I make my living creating art and animation of the beautiful and often surreal world that exists within our living (and sometimes dying) cells. Although I've been doing it since the late 90s, It was in 2006 that The Inner Life of the Cell brought my work to the widest audience on Earth: Youtube. Originally planned as a classroom tool, Inner Life takes the viewer through many of the inner workings of a leukocyte (or white blood cell) showing many of the cellular structures and organelles along the way. I spent about a year and a half creating about eight and a half minutes of animation under the guidance of Dr. Robert Lue and Dr. Alain Viel. As the footage was rendered, we started to get a feeling that this was something special. When it was finished, I thought that the visuals could stand on their own to show the wonder of the cellular landscape, even without labels or explanation. So I made the three minute edit, and asked Matt Berky (Massive Productions) to set it to music. I submitted it to the 2006 Siggraph Computer Animation Festival, where it was shown in the Electronic Theater. It ended up on Youtube. And took on a life of its own. So, to kick things off on this blog, I've uploaded a fresh, clean version of the three minute, music-only version that was shown at SIGGRAPH in 2006, using the original uncompressed frames. Yes, it was originally 4:3 standard definition, and I have cropped the frame a bit to match modern aspect ratios, so purists may be offended, but It's not like I made Greedo shoot first or anything.

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