Anatomy of a Medical Animation

Our regular series that is a behind the scene look at the technical, aesthetic and business considerations that went into creating a particular medical animation movie.

Everyday Health – Outside | In : Rheumatoid Arthritis

Executive Summary

Our client, Everyday Health seeks to empower people to live their healthiest lives, every day. They wanted to raise awareness of Rheumatoid Arthritis and its pathogenesis. The medical animation above is the final version for “Outside|In: Rheumatoid Arthritis”. What went into the video was similar to a movie; a 1-minute movie, but a movie nonetheless.

Read About the Process (5 mins)

The models

Since the animation was for consumers, the science had to be easy to understand, but also be scientifically and medically defensible and, most of all, interesting.

At Scientific Animations, we meet different challenges with creative solutions. One such challenge was to bring the 206 bones in the human body to creatively assemble into a skeleton. We used two techniques to manage workload and maximize aesthetics. First we animated only below the skull — it was a joint animation after all. No need to show flying teeth. Second, with a tight spiraling camera, we limited the number of bones on screen, while creating an aesthetic “showcase” effect often done for jewelry. Animating 206 individual bones would have been a sisyphean task. Our creative approach made it manageable and more interesting.

Everyday Health asked us to visualize inflammation in the synovial membrane and show damaged cartilage. To achieve this, we needed to know our medicine. We also revealed that inflammation isn’t just about swelling or pain in the tissue. It could mean protrusions that physically compromise joint movements as well. As a result, we were able to visualize wear, tear and damage in arthritis affected joints, in a way seldom visualized by the general public.

The client was especially pleased to see how we explained the key differences between Rheumatoid Arthritis and Osteoarthritis as well as how we visualized the very real suffering of patients.

Branding

We were tasked with creating models that viewers could relate to. We opted for a look that was soft and approachable but still detailed enough to be distinctive from what viewers might be familiar with. The background colors, skin tone, age appropriateness, font selection, text treatment, and the styles were all chosen to be consistent with the branding and overall mission of our client.

Process

Similar to movie production, we follow a three-stage process for creating a medical animation:

Pre-production: Preparation of storyboard aligned with client’s requirements. Creation texturized, 3D model “characters”. Develop background scenes, with props, add the characters and light the scenes. Check camera views and optimize the scenes for rendering.
Production: Animate the models to reveal the story and render animations into footage.
Post-production: Compositing or stitching together the animation sequences; adding narration, text and visual effects applied to polish the final animation.

With 15 years of experience and thousands of medical animations in our wake, we’ve created systems that allows our clients to trust in the process. Our project managers all have advanced degrees in medical illustration and our production team culture is uncompromising leading to aesthetic and accurate output, allowing clients to sit back, relax, and focus on big picture.