Skull A Day

Well it's New Year's Eve everyone and I hope everyone will have a fantastic time tonight and be safe and stick true to those New Year's Resolutions. I am heading to Green Bay tonight to celebrate and see some people that I worked with before moving to Chicago... as well as spending another New Year's with someone that I am pretty much infatuated with. :D Don't worry, I will let you know how it goes!

One of my New Year's Resolutions (other than the typical ones) is to do more research in the fields of biomedical visualization, illustration, etc (however you want to describe it) and graphic design. With that, I present an awesome blog Skull A Day. If you haven't seen this one yet, take a look! Though most skulls are not anatomically correct, it is great to see what people can do with typical objects to make or see a skull. It definitely gives me some creative inspiration, hope it can do the same for you!

Happy New Years once again!

Words to Live By

I have finally had enough time to finally read something other than anatomy texts and scientific papers and I finally finished a very inspiring book. The Last Lecture is a memoir by Randy Pausch, a virtual reality and computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a cancer without a cure and kills quickly. Randy died on July 25th, 2008 and left his words of wisdom to his children in the form of a book. His words are ones to live by and I recommend this book to everyone. One of the chapters at the end hit me directly, as some college grads and others think that they are better than what they are given whether it be jobs, classes, etc. The excerpt may be long, but it's worth reading to the end.

51 No Job Is Beneath You

It's been well-documented that there is a growing sense of entitlement among young people today. I have certainly seen that in my classrooms.

So many graduating seniors have this notion that they should be hired because of their creative brilliance. Too many are unhappy with the idea of starting at the bottom.
My advice has always been: "You ought to be thrilled you got a job in the mailroom. And when you get there, here's what you do: Be really great at sorting mail."

No one wants to hear someone say: "I'm not good at sorting mail because the job is beneath me." No job should be beneath us. And if you can't (or won't) sort mail, where is your proof that you can do anything?

After our ETC students were hired by companies for internships or first jobs, we'd often ask the firms to give us feedback on how they were doing. Their bosses almost never had anything negative to say about their abilities or their technical chops. But when we did get negative feedback, is was almost always about how the new employees were too big for their britches. Or that they were already eyeing the corner offices.

When I was fifteen, I worked at an orchard hoeing strawberries, and most of my coworkers were day laborers. A couple of teachers worked there, too, earning a little extra cash for the summer. I made a comment to my dad about the job being beneath those teachers. (I guess I was implying that the job was beneath me, too.) My dad gave me a tongue-lashing of a lifetime. He believed manual labor was beneath no one. He said he'd prefer that I worked hard and became the best ditch-digger in the world rather than coasting along as a self-impressed elitist behind a desk.

I went back into that strawberry field and I still didn't like the job. But I had heard my dad's words. I watched my attitude and hoed a little harder.

Paush, Randy 2008. "The Last Lecture" pp 168-9.

Anatomy of an Angel

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope today all were blessed with love and family. Christmas was great for me, I was given an external hard drive which will be helpful for storing my artwork and my family got a kick out of the chocolate d'anatomie that I gifted. All in all a good day. To celebrate this Christmas day I present to you Damien Hirst's "Anatomy of an Angel" (see a more detailed image here). I have heard of Damien Hirst as the wealthiest conceptual European artist to still be alive, as well as his diamond encrusted, platinum skull (take a look how it was created!) and shark in formeldehyde (with quite a name for its title), but not for sculpture like this. It is argued that he is not what people usually consider an "artist", since he did not formally do the work himself, but had others do it for him by following his vision. Whatever you decide, the work is intriguing to me because of my medical and scientific background because of the relevance in anatomy, preservation, death, and biology. He even has some anatomical models that "he" had done as well! Check out a slide show of some of Damien Hirst's work here.

Photo: Courtesy of DayLife http://www.daylife.com/photo/05Ymdlc5a5bfH

2 Medical Visualization Companies to Take a Look At

I'm going to probably regret saying this in less than a month, but at least during graduate school, I have something to keep me busy. I would be out and about a little more, but this snow is driving me crazy! Plus, my hometown is in the middle of nowhere so I have to drive at least a half hour to get anywhere.....no easy public transportation for me now! I should be working on one of my friend's logo he wants me to do for him, but it's Christmas Eve, that's my excuse. However, I have been doing lots of research on medical illustration and the field and people involved in it, so I think that will help me out; it has been keeping me busy at least. I found two websites to present here. One is Alexander and Turner and the other one is Fairman Studios.

Alexander & Turner is a duo medical illustration team located in Grayton Beach, Florida. Though their portfolios and emphases are very different, both have an incredibly solid and reputable client list.

Fairman Studios is the biological and medical illustration and animation portfolio site for Jennifer Fairman. She graduated from the John's Hopkins program for medical illustration and teaches there now as well. Her work has a very delicate and detail-oriented style and is seen in all of her work.

Well I should help for our annual Christmas Eve dinner! Yay for cornish hens, grasshopper drinks, and family!

This Guy is AMAZING!

