Good morning and welcome to the intersection of
Art and Science using 3D animation to tell the stories of biology with award-winning biomedical
animator Dr Maya Divjak. My name is an Smith and I'm the artistic director of the Arts learning
festival at Independent Schools Victoria, and I have the pleasure of introducing this morning's
program to you. The Arts learning Festival is a biannual event open to all schools and community
to celebrate the power of the Arts, to teach, to connect, and
to inspire us all. Before we begin
I'd like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we meet today, wherever we
may be and I pay my respects to their elders, and all First Nations people past, present and
future. And now to this morning's program. I'd like to begin by recognising the partnerships
that have brought us together this morning; our wonderful hosts here at ACMI, my colleague
Garry Westmore who has provided the space and technical requirements to ensure that this
event
is delivered seamlessly to you wherever you are. And to the Peter McMallum Cancer Center where
our guest speaker Dr Maya Divjak is the inaugural biomedical animator, where the works she creates
are about the cellular and molecular mechanisms leading to cancer. Maya completed her PhD in
molecular biology at Monash University before moving into scientific sales a chance meeting
with world-renowned animator Dr Drew Barry at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute opened the doors
to the wo
nderful world of bio-animation. Maya then pursued her dream of becoming a biomedical
animator studying multimedia at swinburn and 3D animation at Australian film television and radio
school she then won a coveted animation fellowship with Dr Drew Barry and has been animating
professionally since 2013. Her creations have been exhibited at the Vivid Festival of
Light Music and Ideas and she has won several awards. These include a platinum Remy award at
the Worldfest Houston International Film
Festival, the Medical Education Award in Motion Media at
Bioimages, the Jury Award at the Raw Science Film Festival, Awards of Outstanding Excellence
at The Doctors Without Borders Film Festival, and Official Selection at the Melbourne
Documentary Film Festival. And so before Maya begins, if you do have questions, please
type them into the chat function during the presentation. and we'll try and answer as as
many as possible at the end. Thanks very much Thank you Anne for that wonderful
i
ntroduction, and thank you to ACMI and Independent Schools of Victoria (ISV) for
the wonderful opportunity to speak to you today Ok here we are okay we're back in
action. I'd just like to begin by acknowledging the Traditional Owners the
Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation on whose land we meet share and
today. So let's dive right in. Let's begin with some perceptions of science. Number one: science is boring and over on the
right there we have that very conservative Victorian gentleman s
aying "a lot of people think
science is boring but it's it boring that nucleic acid is a macromolecule composed of chains of
monomeric nucleotides pretty fascinating huh?" Well, if you're not a scientist and you don't
understand that language yes that will sound pretty boring to you. Science is complicated:
and here we have Dr Cong Hui-Yao in front of her whiteboard with a very complex looking series of
diagrams, arrows, molecules connected everywhere, graphs and so on all explaining cancer
metabolism, and that looks incredibly complicated. Number three: scientists are nerds and
in the bottom right hand corner we have self-confessed bio-nerd Risha Chakraborty,
who is a secondary school science enthusiast. So why are these perceptions a problem? These
ideas, and you may have thought these yourself or even said them; these ideas shut us off
from the interesting world around us. So, the environment around us and the interesting
world within us. We have a whole universe of cells
inside our body and then a whole universe
of molecules inside those cells, all moving around jostling about, communicating and interacting
without us even having to think about it or even being aware of it. And these molecules
allow ourselves to function, to communicate, to divide, to repair and eventually to die
- and so these molecules are the basis of life and this is what I'm fascinated with - the
universe molecules inside ourselves. So perhaps the solution lies in better communication
about science or better representation of what scientists are like actually like, so can
biomedical animation change the way people feel about biological sciences? And this is the story
that I want to tell with biomedical animation, and this is what's important to me. So
let's start by defining what biomedical animation actually is. Biomedical animation
uses 3D animation techniques from cinema, so throughout the movies that you've been watching
your whole life, to explain biology. And in
so doing it accelerates understanding because it
unfolds before your very eyes, it interests people in science because they can understand it,
because they can see it, and it shows us just how beautiful biology is, and you can see from those
four images there that biology and in particular, molecular biology, is incredibly beautiful, and
I feel so lucky to be able to get out of bed each day and tell the stories of these
molecules and bring them to the world. So why is biomedical animation i
mportant? You're
probably aware that 60% of our brain is devoted to processing visual information, or performing
vision related tasks. So we're visual creatures, and have been since the days we first scanned
our environment in search of food. But these days with the development of the internet
and the rise and domination of social media, we're becoming even more visually focused,
