5 de diciembre de 2007
El cerebro y la memoria

Stefan Estrada pasó por mi clase de infografía online y 3D hace unos meses. Nada más terminar los estudios, fue becario en National Geographic, donde se ocupó de algunas interesantes piezas interactivas e infográficas. Tras algunos meses, ha entrado en la plantilla de la revista como productor multimedia/infografista online.

El historial de Stefan es peculiar: no estudió periodismo, sino computer science (informática). Se interesó por mis clases por su deseo de combinar sus conocimientos de programación con sus habilidades artísticas (es un excelente dibujante). El resultado es un profesional capaz de desarrollar proyectos multimedia complejos en solitario, de reunir y procesar información, realizar ilustraciones a mano, en formato vectorial y 3D, y de programar aplicaciones online y juegos. No se ve gente así todos los días.

Un buen ejemplo de su trabajo es el reciente especial sobre la memoria en National Geographic (gráfico1, gráfico2). En sus propias palabras, en el e-mail en que me enviaba los enlaces:

You can find my original sketches here:

http://www.orizuru.org/ngm/memorysb.html

You can see that most of the original ideas remained in the final version, but of course a lot changed by the time it was finished.

I made all the 3D models. Everything in that interactive I made except for the icons used next to the titles of each topic such as "Visual Information," "Auditory Information," etc... Those icons came from the magazine graphic".

I even did most of the writing and research in the interactive that was not covered in magazine. I had to do a lot of initial research when first planning so I would know what I would cover, and then additional research to make sure that everything in the graphic was correct, including all the imagery. I modeled the internal parts of the brain based on MRI scan data to make sure they were depicted accurately.

I tried to stay with the theme of the magazine graphic, but greatly expanded on it and took advantage of the online medium to depict things that could not be done on the magazine.

After the initial planning stages, I began by modeling the brain cortex and cerebellum and doing some test renders to get the right look and feel. You can see a test render animation I made here:

http://www.orizuru.org/ngm/brainrender.html

After that I started working on the look and design of the flash piece and writing some initial actionscript for the menu and interactivity. I started off by just being able to rotate the brain and then worked on the transitions to the subsections one by one. I would model the pieces involved in the subsections, animate it, and then integrate them into the flash interactive by writing all the necessary actionscript.

After all the sections where completed, it was mostly debugging and working with the art director to fine tune the design.

Once the magazine graphic was finalized, I again reworked the design; mostly changing the color scheme and typography to better fit the look of the magazine graphic.

After that we sent it to neuroscience experts to make sure all the information was accurate and then sent it through QA to solve any remaining issues, mainly typographic errors and some remaining bugs in the actionscript. It was a fairly involved process, but it was great to see the end product.