Drawings of human anatomy have existed for thousands of years.
Now, thanks to computerized animation and the skill of two UConn graduates, the science of looking deep into the body — right into the workings of individual cells — has reached new heights.
Michael Astrachan ’87 (SFA) and John Liebler ’90 (SFA) did not know each other during their college days. After UConn, Astrachan became a portrait artist and Liebler an illustrator. It wasn’t until years later that their paths crossed in New Haven.
“John had opened a frame shop where I occasionally took my work,” says Astrachan. “At the same time I was also doing some freelance medical animation.”
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| John Liebler ’90 (SFA), left, and Michael Astrachan ’87 (SFA) in the offices of XVIVO, their scientific animation firm in Rocky Hill, Conn. |
| Photo by Peter Morenus |
After comparing notes, they decided to collaborate on a few projects.
The moonlighting enabled Liebler to build a portfolio of drawings.
“It led to a full-time job as a medical illustrator,” he says.
Meanwhile, in 2001, Astrachan co-founded a scientific animation firm called XVIVO (ex-vee-vo), headquartered in Rocky Hill, Conn.
As the company signed on new clients, he asked Liebler to become its lead animator.
Initially, XVIVO worked primarily with pharmaceutical companies. Its animations marketed products to the medical community.
For example, when Antigenics, Inc., patented a way to individualize vaccines from a patient’s excised tumor, XVIVO created an animated film for doctors illustrating the vaccine’s path through the body destroying tumor-derived proteins.
Doctors generally viewed the film at trade shows. Other clients included PBS television and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, for which they created animated versions of robots retrieving wounded soldiers from a battlefield.
Their most acclaimed work, however, is an eight-minute animation that took a year and a half to complete.
The Inner Life of a Cell, commissioned by Harvard University, was designed as a teaching tool to help undergraduates studying molecular and cellular biology understand what happens when a blood cell needs to clean house.
Such an innovative teaching tool earned XVIVO a broad spectrum of acclaim:
It has been featured on ABC’s World News Tonight, showcased alongside Hollywood’s best animations at the Siggraph 2006 Electronic Theater, and won a coveted Telly Award for outstanding video and film production last year.
Its approach appeals to both scientists and students alike, making complicated material readily understandable — and entertaining.
Most of XVIVO’s animations begin with a script. “We receive one or are asked to create one,” says Astrachan, who directs production. “From that we start drawing pictures.”
When The Inner Life of a Cell was first presented, however, it read like a scientific textbook. “Lots of diagrams, charts and anatomical jargon,” says Liebler.
“We spent months poring over the material. It was fun taking all that information and turning it into something cinematic that students could look at and feel they have a grasp of what it means.”
Easier said than done. There are trillions of cells in the body. Within each cell, there are thousands of proteins. Around all of this, millions of molecules swirl in different directions.
From the start, the XVIVO team knew it would be impractical to visualize everything. Oversimplification would be no better. A balance was needed, one that was scientifically accurate.
To achieve this, they created computerized three-dimensional models of the body’s most minute elements. Then they faced an even greater challenge, giving these elements motion.
“Micro-cellular structures and the way they move is not an off-the-shelf package,” says Liebler, who used Lightwave 3D, Adobe After Effects, and Happy Digital’s HD Instance plug-in for much of the animation.
“So I looked for similarities to the special effects in movies such as The Matrix or Star Wars and then applied that technology to the subject.”
The result is an elegant, seemingly magical world where free-floating fibers suddenly bond to form shimmering molecular highways.
Upon these highways, motor proteins with boot-like feet drag unneeded nutrients to the cell wall, where they are then disposed into the blood stream.
“Students were amazed,” says Alain Viel, associate director of undergraduate research at Harvard, who also indicated that compared to textbooks alone, animations like this can increase comprehension by almost 30 percent.
“Many have said that seeing The Inner Life of a Cell makes them want to study biology.”
Unlike others in the field of medical illustration, neither Astrachan nor Liebler come from science backgrounds.
Yet their training at UConn equipped them well for their roles at XVIVO.
“I was given a lot of freedom at UConn to express myself and follow my own path,” says Astrachan, who in his senior year completed an award-winning seven-minute animation requiring 2,500 individual drawings.
“It really helped with my independent mindset.” For Liebler, UConn provided a solid frame of reference.
“A day doesn’t go by when I don’t think of something I learned from my professors about the fundamentals of art,” he says, “how to draw, see things, compose an image, or even use color.”
Meanwhile, their work has caught the eye of many — from Hollywood to NASA.
Warner Brothers is interested in XVIVO special effects for its remake of a classic sci-fi motion picture, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
“We’ve got our fingers in a lot of areas,” says co-founder and medical director, David Bolinsky. “Just last week we were working nine projects in parallel.”
One of those projects was an interactive animation designed for hospitals that treat children with cancer.
“It will help the kids and their parents to understand more about interventions such as chemotherapy and radiation,” says Bolinsky.
“It will help them learn more about compliance with drug regimes, nutrition, and attitude. These are things that make for a more holistic experience intrinsic with coming to grips with the disease.”
As XVIVO continues to expand, Astrachan and Liebler look forward to the future.
“I think we’ll do more things like this aimed at education,” says Liebler, “but it’s got to be entertaining. Making it entertaining is good for the subject because it engages the audience. But it’s also engaging to us as artists. If we can’t bring some art to what we’re doing, we’ll lose interest. We need to stay focused in order to do the work just as the audience needs to stay involved in order to view the work. That’s the challenge and the fun.”
To see the animations animations noted in this story, go to http://xvivo.net.