so visual approaches are therefore the best way to interest audiences in science. The other
important thing it
does is connect the research laboratory to the public. So many people think
that scientists are these really weird people who wear white lab coat and they do strange
inexplicable things behind closed doors off their tax dollar, and we really need to open
the lines of communication to better explain what it is that scientists are actually doing,
and biomedical animation does this - it provides a window into the research being conducted in
the lab, and thirdly it's important at the Peter Mac
because it enables patients and people
without scientific backgrounds to understand molecular processes. So, as explained we have
a whole universe of molecules inside our cells, and biomedical animation makes
us aware of this molecular world, and connects us to the drama of our biology
that can sometimes go completely off script, leading to situations such as cancer. It's also
incredibly useful for explaining complex cancer. Treatments: for me biomedical animation is
all about inclusion, i
t's about bringing those without any scientific background into
the world of biology, and even if they don't engage with the science or necessarily understand
it that they can appreciate the beauty of it. But why is it really important? DNA damage
is well recognised as a critical factor in the development and progression of cancer,
so you could describe DNA damage like this: DNA damage consists of single strand breaks which
are discontinuities in one strand of DNA helix; double strand break
s where both strands of the
DNA duplex severed; DNA kinks which occur when stacked base pairs become unstacked causing DNA
to make a sharp turn; and pyrimidine diamond, which cause two separate DNA helixes to stick
together and this is the sort of response you're going to get the person is going to look at you
with a completely confused expression they're going to turn around and walk away and wonder well
why did I even bother or you could show them this DNA encodes the information needed t
o
make proteins which are the building blocks of our body to keep 2 m of
DNA organised within the nucleus it is wound around special structures
called histones much like thread on a spool damage to DNA can include single strand
brakes double strand brakes changes to the DNA [Music] code DNA Kinks and DNA sticking [Music] together it has
been estimated that an individual cell can suffer up to 1 million DNA changes per [Music] day and
you can see that that's a completely different situation
can't you visual representation of
this really complex biology makes it so much easier to understand and it's also intriguing
people enjoy looking at it and they remain engaged so let's take a deep dive into what
creating a biomedical animation actually involves you need to begin by deciding on your animation
project and at petac I'm really lucky because we're not only a world leading specialist cancer
hospital we also have an integrated World leading cancer research program within that hos
pital so
I'm able to select from of the most interesting and Cutting Edge projects that we have within
the Institute and animate them and bring them to the world so I consider myself very lucky in
that regard you need to talk to the scientist if they're available and of course pet ma they are
they're all there doing their research and you need to do this in an ongoing way throughout the
project to ensure that everything is on track and that you're representing their story correctly
you nee
d to read a lot in order to get your head around the subject to be able to understand it
and then distill that into a visual format and in order to ensure that I do understand it I
like to write a literature review and outline everything in statments the story I will then uh
typically distill that literature review into a visual readout in the form of a story board and
you can see an example of that over in the bottom right there and this looks a lot like a comic
strip with the shots in seq
uential order uh you will then show this to the scientist of course
and ensure that they're happy with the story as we've you've laid it out I then like to write
a script and I find the script really handy for controlling the flow of the animation because
you're able to time the length of each shot according to what you need to say to explain each
shot and that just makes everything flow really nicely you then need to assemble your models
from uh a freely uh available repository called the
protein Data Bank this contains a couple
of hundred thousand protein and DNA structures however you won't find whole molecular assemblies
you'll find little bits of pieces and you'll have to put them all together like a jigel puzzle
usually in a program like K or k x and you can see an example of that over here on the left
that's a structure with the EGF receptor and then it's interactive Partners there you then
need to bring that structure that you built into your animation software which
we can see in
the top right here um the software that I work with is called Maya although I am working with
blender now as well I'm starting to learn that and what you can see here is this horizontal
um series of structures over on the left in the animation software here over on the right but
they're the Bel they're below the cell membrane there which is this Coral like structure and this
umbrella likee structure at the top is above the cell membrane where you can't see it you then
have to
rig and animate your structures and rigging typically involves adding a skeleton of
of joints and Bones to articulate the structure in much the same way as your own joints and
Bones articulate your body and and move you around you can then apply forces to that rig to
