This Is How You Create Cancer

28th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, where our studio is located, is the last remnant of New York City's Flower District.

Interesting how this can effect the work.

Last year when we were working with Mark Mannucci on Curious for WNET/Thirteen one of the segments required illustrating the insides of a cancer cell.

We didn't want to be too "science-y".  No gross photoreal veins or anything.

On the other hand, procedural dramas have set a standard of explaination when it comes to the gore inside us.  They also have a standard of production value.  Very computery.  Very dimensional.

This is what we used.

Items from our neighbors in the Flower District.  

I'm not sure what they're meant to be used for, but they make for mean capillaries.

First the soundtrack gets edited and storyboard drawn.

For the art, a little Photoshopping:

Detail:

This prepares the artwork for a relatively easy AfterEffect project:

(above) Only a handful of layers.  A single camera.  The track was already cut (YOU MUST DO THE VOICE TRACK FIRST) and key words are marked so you don't have constantly RAM preview.

(above) Keep the keyframes simple and to a minimum.

The result: