Scientific illustration services for academia and biotech | Pairing scientific accuracy with engaging design | Figures, infographics, 3D animation.
United Kingdom
Joined August 2023
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Dear fellow scientific animators, here's a tutorial on my approach to 3D vesicle fusion animations in Houdini: youtube.com/watch?v=FfLJv7E4…
This tutorial addresses the problem of lipid persistence/flickering that occurs in many approaches by using a particle solver in Houdini.
I created this image of the PhD process as part of a job interview earlier this year.
I didn’t get the job in the end, but I had a lot of fun making it, and it makes me smile when I look at it.
Hopefully it makes you smile too!
Here’s a short clip I made a few months ago while enrolled on a medical animation course! I had a lot of fun improving my understanding of materials and lighting (amongst many other things). Also this scene was infinitely easier to set up thanks to #MolecularNodes
The Delta ligand is shown in red, and the Notch receptor is shown in blue, and the final binding state is the accurate part (using the PDB structure: 4XLW).
My first 3D print - a frame from my animation of neural progenitor cells in the developing spinal cord.
It was so cool to see it gradually emerge from the printer and then even cooler to be able to actually hold it!
Turns out synaptic vesicles are absolutely packed with glutamate (around 8000 molecules on average). This is what that would look like in an average 40nm diameter vesicle!
Also shown are some of the main vesicle proteins present in their reported average abundance.
Thread (1/4)
V-ATPases pump hydrogen ions into the vesicle, and the subsequent electrochemical gradient is used by glutamate transporters (also shown in the image) to transport glutamate into the vesicles.
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Another animation! This time looking at potassium ion transport across the cell membrane.
Making good use of the amazing #MolecularNodes by @bradyajohnston to import molecular dynamics simulations directly into #Blender.
The latest result of sinking many hours into learning Blender!
This procedural animation shows how the nuclei of neural stem cells migrate in the developing spinal cord.
Turn on the sound to hear a pretty convincing AI-generated voice read the script!
My latest graphic featured in the ‘Beyond killing cancer cells’ article for @UoMHive.
Check out the article here: manchesterresearchhive.wordp…
And here’s a short procedural animation of the membrane shown in the last tweet.
I’m steadily building up in complexity so that I can ultimately produce animations involving multiple parts of the cell. The membrane has been a fun place to start.
More lipids! This time in the form of a vesicle fusing with a larger membrane.
The goal here was of make the prettiest snapshot I could with my current Blender skill set, focussing on materials, colour, and lighting.
I’ve been learning 3D animation. Here I’ve been attempting to generate procedural phospholipid bilayers in Blender.
The individual lipids in this small vesicle use accurate 3D chemical structures which are then procedurally displaced to indicate the membranes fluidity.
