Client
Personal
Year
2022
Media
Procreate, Blender 3D, After Effects
Audience
General Lay Public
About
This is a short fun animation on the fight between a cancer cell and an immune cell (NK cell). It focuses on the growth of a melanoma cell as it hypertrophies and damages its neighbouring skin cells. However, our hero NK cell isn't far and is able to stop the cancer cell from getting too out of hand in time before it proliferates and causes substantial damage.
Production in progress, coming soon!
Process
Ideation
To begin, I compiled a few of my favorite videos from various medical animations I had seen in the past as inspiration and jotted down some ideas for a possible topic of animation I could create. I knew I wanted the animation to be character-focussed and fun/upbeat enough that it would be engaging for audiences of all types. The initial idea came to me after seeing microscopy footage of a T-cell destroying an ovarian cancer cell over on Twitter. I thought it'd be a really great project to explore how to make this sort of footage palettable and exciting for a general audience in a short 30-40 second animation.
Music
Before I began to storyboard, I knew I wanted the entire animation to be without narration. This would save me on budget, but also force me to make the storyline of the animation visually focussed. However, I did want music to be incorporated into the video, so I searched artlist.io for some music ideas. I came across a short 30 second song by Oliver Michael which was fun, upbeat, and perfectly suspenseful for the type of mood I wanted to show during the T-cell fight.
Storyboards & Animatic
The story begins with a jittery hand moving on screen and seemingly examining itself by turning around and finally finding a small black spot near it's wrist. A dotted line encircles it and we zoom into the region where we see a circular cluster of cells. Amongst the cluster of cells, however, is one discolored cell (melanoma) which begins to grow and compress it's surrounding cells. Elsewhere, another cell (NK cell) seems to be travelling hastily through a blood vessel. We're brought back to the cell cluster where we start to see the neighbouring cells blebbing and dying off as the cancerous cell releases apoptosis-inducing factors. The NK cell continues moving through the blood vessel where it notices the factors and migrates out of the vessel. The two cells finally meet face to face. The NK cell begins releasing toxin-filled vesicles to attack the melanoma and it is destroyed. The NK cell moves out of frame.
After the storyboarding, I created a quick animatic to time the different panels with the music.
Storyboards
Animatic
Render Tests
I wanted to go for a welcoming and bubbly feel to match the upbeat tone of the music, so most of the scenes show vibrant colors with soft materials. I also decided to change the aspect ratio to 1:1 to be more suitable for social media.
Render Tests
Production
Production in progress, coming soon!
References
- Gonzalez, H., Hagerling, C., & Werb, Z. (2018). Roles of the immune system in cancer: From tumor initiation to metastatic progression. Genes & Development, 32(19-20), 1267–1284. https://doi.org/10.1101/gad.314617.118
- Oliver Michael. (n.d.). Artlist. Retrieved from https://artlist.io/song/1530/mine-is-yours.
- Suijkerbuijk, S. J. E., Kolahgar, G., Kucinski, I., & Piddini, E. (2016). Cell competition drives the growth of intestinal adenomas in drosophila. Current Biology, 26(4), 428–438. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.12.043