Part of my MS thesis short film has a section about the impact that oil exposure can have on the eyes and hearts of fish. I wanted to make sure to have the equivalent physical affect that humans would experience to make the damage more relatable. Following are the different illustrated aspects of that. There is also live footage incorporated throughout this part of the film.

I was looking for the opening illustration for the Vision section to be lighthearted and understandable. Having already done the illustrations of all the marine wildlife, made creating a fish vision chart with an accompanying ophthalmologist a perfect fit! This concept was inspired by the original Doctor Doolittle film. An animated clip with a Red Drum interacting with the illustration below can be found here.

The following image series was initially created for a one-off Instagram post and then turned into concept art and assets for the film. This series (top to bottom and left to right from upper-left) shows a Mahi-mahi eye from the outside, the cross-section of the eye, the rods and cones of the eye, and finally the rhodopsin protein within the rod cell. 

Essentially, rod and cone cells within human and fish eyes allow us to process images and color. Rod's rhodopsin protein in particular only "photograph" in black and white, allowing us to see when there is a limited amount of light. Cone proteins capture images in red, green, and blue and work best in brightly lit areas. The "photos" from rods and cones are sent to the brain and processed into full color images that we see when looking around our environment.

The following animations are part of the human health aspect that I wanted to relate to fish. I started with the simple eye illustration opening and closing and then combined it with the eye cross-section interfacing with a brain. I particularly wanted to highlight where the brain processes light. In the right animation you can see light entering the eye and then lighting up the optical lobe at the back of the brain where the image processing occurs.

This final fish eye illustration uses the assets mentioned above and is a direct comparison to the human eye animation (also above). The most obvious difference is the brain anatomy, but there are slight changes in the eye cross-section as well. The optical lobe of a fish is located at the second "bump" on the top crest of the brain.

I did the same animations as the human eye, and didn't think it necessary to add the animation here.

In the same vein as the ophthalmology title card, I also wanted a cardiac card. In the film a mahi-mahi swims up to the cardiologist, similar to the red drum animation. 

Visualizing hearth health was a bit easier than eye health. Conveniently, Red Drum and Mahi-mahi, the two main study species that the film focuses on, both are quite translucent during development in the egg and soon after hatching as larvae. So the hearts are very easy to see without any surgery or dissection!

Although I did work extensively with microscope video and photo capture, it was helpful to have illustrations as well. The art particularly came in handy for illustrating the difference between a healthy fish and an oil-exposed fish that has developed an enlarged yolk (think chicken eggs) due to fluid flooding the area and pressing against the heart. The animation below the illustrations shows off a sort of time-lapse of a healthy fish morphing into an oil-exposed fish experiencing edema (the expansion/fluid flooding). There are also other morphological differences associated with oil-exposure that are noticeable in the time-lapse.

The last stand-alone animation that I made (I also did animations overlaying live film) is this treadmill. Although it may seem random, there are swimming chambers that researchers use to study the heart health of adult fish that are remarkably similar to treadmills! 

Having the treadmill was a perfect source of comparison alongside a simple but effective animation to finish off the health art series.