THE PROBLEM:
Vessel created this piece for the Medical Illustration sourcebook – an unique collection of medical artists promotional material. It gave us the challenge of how to best represent our studio in a single two page spread?
THE SOLUTION:
To answer this question we thought about what problems we solve as medical and scientific animators/illustrators. Medical and scientific animation and illustration is fundamentally about visualizing scientific concepts that are difficult to see with the naked eye.
This could be because it’s a vital organ buried within layers of tissue or because it’s a microscopic cell with tiny, transparent, structures. The job of the scientific artist is to bring these intricate and beautiful pieces of our natural world into a more comfortable visual space.
There are many ways to achieve this.
The problem then becomes how to best reimaging and recreate these invisible biological structures? Therefore, in order to best showcase our studio in single image we chose to bring to life to a single microscopic structure in two distinct ways.
THE IMAGE:
This is an image of the HIV virus show in two ways: Where the left side is literal the right side is expressive, where the left side is stark monotone the right side is colorful and rich, where the left side has structural realism the right has natural realism.
This piece showcases how a singular biological structure can be visualized with different sets of goals in mind.
THE LEFT SIDE: THE ANTOMY OF A VIRUS
The left is a bold literal rendition created from real 3d data, sourced from the protein data base. The anatomy of the virus is clear. Each protein is defined. You see its specific receptors, its cell wall, its nucleus, and the RNA strands within that nucleus.
It is rendered in stark black and white with an artificial plastic like material. These clean, minimalistic choices facilitate quick understanding without sacrificing the subject’s natural beauty.
The crisp, white background and slight chromatic aberration brings a photographic realism to the rendering. It also nods to the backlighting of a microscope (where so many first looks of these tiny structures occur).
THE RIGHT SIDE: THE BEAUTY OF A VIRUS
The right side inspires curiosity and interest. It draws the viewer in by reminding them of something familiar and organic in the macroscopic world.
Bubbles, reflection, bioluminescent color, transparency, wispy fibers and irregular microdetails mirror the richness of a more recognizable living organism.
This virus looks like a beautiful creature found in the deep ocean, something that is mysterious and unreachable. This recognizable beauty guides the viewer across visual barriers of understanding the microscopic world, which can seem equally mysterious and unreachable.
THE RESULT:
By setting these two distinct renderings of the same structure side by side, we are showcasing the creativity, skill and thoughtfulness Vessel puts into even the smallest structure.
The two renditions represent the two sides of the medical art coin: accuracy vs beauty, clarity vs realism, literal vs creative, and ultimately art vs science.
There is something fundamentally opposite to art and science and there is something universally beautiful in making two opposites harmonize. Uniting fine art and science continues to be Vessel Studio’s’ enthusiastic goal and we hope this piece encapsulates that mission.
