For this project, a website graphic for a biotech company's homepage, I needed to get a draft made in 3 hours or less total. Because I didn't think a pencil sketch would give them a very good idea of what the final product would look like, I had to move to the computer pretty quickly after a few cursory thumbnails on paper. So I wound up with something that looks like it could be a finished product, but a rather poor one, since both the composition and colors need some work. So now my sketchbook is like, "See? I told you so." And it's right. But the clients know that this is just a "sketch" so it's okay. I'll probably go back to the sketchbook before moving on with it. That is, if it'll have me.  

This interactive animation is a work-in-progress. So far it illustrates how the electron was discovered using a vacuum tube. By the end it will go on to show how the mass/charge ratio of an electron was found.

syrb2v1 from Mary O'Reilly on Vimeo.

The last video I posted described antibiotic resistance and the proliferation of antibiotic-resistance bacteria, and is the first in a series of three animations that accompany a video describing a post doc's work on a threonine halogenating enzyme. This animation is the third in the series, so the bomb at the end won't make sense until the second one is complete. Once threonine is halogenated, it gets incorporated into an antibiotic via a non-ribosomal peptide synthetase. The electronegativity of the chlorine activates the adjacent carbon and it is thought that this enhanced reactivity plays a role in the toxicity of the molecule. That is why the carbon is blinking. Subtle, I know. But the only real hiccup I had with this animation so far was when I realized that I had drawn the enantiomer of threonine in my prototype. Not even just a diastereomer, no, the complete enantiomer. My students would be so disappointed if they knew. 

antibioticresistancev2 from Mary O'Reilly on Vimeo.

Here's a more complete draft of this animation about antibiotic resistance for an undergraduate chemistry audience. Obviously still a few gremlins to work out but it was ready to send to the clients. There's no point making the client pay for polishing if there are major revisions in store. This was done in Flash. I'm going to miss you, Flash.

antibioticresistancedraft1 from Mary O'Reilly on Vimeo.

Here is a preview of an animation I'm working on for the HHMI-MIT video series that I've been involved in for the past year or so. There'll be three animations for this particular video, and this first animation is meant to show how even though humans are smart and can design potent antibiotics, the bugs outsmart us and develop resistance. I still need to wipe out the rest of the colony and then re-populate it starting with division of the antibiotic-resistant cell. I should say that the mechanism of resistance is a tad more complicated than the bacterium breaking the arrow over its proverbial knee, but I would need at least one more full animation to do it justice, and that's not really what the video is about. Stay tuned to find out what that is.