I was tooling around the internet looking for graphic designers, photoshop tutorials, and whatnot (I tend to do a lot of tooling around since I don't have that much to do during break) and I found this designer. His name is Chris Haines and he can do some pretty cool things with Illustrator and Photoshop! I better watch to some more tutorials.... my stuff is so basic compared to his! Check out more of his stuff on the Behance Network. It's nice that he uses some anatomy in his work as well!

All I Want for Christmas....

Is my two front teeth from Bubba Gum! I was tooling around the internet yesterday to find some silly Holiday-related things and I found and interestingly wonderful stocking stuffer. They are candy teeth, and they don't look like the beautiful ones that come from braces when you were 12 years old. But if you want to reminisce of the good time when you were little with crooked teeth, this sweet thing is for you! Click the link here to see where to get them!

I Almost Died During Christmas Break....

Well okay, here's the story. My Mom wanted me to paint a few places in our house including the ceiling of a few rooms during the break since I didn't quite have a job. You know, no big deal, I can paint a flat color no problem. Needless to say, I started with the ceiling since we didn't have to discuss colors. Too bad I didn't think about the trouble I would encounter with my mere 5' 2" frame.

I was in the process of cleaning the ceiling.... no problem, and then I started taping. I started and I couldn't get right up to corner so I had to use the tallest chair that we had.... too bad it was a swivel chair. I was fine for sometime, but the thing is with taping you have to continue with a long piece of tape; it will look better that way. So in the process of trying to hop to another chair, I crashed. Yup, just crashed. Crashed on my parents little snowman Christmas tree that I thought I moved far enough away. At least it was fake so I just messed up the branches of the tree. However, there were some glass ornaments which of course I broke and of course fell on and of course cut myself with. It's not even the problem I cut myself, it's the place. RIGHT ACROSS MY WRIST! Seriously, not only am I sore, bloody, broke some ornaments, and ticked off at myself, but now I look like a cutter. Awesome. I just hope it heals with no scars, seriously, who is going to believe this story?

Well after a bit, I went to taping again, but I left the hard-to-reach parts to my taller family members. So I was done for the day, with painting to do tomorrow. I received my brother's gift in the mail from my online shopping, just to open in and find out it has a tear in it, AWESOME. I also check out my loan account and there is STILL money in there. I. HATE. LOANS!!!!!!!

Tomorrow should be a better day, we will see with the painting.....

Also, I found this little illustration on Flickr, don't know who did it, but I thought it was appropriate.

It's Not Too Late to Shop Anatomy-Style!

Just in case you were looking for that special someone who has everything for Christmas, check out the outrageous array of objects at Cafepress.com. I want a mug, an ornament, and a tshirt, with a matching throw pillow and shirt for my dog....yes, they have all of those things for the science geek at heart. Or you can get something a little more tasty, like antomically-shaped chocolates.....no lie, I purchased some for Christmas. I'm looking forward to get the weird looks when they are opened! Well off to sleep to do some more Christmas shopping tomorrow and meet a little one!

Website and Internship

Well, the semester is finally over! We had our presentations on Thursday; They went well and it was really nice to see all of the student's work once again. We worked hard for this, and you can tell. I'm really a fan of this program, however stressful it may be, but that's just how it goes. It feels so good to now have to do anything. So now you can take a look at my finished website.... I will more than likely put in a few more things during the break to make it even better, but I think it does the job at the moment! Here's my website, check it out and let me know what you think!

Also, as you can tell from the picture at the top, I did have my 2nd interview at the National MS Society, Greater Illinois Chapter for a web and graphics internship with them and I got it! I will be starting January 5th and I'm so excited! It all happened because I can proof-read text and that I showed the head of the marketing department my website! It helps to get yourself out there! It will be beneficial to gain experience and to work for such a great organization.

The building is awesome and it is right downtown..... I love this city and I feel like I'm going to love working here too!

There was one issue though. You know, of course. It is really convenient to get there; the bus on the corner of the street of my apartment stops right at the corner of the building I will be working at! However, it is on a one-way street, one thing I did not think about...... I was expecting to take that bus back, but I couldn't find where to take it the opposite way. At first, I began to panic because of course I forgot my map and got turned around with everything going on. It was right across the street from Union Station, so I knew the Blue Line was there, but I didn't know on what street.

Instead of looking stressed, I just started walking. You never want to look like you are confused when you are by yourself in the city....that's when bad things happen. When I was trying to cross the street in front of Union Station, this homeless man was trying to sell me the Onion newspaper (If you don't know this already, DON'T TAKE IT FROM THEM!) Usually you can just say "no thank you" and they will leave you alone, but this guy was persistent... thank God I tend to place myself around plenty of people so nothing would happen without a witness. Eventually he left and I found the Blue Line to go home. It was nice to see what's around the area from my walking though, so that was good. You just have to have a good head on your shoulders and look confident, even if you may not feel like you are!

Inflammatory Response

Assignment numero dos for the week of Hell: Process Graphic. I chose the nonspecific inflammatory response for the general public for print. I think it turned out well and I had a lot of fun doing it! My style is becoming more graphic and I love to work with Illustrator and find new tools to use when I can. Phew, thank goodness this week went by fast!