Archive for the ‘skull’ tag
New Skull
I recently finished up one of my old little skulls. I still haven’t started reproducing any of these little guys yet, but a buyer contacted me not long ago for the originals I have around so far, so that’s encouraging to get back into it. I wound up baking this last one completely black, but that just makes it strong. Hopefully I haven’t lost too much detail in the coloring. I think that getting back to these is really good practice for me while I’m out of the clinic. Working in polymer clay is very different than working in wax, but I think that any kind of working in shape and form like this is good practice for me.
Gonna polish this little guy up a touch with some denim or something and I’ve got a bundle of skulls to send off to someone 🙂
Skull Pie
Tonight I went to a potluck, and one of our hosts made an apple pie with skulls on it. Yeah. I just had to post a picture here. Thank you, Ben.
Back to Sculpey
I’ve been playing with Super Sculpey again. This week I got back in to skulls. I hadn’t done that in a while. This was my first attempt at recreating the various foramen underneath, and still keeping a mandible in place. It didn’t come out perfectly, but I’m pretty sure that I could get it the next time now.
I still need to make one perfect one, so that I can recreate them in a mold and have my very own basket of pocket skulls. I still think it’s the perfect study aide for students trying to learn the foramen. When you’re a student, you learn to treasure the things that you can take with you on the bus, or just walking around that let you review certain basics in those spare minutes of your day. Maybe next week, I will do this right, once and for all.
In the meantime, it’s been good getting some practice in with sculpting in general. I think that I may always come back to skulls for this purpose. They can be as complex as you care to make them, or not. And really, everyone loves a skull. 🙂
The Bilateral Sagittal Split Osteotomy and Osseous Genioplasty
So, I was going to wait until I’d shown this in my big presentation next month, but I just couldn’t. I put it up tonight.
Introducing, The Bilateral Sagittal Split Osteotomy and Osseous Genioplasty…
And if that doesn’t work, here’s a direct link to the YouTube page itself – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQI8L5Sxa6w
Movie Posters for a 3 Minute Animation
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!
more tweaking with the skull
Awe yeah! That looks to me like a skull that fits entirely inside the head I made for it! It was poking out in a few places before, but now, I’d say that’s a fit I can work with. I do believe my animation’s got a matching presurgical face and skull now!
**Edit** – Actually, I got a little prematurely excited there, and have since gone back and reworked things a bit. The current model, looks more like this (keep in mind that this model features a shortened mandible)…
Now I will just have to go back in and realign my braces.
Animating in a Snowstorm
The City of Chicago is buried under blankets upon blankets of snow. And I am taking the day to work on my animation project. I have literally been working on getting this skull in proper shape for months now. And it is sooooo close!
For those of you who do not work in 3D animation programs, this is the kind of screen I have been living with of late…
All that mess, and when you zoom out, it’s just…
I’ve been doing this all the way around the skull, slowly stitching edges together. And now I’m patching up the parts where the CT scattered due to metal pieces on the plastic skull we placed in there.
It’s been a long process, but I intend to finish this today. I have a bowl full of braces for modeling next, (yes, my skull is getting braces) and then I can put together an animated storyboard. I need to ask fast, because the semester is flying by and I intend to present this work for graduation in April along with a paper detailing the process and what I have learned from it. It never feels like enough time, but I still believe it can be done.
So you just keep on keepin’ on out there, Snowmageddon. I’ve got plenty to do right here inside.
Skull a Day
Ok, I just found out there is a Skull a Day website. How delightful.
Skulls!
Ok, so I saw this over at Street Anatomy and it made me happy…
It is by Russian artist, Dimitri Tsykalov.
I myself have been playing around with skulls again lately. There is the skull I am working with in 3DsMax, and also my latest pocket skull I sculpted amidst the crazy of all the tech support it took me to get back to my digital 3DsMax skull.
Lately I prefer making these little guys without the mandible so that I can put in all the little foramina underneath.
Unfortunately with this one, I broke the left styloid process before I got around to photographing it or reproducing it. Honestly though, I can make a better skull than this. Hopefully I’ll find the time to do another one soon, because I think if I did another one while this one is still fresh in my mind, it could be really cool, and that one would be worth reproducing in resin.
So many things to do, so little time.
Script and Storyboards
I’m so excited. Tomorrow I get to observe the surgery on which I am basing my project research. I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time now, so it only seemed appropriate that I post the current version of the script and storyboard I have been working on.
First, the script (click to access the PDF)…
And then the accompanying storyboards…