Freelancing Fun

So I have been working with an internist up in Evanston, IL on medical models to help him with accurate injections to combat nueropathy in his patients. Yay

It’s been A LOT of fun, even though I’m over worked as it is, I’ve really enjoyed doing this. I’ve been playing with new materials, getting fun new tools (like the best, fastest, most gnarly speed demon of a dremmel tool). The first prototype is finished so I wanted to share its completion with you guys.

Next I’ll be playing with plastics and less detailed painting and more form representation for the musculature. Hope to be done before May, so you see the finished product around then. Then there’s talk on moving on to a right leg and possibly some forearm/ hand work. Fun stuff.

 

Don’t You Steal My Spinal Fluid

This is the second piece we just completed for Illustration Techniques. Once again working black and white but purely basic line and using Illustrator’s vector based programming.

For this piece we had to choose a particular medical procedure, nothing to surgical, that should involve hands and medical instruments so we could get practice illustrating them. It actually took  me a while to figure out what I wanted to do for this piece and I finally settled on a Lumbar Puncture. I haven’t gotten around to revisiting this piece yet. I need to re-illustrate the patient as they are not curled up enough as they would be in reality to show the spinal processes to locate the place to puncture. I also want to add some color to the fluid, possibly gloves. I’m open to suggestion. I did it in only black and white first because I wanted to see if I could create a successful illustration without the use of color. I didn’t want it to be a crutch that I relied on to give the reader important information.

Not that there is anything wrong with using color to convey information. I just wanted to make I could be successful without it first. It was an experiment

I’m also showing real quick the exercise we just did in recreating a carbon dust Brodel using Photoshop. I mainly used the Burn and Dodge tools for this piece and discovered they are awesome for black and white renders!

Oh by the way, I’m Taking Illustration Techniques too.

I wasn’t going to but decided to add it to my list again last second.. because I’m insane. I’m 19 credits of crazy. (hence delays on blog posting)

Anyway, I digress. I finished the first piece a while back and recently got around to revisiting it completely in a completely different program with much more successful results. For this assignment we were to attempt pen and ink style thru digital means. You could do it traditionally but I’ve done that a lot and wanted to try a new route. So I went with Photoshop and brushes first which yielded these results:

I think the second one is MUCH more successful. I hope you guys think so too.

It’s ‘Ear

I finally finished my first prosthesis. If it was adhesion only and if this patient suddenly developed my exact skin tone…

Well, I’m not working with patients yet so this just my first dry run prosthesis. I proud of it for the most part there are some shadow coloration issues. The second pack, I think was a bit of a disaster since I had to remix the base silicone color from scratch, I rushed a bit to be honest and it became WAY too opaque. So, needless to say I’m a little angry at myself for not taking more time and adding the pigments slower…. LIKE I’M SUPPOSE TOO

So since I last updated about my ear I was still at the wax phase. After all that hard work I covered the wax ear in dental stone and melted all my blood sweat and tears out to created a mold of the wax version. Then I made a series of colors from freckle to base, applied them in layers to the mold, and waited… and waited… and waited. And TADA. We have an ear:

As I said before I laid in the shadow glaze (the purple bits) a little too thickly so this prosthetic would belong to someone who exhibits poor circulation

I’m Such A Flamer

Yeah, so these past few weeks have been quite the wild ride. I do promise from now on to be more attentive to this blog and to try not to let my schedule get to me. The most recent project I have to talk about is my first 3DS max experience. For this project we were to choose any type of medical tool and told to render it using the 3DS Max sculpting software… I WAS SUPER PUMPED.

I decided to do something a little different and chose to model some of the sculpting tools we (facial prosthetists) use in sculpting a primary cast prosthetic model out of wax (one of the first steps in making a prosthetic).

I thought this would be really interesting because I got to get creative and play with some flame material creation and glass material creation. The flame took most of my time obviously, but I think the final product was a success. I’d like to revisit the metal material on the tools. They just look a little dull and CGI-ish to me. Thoughts?

