Creating an animation about epigenetics
Biomedical visualization master’s research project
Part of the requirements of the Master of Science in Biomedical Visualization program at UIC are to create and conduct a research project that either answers questions that inform the literature of our field or solve a problem via some form of visual stimulus. I partnered with Northwestern University to create an animation explaining chromatin biology and why it is an important field to study. In addition to educating the public, this animation was intended to advertise for the brand new building and center dedicated to the advancement of scientific knowledge related to the field of epigenetics: the Simpson Querrey Center for Epigenetics. I created an animation designed to be watched alongside two of my classmates’ research animations for use by researchers at Northwestern University.
These projects begin with extensive background research, outlining the learning goals and visual story, creating the storyboard and narration, and finally creating all digital assets to create the animation.
establishing the content hierarchy
After researching and compiling the information to be conveyed, it was necessary to select which information will be shared with the audience in under 3 minutes. This was a challenging process as it seemed wasteful to eliminate every piece of pertinent information to the topic. The key was to break down the information into core elements and carefully scaffold more knowledge on top of this base layer of information. One benefit of using animation as the media of communication is the opportunity to include more information in the form of visuals that are not necessarily emphasized in the narration.
Scientific accuracy
Scientific accuracy is always first and foremost a priority. In order to make the animation as accurate as possible, 3D data from the protein data bank (PDB) was accessed to create the 3D models for the applicable molecular elements. Not all elements in the PDB (in fact very few) were complete models. It was important to me to create the models using accurate scale in proportion to each other. So the models that were incomplete were filled in using either homology models or prediction models such as ITASSER. While not completely accurate, these provided at least a prediction of how these proteins might look in real life.
VISUAL STYLE
Many of the design decisions for this animation were made as a team with my two other classmates who were creating animations for Northwestern University: Dani Bergey and Ann (Hui) Liu. All three of us had different audiences for our animations. We made design decisions to unify the animations as a collection and to allow the animations to work best for each of our audiences. For example, a high-radius surface model was used to depict the proteins as research has found that high-detail surface representations of proteins can be overwhelming and distracting to a lay audience. The DNA was depicted using two representations, depending on the mechanism being displayed. A surface model representation for the DNA was used in my animation when the focus was on histone modifications and a ribbon model representation was used when the focus was on DNA modification. This served two purposes: to shift the focus of the viewer and to get a lay audience to connect the two different representations of DNA as models of the same structure.
ANIMATION
The final animation was created using Autodesk 3ds Max and Adobe After Effects.