Daily photo log

So, I may have plugged my other blog, Stanford Sunrise, here a time or two.  I have a great deal of fun and creative outlet taking my pictures every morning.  I just took a gander at the 'Places' function on my iPhone, and the result was kinda neat.  Not always completely accurate, but neat.

You can see my basic walk to work, picked out in photos placement here.  There's a small deviation to the right, at the bottom of the map... that's where I sometimes have started walking over to the Clark center on campus for more photo opportunities.  There has been some heavy construction on my regular walk, which is starting to really limit my photo-taking choices. 

Hey... you took away my grass, trees, and little mushroom guys.

They left the gate open... I promise.

Crane through the fog, with the 8X lens.

I've already self-limited to an extent, trying to take a years worth of photos on this one walk.  But it's been totally worth it. If anyone else is undertaking a similar journey, I would love to hear about it.

Sunrise Stanford

Hello all!  I have started a sister blog - Sunrise Stanford - designed to house just my daily photos of my walk to my building on Stanford campus.  And by 'started...' I mean back filled it so that all of the posts were on the correct days.  That was 81 posts to back-fill... A fair number. However, all of the photos taken thus far are up on that blog.

Photos from the most recent entry:

 

Most of you know this - but to get everyone on the same page - I only use my iPhone for this photojournal.  I have a set of lenses (from Photojojo) that stick onto my case using magnets to enhance some of the photos.  I tried to tag any posts that use one of those lenses- macro, 8x zoom, 2x zoom, wide angle, and fisheye.





This is where my photos will be living from now on - I'll work on how to best cross post for those that don't follow my blog, and I have a twitter handle started up just for those photos. I will attempt to avoid spamming this blog or the @anatamation twitter feed with the photos, although you can find a link to the most recent entries on the right....

 

In any case, Sunrise Stanford has it's own dedicated blog now. I hope you enjoy some representations of the beauty I see in the world around me.

Real or "fake"?

I had an interesting interaction with a doctor that I work with quite often.  It really brought up the question, "Is what we do as medical artists real or fake?"

(At this point, I should take a moment to apologize for the over-use of quotation marks in this post.) 

I don't have an good answer for that question, especially in light of the reactions from said doctor.  Before observing her reactions, I would have said with 100% confidence - what we do is "real."  So, yesterday we were working on the project we have been collaborating on, and I was updating many (most) of the images.  One of the things that Stanford (and myself, especially) is very aware of is copyright. 

i.e. You can't just use images from Google in things you are offering outside of the University, and especially not for profit.  

I thought that this was common sense, but it seems that many a professor disagrees.  One of the things I have had to do on this project was replace images pulled from Google with original work. On a personal level, I know that I wouldn't want people ripping off my hard work, so I tend to lean towards the copyright enforcer role sometimes...

In any case, we needed an X-ray that depicted a CMC fusion.  I pulled one that I thought portrayed that surgery from her library... but I was wrong.  It was a hemitrapeziectomy with a k-wire pin, not a CMC fusion with a k-wire pin.  Darn and blast!  It turned out that she didn't have a CMC fusion with a k-wire pin example in her library.

Now, if this book wasn't due the day before yesterday, she could go off to her case library, strip all identifying data from a patient case example, and use an x-ray from there.  Especially since she has a ton of x-rays from patients that have agreed to let their data be used in studies and papers.  But... needs must.

So I modified an x-ray that we had available.  It was ours, nearly showed what we needed it to, and was fairly straightforward to edit.  Which is better than what might have happened- yep, google was the first place to turn to.  Now, she made the argument that an x-ray with identifying data stripped from it is actually in the common domain.  I have no idea, truthfully.  She could have been 100% correct and I spent my time on nothing.  But I would rather err on the side of legality, especially since it's my name on the artwork in this book.

Looks like a CMC fusion x-ray to me!

As I was exporting the book for final edits tonight, her reaction to my editing this x-ray really struck me.  She was unhappy that we didn't have the real thing, or access to one via the internet.  On the other hand, I was happy that we had a drawing that looked accurate and was from source photos that we owned.  I was really wondering why editing an x-ray was bad, but editing photos is okay (I did a fair bit of that as well).  Or even teaching via 3D models and line drawings... why does a "false" x-ray ring so much more on the 'not good' side than the 'teaching' side? 

I don't have an answer for that, but I found the idea of it intriguing. 

Anatomy inspired Art

Recently Yvette Deas installed her "Dissection Series" in our hallway.  I can't tell you how excited I was (and still remain) to have this art in our halls.  I got her to give me a few paragraphs to give to anyone interested, and I printed up small placards to place next to each painting.  They are quite lovely, and I enjoy looking at them every day.

"Dissection Series, seven paintings installed at the School of Anatomy at Stanford, takes dissection as both subject and process. Considered as an examination of portraiture (which is, itself, always a process of dissection), the subject is variously centralized and decentralized, alternating between the seductive amorphous absorption of flesh and the idiosyncratic vestiges we leave behind. Body parts: belly buttons, painted fingernails, tattoos, and the gesture of a face under cloth become traces of a life once lived, even as the surgeon's hands becomes the artist's hands and the viewer's eyes.

These paintings were wholly unintended, the result of taking my figure drawing students to the Anatomy lab at Stanford. Welcomed and encouraged by the doctors and students, most especially by Dr. Srivastava, they allowed me to poke and prod and mush the bodies, and rearrange their parts (I put them back, though, I promise).  I asked the students questions: was there a part of the body that popped you out of the dissection – a minute in which you were suddenly reminded of the body as a person? I found that their answers were the same as mine and my students. These paintings explore those strange moments of absence and presence, person and non-person, a psychic dislocation impossible to reconcile. The paintings, still multiplying in my studio, are alternately strange and indecipherable, familiar and tactile.  For me, they are a source of endless fascination and beauty."

Harold, oil on canvas, 96” x 72”, 2012

 

Quita, oil on canvas, 96” x 72”

Harold II, oil on panel, 14” x 11”, 2012

Quita II, oil on panel, 14” x 11”, 2012

Ron, oil on canvas, 48” x 36”, 2012

Jan, oil on canvas, 48” x 36”, 2012

Most of these are installed in our main hallway, in front of the elevators.  This last piece is installed in the dissection lab, near the sinks.

Eleanor, oil on panel, 20” x 16”, 2012

Retopology Revisited

Well, it's been a while since I was last posting in this blog, and the landscape of 3D reoto'ing has changed a bit.  At least, the section that I use has changed.  I found a little program called 3D Coat, and I never looked back.

So I wanted to just mention some of the overarching things that I now do...  No details (yet).  I regularly use 3D Coat in my daily activities.  Truthfully, I prefer the tools within this program to be much more intuitive and easy to use compared to the other software that also does retopo'ing.  And I've done quite a bit of retopo'ing, let me tell you.  So far, I've looked at the bones of the arm, including the shoulder girdle, and every. single. muscle.  Seriously.

 

The muscles were segmented from grind data from a cadaver, edited in Maya to ensure accuracy, exported into 3D Coat, given a new topology, initially painted also in 3D Coat, refined in Photoshop, assembled in Maya, and then brought into Unity 3D for the (eventual) final app delivery.  

Both normal maps and the initial diffuse maps were created in 3D Coat.  The diffuse maps were modified in Photoshop for a better blend of tendon and muscle belly, but the placement of those elements was first conceived in 3D Coat.  Every model is definitely under 10,000 polys, and most are under 5,000 polys.  So, normal maps were essential in getting the look and feel that we wanted for each muscle and its fibers.

The same process can be used (and will be used) for the rest of the body.