules in Cinema 4D, and pick up all kinds of other nuggets of awesome along the way.  Who knows, I may even manage to pick up an award for the Translation animation!  Woot!

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July 15th, 2013 at 8:07 pm

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Award Certificate

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Hey, look what came in the mail today…

They even included a shiny red ribbon in the package too.

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November 19th, 2011 at 3:30 pm

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AMI’s 66th Annual Conference in Baltimore

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So I started to write a bit about the conference a few days back, while I was still in Baltimore.  Now that I’m home, I wanted to say a little more about the experience.  First of all, the event was held in a beautiful hotel, the Grand Tremont in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.  This is a quick shot I snapped with my laptop during one of the lectures.

And we saw most of the big lectures from that room.  That is where Linda Wilson-Pauwels gave her presidential address, encouraging participation and volunteerism within the AMI.  And directly after followed Juan Velasco from National Geographic.  I knew that National Geographic had a well deserved reputation for it’s imagery, but I really had no idea the level of work they were putting into keeping up that reputation.  Their process was fascinating to hear about.  In particular, I was surprised to learn that so many of their images start with the creation of a physical 3D form.  I just don’t know of anyone else doing that as part of their process toward their 2D images.

We also got a talk from animator Drew Berry that day.  His work is really some of the best out there  in the world of biomedical animation.  I’m just going to put up this piece of his work on malaria that’s up on YouTube here, in case you’re interested…

 

 

He’s also done some fantastic work with DNA, which looks like it is getting more widespread recognition and will be making it’s way into an experimental music video. One can’t help but wonder what getting these sorts of images into public consciousness does for mass understanding of how our bodies work. It seems like at least on some small level, even if unstudied, it would lend to some innate level of understanding.

We then broke into the business lunch, and further workshops for the day. The business lunch focused a lot on re-branding of the AMI as an organization. As a student member, I’m only allowed to listen in, and not vote on any of that, but it will be interesting to see where these efforts take us.

Over the course of the conference, I couldn’t help but be inspired by the talks that people were giving and think about things I might like to try when I got home. I definitely intend to do a little work with Zbrush and Mudbox while I still have student access to the Lynda.com tutorials. And I absolutely need to download the Molecular Maya plug in and start working with that. The creator, Gaël McGill was one of the speakers at the conference as well, and I very much enjoyed meeting him. I also found myself wondering if I wouldn’t perhaps be in a good position to give a talk about working with physical 3D forms and digital 3D forms and how knowledge in each area can benefit the other. And I found myself inspired to create a web forum for anaplastology patients and anaplastologists to share information and anecdotes with each other while listening to a talk about community building and branding by Katherine Jones of Milkshake Media which was behind the Livestrong campaign for the Lance Armstrong foundation. And it is most definitely time to re-cut my 3D Graphics and Animation Demo Reel to include both the blood vessel fly through animation and my now award winning animation on the BSSO and Osseous Genioplasty. I also need to add that award to my resume and well, I checked with my adviser and there isn’t anything I need to wait for before listing myself as a graduate of UIC’s program rather than a student seeking said degree, so that’s a fairly big change in the resume to make.

Yup, so plenty to do, and for starters, I finally got around to polishing up a still frame from my blood vessel animation to show as just an illustration. Here that is…

It’s been a great trip, and now it’s good to be home.

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July 28th, 2011 at 1:18 pm

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66th Annual AMI Conference

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Hello Readers!  I am writing this time from the basement of a lovely little youth hostel in Baltimore, Oregon.  Yesterday wrapped up the final day of the 66th annual conference of the Association of Medical Illustrators.  As usual there were lots of ideas floating around, and a real wealth of knowledge spread across the attendees.  I have about a million things I’m excited to get back and try now, *and* I had the added good fortune of getting an award of merit for the new animation!

Thank you AMI for another wonderful opportunity, and I’m excited to be here another couple days and get to learn a little more about Johns Hopkins before I head back to Chicago.

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July 24th, 2011 at 7:25 pm

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And On Into The Next Chapter

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Well, I am officially one week into being finished with my graduate work.  Well, I suppose that’s a very technical statement, as there are plenty of things for me to keep going with, but as far as my school is concerned, I am done.  And I must say it’s been a fine week.

And now, it’s time to pack up and get my things together for the annual AMI conference.  This time it is happening in Baltimore.  And I am particularly excited to be able to get a look at Johns Hopkins while I’m out there, specifically their anaplastology clinic.

I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to attend such a conference with such perfect timing after finishing up school.  I think this will be the perfect move to get my head into the task of finding a career, after so much time as a student again.  And it will be nice, getting to meet and talk with people without the pressures of academic assignments looming overhead.

In short, YAY!

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July 19th, 2011 at 1:19 pm

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Movie Posters for a 3 Minute Animation

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Well, it’s official.  I just submitted the new animation to the AMI for consideration at this summer’s conference.  I still haven’t uploaded it for public viewing yet, but that will come soon.  I had to trim a bit to get the piece within the AMI’s three minute time limit.  I’ll have to decide if I really like those changes or if I want to put any of that back for myself when I am not submitting under that set of rules.  That’s not a decision I have to make tonight though.

Rather, I just spent the last several hours getting all my graphics together for submission alongside the animation itself.  That was my little thumbnail image at the beginning of the post up there.  And then I have the web display image.

And lastly, one that’s more of a poster for the whole thing.

It won’t be long before I’m in Baltimore, meeting up with so many medical illustrators, and all of this will be a finished project.  I’ll even have presented for my graduation by then.  It’s all wrapping up here.

Anyway, I’ll publish the animation itself soon.  In the meantime, phew!

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June 17th, 2011 at 4:04 am

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AMI Certificate

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Hey, lookie what I got in the mail 🙂

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September 2nd, 2010 at 10:44 pm

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