Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

Life is complicated.  There are many choices, paths and decisions for us to make in search of our destiny.  There are paths we follow regularly that we are not even conscious of, such as the metabolic pathways keeping us alive in our immune systems.

I had little understanding of these paths, until I began these illustrations for Epitomics, a biotech company that manufactures over 1,000 different antibodies from rabbits.  According the Wikipedia, “Antibodies are gamma globulin proteins that are found in blood or other bodily fluids of vertebrates, and are used by the immune system to identify and neutralize foreign objects, such as bacteria and viruses.”

The maps are being carefully constructed in Adobe Illustrator from Epitomics diagrams and then imported into Flash to add linkage to their many unique antibody products.  Click here to see the current Flash Pathway maps, and there are more in the pipeline, and more data to be linked using XML.

Obviously, it is important to faithfully construct the pathway maps with scientific accuracy.  The spherical antibody nodes remind me of paintings I’ve made of beach stones, whose arrangements are pretty much random and meaningless.  I’ve been thinking about picking up the paint brushes again, and working on a few more of “the rock paintings.”  To make the stones more interesting, and their arrangements perhaps more meaningful, I plan on using image processing techniques, Photoshop filters and 3D rendering before projecting the design onto blank canvas.  I’m thinking about painting layers of imagery, similar to constellation star maps and the work of Julie Mehretu.  It’s a pathway I’ll have to decide to go ahead on, while my antibodies are still doing their quiet work to keep me in good health.

To see the artwork of Julie Mehretu, please visit her page on Artsey.net. (Update July 18, 2015)

My friends at elementalLED, a green business selling LED lighting products, commissioned me to create an online marketing video.  They wanted something fun and edgy, with the potential to catch on as a viral animation, passed from friend to friend, business to business.  Some of the examples they showed me were really wild, almost South Park crazy, so I knew I could let the dogs out and run with this.  As we brainstormed, we discussed the virtue of LED lighting’s low heat emission from the intense light source.  Animals, such as moths, attracted to the light would not be burned.  The idea stuck, and I was off and running, writing, storyboarding and animating the old fashioned way in Flash.

The journey of The History of Lighting According To Moths took me back to my high school days of Mad magazine and Fractured Fairy Tales on the beloved Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show.  It was a lot of fun, and James Goode’s sound track worked wonders to bring the animation to life, and support my corny narration.  Next, maybe I can figure out a migrating bird friendly wind turbine promo.

New credit cards are now featuring something called “blink” technology.  This wireless technology was the subject of my recent motion graphics project for Silicon Valley high tech company, ViVOtech.  I converted their PowerPoint technical overview and marketing presentation into an eye-catching tradeshow animation in HD resolution.  See the online Flash video animation here.

From what I understand, a lot of people at the tradeshow stopped and blinked at the ViVOtech booth.

This video makes outstanding use of Flash ActionScript programming of video object and overlays.  And, it’s funny! On Facebook my profile photo appears in the video.  Due to terms of service with Facebook, it does not appear within this version.