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Strayfish — Effect of Amph on DA Neurons
by-nc-nd
Published: 2009-04-05 16:54:10 +0000 UTC; Views: 1296; Favourites: 20; Downloads: 50
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Description
One of my latest assignments, for textbook illustration, specific topics in neurology. I decided to look at synaptic clefts and the topic I chose ended up being the effects of amphetamine on dopaminergic neurons.Adobe Illustrator CS4 was used to make the basic shapes and moecules, and Adobe Photoshop CS2 was used for the shading and detail. And many, many iterations of this happened in pencil before this layout was decided upon.
I like how it turned out; my bf described the texture of the neurons as resembling "dolphin skin," which I think is pretty cool. It's difficult to visualize structures on this level without some creative constructs so I am happy that it turned out looking kind of unique and hopefully tells a good story too.
Edit: I replaced the old and quite ugly version with the finished version that was handed in for marking. Apologies for not being able to read the text. I think this resembles a textbook illustration much more now than the previous version.
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Comments: 24
Well done on this medical illustration! I appreciate concepts of dopaminergic transmission that I learned in pharmacology and physiology a little more now, with this image.
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Nice work.
Making scientific illustrations really is a pretty tough art. Especially for something as difficult to visulize as microbiology or neurology. I'm always impressed with what other artists come up with.
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Thanks! I appreciate the comment.
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I'll take that as a compliment XD
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Why thank you, dear
Hope my teachers think so... >_>
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I'm so ignorant to biology details, but that looks awesome. Great work dear!
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Aww, well, unless you took university-level bio it'd probably be kinda difficult to follow without a lot of explanation of terms anyway 
I probably made that unnecessarily complicated anyway :/
But yeah, I did my own research for the pic, and trust me, my teacher couldn't follow it without like 3 explanations either and she's been a medical illustrator for decades.
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Oh wow! I'm getting flashbacks to my human anatomy course I took last year, where I'm pretty sure we covered the process of the neurons. (Hell, if I remember any of that though. I have to admire you for your incredible understanding of such things, heh. )
Either way, the illustration came out nice, it truly looks professional like what you'd see in a textbook. Your research most definitely paid off as I'm sure an ignorant audience wouldn't realize how accurate the images are to the initial concept. Excellent work!
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Thanks so much! ^-^;
In the actual textbook image (the one I'm handing in) the background is white and there's a lot more text/explanation, but I'm so happy that you think it looks professional!
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I have no idea what's going on but I'd like to 8D that looks so hard to create... X__X
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See my reply to MuseSilver? Haha.
It wasn't that bad for rendering really, just went through many, many design stages for increasing clarity. So many O_O
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heeey now that i've taken psych where we went over neuro anatomy I understand what's happening LOLOL like the vines being the dendrites and the circular things are the terminal buttons hahaha
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I love seeing actual technical illustrations in the technical illustration gallery
I'd love to see what's going on
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I probably should post the version with the legend/explanation at some point 
I'm glad I chose the right category for it... they don't really have anything for medical illustration, but it's definitely a technical degree and not an "artistic" one (not to say that creativity/artistic skill isn't promoted). :/
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I think technical illustration requires a lot of creativity - especially anatomical or biological illustration because so much of it you can't see without a microscope!
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Thanks!
Mostly what the instructors want from you is to be able to tell a story and be able to educate others, which has been difficult to learn but is really rewarding when you get it right.
It's true though, a lot of what we are asked to draw is not obvious or even normally visible, and most of what you get through a microscope/EM scan/ultrasound/MRI/whatever is not easily... translatable? So it's a big challenge (but also a lot of fun) to decide how to depict these weird, essentially imagined, structures in such a way that people actually understand what the hell you're trying to tell them
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Well you seem to be doing a really good job of it!
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That looks fantastic! I cna't wait to see more anatomical stuff, it's sp fascinating....
Funny enough I still rmeeber how this procedure works from Bio... Well, excluding the specific names of those long words.... xD
<333
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Yay! Someone else knows XD
It's all about, you know, synaptic clefts and vesicles and things...
Even so, I ended up simplifying a lot from the research since know one is actually 100% sure what the processes actually are...
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