Evolution-Health: Sunburn

Ending the week of show-and-tell, here's the final set of designs from the Evolution-Health animations we made at FableVision for the New York Hall of Science. The last one is on Sunburn—why some of us ended up with pale skin to begin with, and what light-skinned populations can do to protect themselves from the sun. It's not often that bikinis and bathing suits pair up with educational science, but here goes.

In all of animations I had an interesting time playing with a cartoon style lighter on line construction. It's difficult for me to work completely in flat shapes, so I reserved line to help separate out those shapes as needed. You can see that her legs warranted more definition because they have overlapping forms.

This is what happens if you don't wear sun screen!

When you live closer to the equator, darker skin helps protect you from the sun's damaging UV rays. When our species migrated north from the African continent into Europe around 40,000 years ago, people evolved pale skin as a means to better absorb the noticeably weaker sunlight needed to create Vitamin D. So, it's an issue of where your recent ancestors lived on the planet.

But it doesn't make as much sense to go sunbathing in the cold north.

Still, that doesn't stop lighter-skinned folks from hitting the beach.

Eventually our protagonist learns her lesson, and shares this info with her other tanning friends. A squirt of sunscreen can do you a lot of good.

Thanks for following along this week. I'll let you know when the animations go up on the FableVision website, which should happen soon. You can see the designs from all four animations by clicking on the filter for NYSCI.