animate the molecules and make them move around and throughout that process you will perform
lots of test animations called play blasts to ensure that the animation is is unfolding in
the way that you like that things are inte
racting properly and the timing is f so I'll just
show you a little example of a play blast here and so you can see that's the cell membrane there
that you can see above which is being controlled by that lattice um structure there you've got
those two molecules interacting there's a chain and then they they part so you will doing lots of
these throughout the animation process to ensure that things are working the way you want them to
you will then texture and add pretty colors to to your mo
lecules to make them beautiful you will add
lights to the scene so that you can see everything and you'll add cameras through which you'll be
looking at the action you're trying to capture so so it's a lot like being a film director
in a digital format you'll then render the animation and rendering is a process uh whereby
for each second of Animation you have 25 frames and rendering is the building of each frame pixel
by pixel in my case I work with 1920 x 1080 pixels and so rendering is pr
ocess of putting all those
pixels together for each frame of the animation you then have to take all those frames and put
them together to make a coherent movie which is a process called compositing and I do that in
After Effects but you can use Final Cut Pro or premere or anything like that at this point you
will kind of edit as well to make things flow a bit better if you need to you can add special
effects you can add labels and captions I will then add sound effects and I with two fanta
stic
sound guys called Adam hunt and Ryan Granger and they do amazing work punctuating all the
movement that's going on and finally We'll add a voice over narration and I worked with Dr CLA
fidelli who was a scientist for this and she's amazing so let's take a look at some artistic
considerations that you need to be aware of when you're making an animation first and
foremost the story determines the design what you're trying to say the story drives the
look and feel of each shot and not th
e reverse so you're not trying to make the shots look
beautiful at the expense of the story you may have heard Pixar say story is King and this is
what you need to keep in the Forefront of your mind camera movement and lighting are really
important for directing the viewer's attention and you can use camera movement to take the viewer on
a journey from point A to point B so that really directs where the viewer is looking choice of
colors this is quite contentious a little bit controversial
because most molecules are not
naturally colored there are many that are uh for example our favorite genetic reporter green
fluorescent protein Indigo which is blue ferine which is kind of rust colored but many are not and
so there are many purists out there who say that it's not scientifically accurate to have colored
molecules in your anim ations uh there's a woman in Italy called Monica zppa who works entirely in
grayscale and you should check out her work it's pretty amazing uh her work
looks really beautiful
despite being entirely in Shades of Gray but I love color and it's a signature of my work and
I like to use it to indicate disease States for example if I'm trying to talk about inflammation
I will use warm pinks and reds to indicate that and for example if I'm I'm animating cell death I
will use murky greens and yellows and these ideas they register subconsciously with the viewer
they just seem to inherently understand that this is what you're trying to say you can
also use
color to define the different functional parts of various molecules for example over on the bottom
right there on the on the left area of that image there is the structure of the braa one which is
implicated in causing breast cancer and I just made the various parts of that structure varying
shades of SE green because I thought they were beautiful so it's a completely personal choice
in this situation you can use glows to highlight molecular and cellular interactions for example
i
nsulin binding to the insulin receptor that can really punctuate the movement and direct where
the viewer is supposed to be looking and you can use sound effects as well to to create effect and
again these actually direct the viewer's attention and they promote understanding and they're not an
afterthought if you've ever looked at a biomedical animation or an animation without sound and
then compared it to the same thing with sound it really brings things to life so it's it's a
very importa
nt consideration and is intrical to my Productions so I'll just talk a little bit now
about how we're actually using animation at Peter so firstly we're creating the usual
screen based animations which you may be familiar with and what I'm going to show you
now is an edit of our latest animation about chimic antigen receptor key cells which is
uh a treatment technology that we have at petac and it's just recently come on board and
it's really firing of imagination so this edit explains how
these receptors are structured on
the surface of ker T cells and how these cars as they're known enable the teer cells to seek and
destroy cells so let's take a look at [Music] that in the laboratory tea cells are instructed to
produce special receptors called chimeric antigen receptors or cars on their surface making
them into car tea cells the cars consist of different components that occur naturally
in cells but which are never found together the cars sit on the surface of the cell and a
re
engineered to recognize and attach to a patient's cancer cells via The Binding domain here's
a blow there we will now move below the cell surface here we are looking inside the car
t- cell at the car signaling domains or glows once the car t- cell is Bound car
signaling domains begin a chain of events which activates its killer function fun to
destroy cancer [Music] cells a car is therefore a modular combination of cell recognition
components and signaling components Allin one we are no
w looking at the
magnified surface of a car te- cell in contact with a cancer cell
once they are in the body the cars can directly bind to specific markers on
the patient's cancer cells shown in yellow the bound cars then cluster [Music] [Music] together we will now move below the cell membrane here we are looking inside the car
cell at the car signaling domains The Binding interaction has activated the signaling
domains beginning a chain of events which activates the C cell once activated
the green
cart cells release toxic chemicals into the cancer cells which kills them indicated in
red car cells are known as serial killers because they can kill release and move on
to kill other cancer cells in a cycle that can occur multiple times this makes the
them very effective in the fight against [Music] cancer you can also use animations as
the center pieces for interactive tablet based resources and these can be used in patient
appointments so this particular resource was designed
to help a group of lung cancer
patients that have a mutation in a protein caras which controls cell division and this
resource helps the patients better understand their cancer biology and to make informed
decisions about their treatment and maybe um even whether to participate in trials
that are testing new treatments so you can see over here on the left it's an iPad based
resource it's um there's a a a keyboard and a stylus there uh there's welcome information
and an introduction giving
you a background to K there's a video explaining the biology itself
and then there's a series of still images taken from that animation that the the doctor can
annotate uh in real time so um you can draw on the images themselves to indicate this is
where the treatment actually fits into that K structure to keep the off switch in place to turn
off that out- ofc control self Vision then there's a series of terms and definitions and then this
whole thing can be packaged up as a PDF and sent t
o the patient and so we're actually already
conducting a study in the clinic where we're using this technology in patient appointments and
we're then interviewing them after they've seen it and we're going to statistically analyze the
interviews and then determine whether this is a good technology for explaining cancer biology to
patients and whether we could apply it to other cancers we also create still image exhibitions
from the animations that can be animated with an app or aride on you
r smartphone so I'll just
show that to you now hello I'm Dr Maya Dak and I'm the biomedical animator at Peter Mac we have
just recently launched our latest bio animation called what goes wrong in cancer and to go with
that launch we have a series of still images here taken from the animation and these images are
actually interactive so if you use a specialized app called arive and you hold your phone up to
the image like this you can see that it comes to life so you can find this exhibition
on level seven in the atrium so do come down so you can see that animations can actually
achieve a life beyond the confines of a computer screen and that's where it gets really interesting
we've also created Holograms from the animations so this allows the beautiful Graphics to
reach a wider audience in a purely aesthetic form and they're not meant to be educational
they're meant to be inspiring and beautiful so the animations are actually projected from a
television screen that sits hori
zontally above a four-sided transparent pect pyramid and the
images are actually projected into the pyramid forming a complete sphere inside pyramid and
so this gives them an actual presence so you can walk around the pyramid you can look into
it you can poke it and so it becomes a quite personal or communal experience and it's a
physical one as well and these May Inspire more questions than answers we actually tested
these Holograms at a an event called testing grounds which is a forum for
artists to test
Works in progress and they were really well received so we're thinking of of what we are in
the process of actually constructing uh these holograms for an exhibition at peterm and
to also take on the road to various events and conferences and so on so let's take
a look at that hello I'm Maya this is an installation that I created with Eric J who is
the holograph and I'm the animator hope you like it so these the pect cing the TV above
it we can see the the sphere inside [M
usic] cing that's Eric he's the artist
that developed this [Music] collaborating oh let's talk a bit about me how
did I become a biomedical animator I went right through the academic system to post-doctoral level
so I did an undergraduate degree in biomedical science I then went on to do honors I worked as a
research assistant for about three years and then I came to Melbourne uh to do a PhD then I worked
as postop for about a year after that before I kind of you know came to the realizatio
n that
maybe a career in bench based research was not for me and I then went into scientific sales for about
10 years and about the 8year Mark I started to get um really aware that my artistic side needed a
creative Outlet I had always been quite artistic at school I had an even split of Art and Science
subjects I studied Fine Art and French in addition to chemistry and biology and that whole artistic
side took a complete backseat when I was going through University and and climbing the aca
demic
ladder and it was just yearning to come back out again but I was really struggling to think of a
way of bringing Art and Science together my two favorite things so I was asking you who's the art
and as luck would have it I met a wonderful man called Dr Drew Barry who's probably considered the
world's leading biomedic animator and he works at the water and liiza Hall Institute and I was there
for my sales work and it was just one of these chance meetings and he showed me his work and
to me it just seemed the perfect combination of Science and visual representation and that was the
aha moment for me and I said yes this is what I want to do so I said about retraining to become an
animator I went to swinburn and studied multimedia and design and that um allowed me to create enough
uh material to put together into a portfolio to apply to the Australian film television and radio
school where I did an intensive 3D animation course um I then uh set about doing aot lot of
work
on my own trying to get my skill based up doing a lot of freelance projects animating my PhD
which was a really great piece of advice from Drew because you know it so well and so intimately
just really trying to get my skill base up and and getting a really good portfolio under my belt
uh I was then really lucky to be offered an 18mon fellowship with with Drew at weeh high and that's
where I found the art and where I learned most of what I now know I got my first job as s animator
at the ge
ne technology Access Center which is on the grounds of the University High which is right
next door to we high and I'm currently biomedical animator at Peter McAllen Cancer Center as
you well know and I actually went to to the executive director at petac and I said to him
this is who I am this is what I do and this is why you need me there was no job I had to actually
collaborate with them to make a job in this field so you might ask well how can I become a
biomedical animator first and for
emost you have to be really interested in science and in
all reality You' probably have to study to at least Master's level in a biology related field
to be able to have the skills to interpret the data and be able to represent it um visually
that is of course unless you work in a studio of feas where the is provided for you and
you are told to animate something but of course if you have science and you understand
it then you will make a much better science animation then of course you will
need to study 3D
animation and unfortunately there are no specific biomedical animation courses or even a well-
defined career path you know to the entertainment industry and visual effects uh in particular there
are amazing forces at rmit there is plenty of online material for uh biomedical animation that
is specific to biomedical animation so it just depends on how you like to learn whether you like
more formal structured courses or whether you're more um more self-directed and if anyone
wants any
information about any of these offerings any links so on I'm really happy to share them with you
there are actually fantastic courses in Canada and the US that are specific to biomedical
animation but they're very competitive and you will need pretty strong portfolio to apply
but of course someone has to get in so why not you as mentioned the career path in Australia is
a bit sketchy there are a few job opportunities but there are many internationally if you want
to St in Austra
lia you'll probably have to forge your own career path in the way sort of the
way that I have done and that will probably involve freelancing to begin with which as
you know means there could be periods where you have so much work you don't know what to
do with it and periods where you don't have anything for months and end so it can be
a difficult existence but it will be great for getting your skills up you could also
study or work overseas as mentioned to gain valuable experience this is
also really good for
personal development and something I'm seeing more and more now is that a lot of international uh
scientific Animation Studios are offer offering remote work to International uh employees
so this is actually opening up the market a lot so although there are a few opportunities
in Australia this actually gives you the chance to be part of a developing movement and to
shape the way that you really want to work so you'll be at the Forefront of a revolution
in scientific
realization if you choose to to study and stay here uh I can see a situation
in the future where scientists applying for grant funding will have to to have a visual
component explaining what they've discovered at the end of of their research process so
I can see visuals becoming um more common in the Science World in Australia so I think if you
were to get into this field now you would be well placed so back to those perceptions of
science we started out with science is boring and then we w
ent on to science is
complicated and finally scientists are nerds with biomedical animation I really
hope that I've convinced you that it's a wonderful tool for making science interesting
for enabling un um understanding and therefore making science accessible and that maybe being a
sence science note is not such a bad thing I love what I do and if you're interested in science
and and representing visually you will love it too above all I really hope that I've made you
aware of the inner w
orkings of yourselves and that what happens there is extraordinary
thanks so much for your time these are my acknowledgements I won't go through them now
but I would really like to thank the Peter M Cancer Foundation for support of what I do I
am paid entirely through philanthropic funding you can reach me on my Twitter handle or my
email address as I mentioned please contact me if you'd like further information and
yes the intersection of Art and Science is indeed a place of Wonder and I'm
so happy that
I inhabit that Nexus on a daily basis thanks so much thank
Comments