Nature Biomedical Engineering Volume 4 Issue 7 Cover Art

I had the opportunity to make the cover for the JULY issue of Nature BME

This was a stellar paper, and a great journey to get the cover. 

We went along with this project as a great opportunity and a long shot. We made this cover in hope that it would be accepted but by no means did we expect it. Everything worked out and we were able to land the cover and I really appreciated working with the Nature Biomedical Engineering team, in particular Alex Wing the Art Director to make this happen. They helped me coordinate, design create this piece. 

 The creative concept was to illuminate a breast cancer tumor with a new innovative process that uses a 3d printed lens holder to leverage an Iphone as a cancer detecting radiology solution. All I had to was come up with a way to illustrate this concept. Dr. Moritz Kircher and the scientists had the hard part of making the research paper. They did also emphasize a lot about nano particles, so I got to reading the research paper, which technically went over my head but I think I was able to understand the abstract of the process. Through some sketches we built out ideas. We then used Blender 3D software to create the objects and light the scene.  Now for some pictures! 

It was fun to utilize colored lights. I ended up with 14 lights in total. It was also interesting experiementing on materials for the tumor since it was supposed to absorb the light and the metals on the phone would reflect it. 

This is the ugly part. Looking back at your digital skecthes. I just think its important at this stage of the process to understand that they are just stepping stones. Its hard not to get caught up on unfinished artifacts. You can always clean up later. We moved forward. We changed the tumor out and re positioned everything, and worked on nuances thanks to Alex Wing and Natures Design team. Below is the final image without the titles. 

This was a great project for me, and I hope I can work on some more medical animations in the future. I learned a lot working with a genius like Dr. Moritz Kircher. Who unfortately has recently passed away. May he rest in peace.