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.

Evolution-Health: Lactose Intolerance

The third in the series of Evolution-Health animations (created at FableVision for the New York Hall of Science) is on Lactose Intolerance, and probably the trickiest to explain. While a lot of us can digest milk well into adulthood, some of us cannot. Basically, we're all born with the enzyme to digest the lactose in our mother's milk when we are infants, but until tens of thousands of years ago, there was no reason to retain that ability once our mothers weened us. It wasn't until some cultures began raising livestock that animal milk became a valuable source of nutrition—people who could drink the milk were at a new advantage (thus, more apt to survive and reproduce). Those who couldn't, well—didn't do so hot with cow's milk.

I actually named these kids in the Flash file as I was drawing them. From left to right: Sam, Amelia, Danielle, Jason, Nikki, and Lily.

Nikki is not pleased.

Parts of Europe, Africa, and East Asia didn't partake in the whole animal milk thing and are now more likely to have difficulty with lactose.

Mooooooooo.

But, it ends on a happy note. The kids who can't drink the milk help themselves to some orange juice. (Yes, that's an orange juice mustache.) I can't take full credit for this gag—Margie Prager from Jeff Kennedy Associates wrote in the orange juice bit. I did add the pulp flecks.

Next up: Sunburn.

Evolution-Health: Obesity

If you missed my first post on Back Pain, this week I'm sharing some of the designs and layouts I did from the Evolution-Health animation project we created at FableVision for the New York Hall of Science. The second of the 4 animations we developed is about Obesity... specifically, the idea that we evolved the ability to store fat when food was scarce, and how that's become a problem in the modern world (at least here in America), where easy access to an abundance of high-calorie fatty and sweet food combines with an inactive lifestyle.

Obesity was the first animation I started design on. Initially there was a thought to have the contemporary characters have match with prehistoric counterparts (a fun idea). It ended up clashing with the some of the story set-ups, and was probably too cute. Including in this case, where we open on a couch potato but follow a smaller runt-type when we move to the past.

Below, an early storyboard sequence of the runt, running to catch up with the food.

This one has a great 'snarly-gorging' eating sequence (above). It ends on a family, happily chomping away on various unhealthy snacks. Note the baby with the soda.

Next up: Lactose Intolerance.

Evolution-Health: Back Pain

Starting back in October of 2012, I began work on an assignment at FableVision that would quickly become my favorite project of the year. I've written before about the animation-science connection that happens often at my company—we often use film and gaming to teach educational concepts in a fun and entertaining way. I'm a big science nerd, and and even bigger animation nerd, so it's a dream when the two overlap. This was a collaboration between our studio and Jeff Kennedy Associates, who we'd previously worked with on a series of animations for the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (here and here). The exhibit, scheduled to first appear at the New York Hall of Science, discusses the relationships between evolution and modern-day health issues, such as back pain, lactose intolerance, and obesity.

Over the course of the week, I'll be posting some of my designs and layouts from the series, starting tonight with Back Pain. I went in wanting explore a cartooning style that was lighter on linework than I normally work. Another restraint: no texture. Keep it simple using flat colors. The project was drawn and animated completely in Flash (CS3, if you're curious). This short, and another one, feature ancestors like Homo erectus—so you can see why I had a lot of fun.

(I split this one up so you can see a few of the key poses.)

Next up: Obesity.