Hope You’re All Ears

This is it, the time has come. It’s finally here.

The day I get to make my first prosthetic. I’m pretty overwhelmed, piling wax onto this dental stone surface making his amorphous blob that will soon become an ear. Going at it with dental tools with little idea at to exactly what I’m doing. But in the end I am able to do a pretty good back replica of a modeled ear. The first day was rough, I only got a little over an hour to work on it and not having sculpted in forever there was some rust to my skill but by day two I was rollin’. Got a lot of major aspects done. Then I got to the details and perfecting. Most of this time was spent on the tragus and anti tragus…. oh the tragus. That little thing is a simple looking but actually complex little bugger that makes me oh so very perturbed.

But I digress. I greatly enjoyed working on it. The clinic itself has such a great atmosphere, the people are super nice and friendly and everything is so very clean and peaceful with Johnny’s classical music going on in the background. It’s most certainly a place for divine creativity and I look forward to creating much more there in the months to come.

In the mean time here is a brief look at he developement of my first ear. Unfortunately, it didn’t occur to me to start taking pictures at the very begining but eh, what are ya gonna do.

They are in chronological order from left to right.

3ds to the Max

Ever have one of those, “What was I thinking moments?” I just did looking at my last two post titles… cheese-y. Oh well, I digress.

I started my first medical objects in 3D rendering this semester. I’m really enjoying all the toys you can play with in this program. The complex shapes and modifiers are all blowing my mind.

For this week we had to rendering a syringe, red blood cell, and vessel. Lathe in my new best friend when it comes to making custom 3D shapes. Chamfer and fillet are still  blowing my mind a little but I’m getting the jest, and just got Digital Lighting and Rendering by Jeremy Birn from Pixar so I’ll be trying even new fun stuffies. Here are the jpegs of my renders for you viewing pleasure. Other things to come… enjoy

 

Wooster, well cock-a-doodle-do

 

This is a new blog I am currently obsessed with. Its called the Wooster Collective and it’s goal is to post street art, all day everyday and I’m a bit of a street art addict so to me this is great and every morning when I get up I can’t wait to check in to see if anything new and exciting has come up.

 

Anyways, this is a short post as I get back into the swing of things after a hard and trying break ( antithesis of what a break should be I realize). But  I will not give up!

In the meantime… look at the blog of the Wooster Collective!!!!

Next Semester, ITS A BLAST!

So, part two of my five part stint into Graduate School has begun and somehow I’m already tired… who knew? Anyways, I’m chock full of 19 credit hours this semester so this should be fun right?

So far I have started my first prosthetic (I will take pictures soon) and made a really lame rocket in Computer Visualization using my first ever 3D program and there it is proudly displayed below in all its dork-dom.

I’m excited for this semester to see what it will bring to my professional career. Insight into my future perhaps? Hopefully a part time job maybe. The prosthetic sculpting process is very interesting so far and am just working with the traditional basics but hopefully with time and patience I make my way up to the fun tech-y 3D scanning processes etc.

Hopefully it's atleast cute.

The Semester Is Over And What To Do Now

 

… but dwell on things that I think I should have changed and what I didn’t do well enough. So far today I have redesigned my business cards and post cards and ordered sets of both. I also went through my website again seeing if I wanted to change anything. Then I proceeded to make a WHOLE list of changes to which my lovely boyfriend said, “Do not change anything, you’ll make it too busy, and I’ll hate it.” So I throw out the list in a effort not to overwork things.

These are the cards I designed today:

front of business card

back of business card

front of post card

back of post card

After today I will attack drawings I don’t like and start shipping out Christmas presents.

I am not working for the first break ever in the history of my life (well about since the age of 15) and have no idea what to do with myself accept working on stuff. Is that wrong?

I think I’m going to fast because I already have almost half the things on my “winter break to-do list” already. Oh fudge….

Check out the following:

www.azimmerman.net

www.society6.com/azimmerman

^more prints to come, its on my to do list