Today we're talking to
Michael Astrachan, owner of
XVIVO Scientific Animation. Michael combines a fine arts and animation background with experience across a wide range of medical and scientific disciplines to create visually compelling animations. He has developed and directed mechanism of disease and mechanism of action animations for the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.
Michael Astrachan
Your work is absolutely beautiful. We were wondering where it all started – your journey. How did you end up in the scientific animation business?
My background is in fine art. After college, I studied classical painting techniques for 5 years. I also had a successful airbrush company with several locations in malls around Connecticut. I learned a great deal from my airbrushing years, particularly about customer service and business in general but after 10 years of airbrushing I burned out. It was at that time I decided to put my airbrush aside, and learn computer animation. A year later I started an animation company. I was offering everything from corporate programs to special effects. But to my surprise, most of the work I was getting was for medical animation. I honestly had no master plan to pursue medical animation... I guess you could say I just walked through the doors that opened...
What do mechanism of disease and mechanism of action animations demonstrate?
Mechanism of disease (MOD) are programs that show how a disease progresses, what processes, systems and molecules contribute to the development of a disease. Often the client has a protein or receptor that they have targeted for drug development. The MOD is used to raise the awareness of the role of that molecule in the disease state. MOD's often illustrate the healthy state so that the disease is evident in comparison.
Mechanism of action (MOA) programs usually come after the MOD. Once we have clearly identified the targets involved in the MOD, we show how the client's product acts on those targets.
Your projects challenge your team with animating intricate and detailed processes going on in the body. How do you stay up to date with both emerging production technology and the science you’re illustrating?
We have a great team of professionals who love what they do, and are motivated to keep up with the latest information not only on the science but also on the tools we use to translate the science. This is done through a lot of reading, educational videos and internal conversations. If a team member discovers something of particular interest, they present their findings to the group to keep everyone up to date.
Michael set up a day for the team to return to the canvas.
"it was wonderful to replace mouse and monitor with graphite and paper!"What kind of internal team do you need to assemble? What’s the winning formula?
We have a great team of dedicated animators, medical illustrators, story tellers, programmers and production wranglers. The combination of these particular talents leads to our winning formula.
What computer programs and equipment are necessary to produce the projects?
We use XSI, Lightwave, MAX, and Maya for 3d rendering. For compositing we use After effects. We do final edits in Final cut.
Your team’s expertise would fit so well with emerging online and mobile device technology. Where do you envision XVIVO evolving to serve these new platforms?
We see the tablet platform as a wonderful vehicle to develop rich media programs with our animations at the core of the experience. We are currently investing in this development to create educational virtual learning experiences. Most recently, XVIVO produced
'Life of a cell' for Harvard University.
Can you help us understand what that process looks like? Do you start with traditional story boards? Do you go right to rudimentary animations?
In a perfect world...which is not often the case...we begin any project with visual and literary research. From there we develop a script (or we are given a script by our client). The scripts are developed to support the visual narrative, so we are aware of the liner flow required. For example sometimes it is better to say “the hill the dog ran up” rather than “the dog ran up the hill.” From the script we record a scratch track...and then we develop an animatic. The animatic is a very rough animation often done with stand in geometry devoid of textures, and lighting. The animatic helps us to visualize issues that the storyboards can miss. Next, we develop the rough animation. The rough animation includes texturing, lighting, camera moves, and a few transitions. Once the rough is approved the final piece is edited with transitions, professional voice over, music and sound effects.
It must take a great deal of collaboration between you and the medical team.
What kind of medical background does your team need to interface with your clients?
We have several Medical illustrators on staff who are specifically trained to communicate complex science into effective visual narratives.
Still from 'The Life Of The Cell'
'Life of a cell' is so visually compelling. How much poetic license do you have when illustrating these internal functions?
This changes all the time. The more that is known about these molecules and how they interact, the less poetic license we take. Color is one area that we do have poetic license. Color does not exist in this molecular world... this is because the molecular structures that we depict are smaller than a wavelength of light.
There is an elegance to all your work, which we find unique to XVIVO’s animations. Do you feel your fine arts background influences the final project?
Oh absolutely. I think of it is this way, the computer is just another canvas. Understanding the vocabulary of art…light, shadow, value, chroma, edge, line, shape, composition, etc is essential to create aesthetically pleasing animations.
There are probably several industries that could benefit from your animations. Aside from the medical community, what other industries do you serve?
We have developed work for the military, and several science museums. We’ve also found interest from a diverse group of industries, including the food, clothing, detergent, cosmetic and hygienic Industries.
In the same way we illustrate the inner workings of our cells, we have also shown the chemical properties of cleansers, the beneficial compounds of milk, the antimicrobial traits of merino wool, even the therapeutic effects of chocolate. Today, most industries are driven by science and technology – they all have a story to tell. XVIVO helps them represent the science behind their products. Our team brings those stories alive. (or 'to life')
A lot of projects go through your shop, what was the most fun to produce?
We just finished a project for a foreign company (not yet released) They gave us full creative control, so that was a lot of fun for us to conceptualize and produce.
Special thanks to
Michael Astrachan and the XVIVO team for making this interview possible. Feel free to check out XVIVO at
XVIVO.net, on
Facebook, and on Twitter
@xvivo.
