Hello World

   When people ask me what my major is, there are several different, though all truthful, responses that I can choose from. Sometimes I simply reply “Biology.” It’s fast. It’s simple. And it doesn’t require much elaboration. However, while it is a truthful statement, I don’t think it contains the whole truth. A more complete answer would be “Biology: I’m pre-med” because I am, in fact, much more interested in becoming a doctor than learning about biology, chemistry, and physics. An even more complete answer about what I do at school, though not exactly what they asked, would be “Biology: I’m pre-med. And I have a minor in 3D animation.” Often when I say this, the response I get is something along the lines of “And how are those related?”

   To be honest, I’m still not completely sure how to answer that question. Over time, I’ve come up with multiple answers: some more satisfactory than others. Sometimes, I simply reply that they aren’t related, or that they are related only in the sense that I enjoy both of them. However, as I’ve delved deeper into the fields of 3D animation and medicine, I’ve come to recognize more and more areas where the two fields intersect.

   For example, I have often in my pre-mad classes seen the professors use short animations to help us visualize a particular biological or chemical process. Whether it be the mechanism by which ATP powers the ion channels in the cell membrane or how a virus injects it’s genetic information into the host cell or how the four chambers of the heart work together to pump blood through the body, animation is a great way to help people visualize processes which they can’t otherwise observe for themselves. However, not only is animation useful in the world of medicine, but the reverse is true as well. Experience with anatomy and physiology is quite useful when modeling and rigging 3D characters. Knowledge of physics and of the properties of light would help you make your animations and your lighting more realistic and believable. An example that comes to mind is from a discussion panel I attended last year. One of the guest speakers had done some work for a program on Discovery and had animated a person getting shot in the head. He had to have all of the bones in the skull modeled correctly and then had to show the path of the bullet in a sort of x-ray view as it went through the man’s head. And he had to have all the correct physics for the bullet’s path and the damage it caused.

   These are just a few examples of how two of my passions, animation and medicine, intersect and complement each other. Throughout the rest of this blog, I intend to explore these two fields and the ways in which they are related. In doing so I hope to deepen my knowledge of and passion for these fields and maybe even figure out what I want to do with my life after college.