Cancer Killing Short RNAs: A Novel Anti-Cancer Therapy
Background
This project was created in collaboration with Dr. Marcus Ernst Peter at Northwestern University. The purpose of the animation is to introduce the recently uncovered role of microRNAs in protecting the body from cancer, and to communicate recent advances made by Dr. Marcus Peter and his team at Northwestern University that may be used in the not-so-far-off future to fight cancer in a novel way.
Media: VMD, Zbrush, 3ds Max, tyFlow, Vray, Adobe Photoshop, and After Effects
Client: Dr. Marcus Peter, Rex Twedt, and Leah Lebowicz
Audience: Educated lay audience
Period: August 2020 - December 2020
Storyboard
The science story Dr. Peter introduced to me could be told in different ways. I wrote multiple versions of the script and then created two storyboards to communicate the two paths I felt the story could go down. First (left) a detailed introduction to the science that Dr. Peter could use to supplement presentations of his research, or (right) a friendly, simplified story that could stand on its own.
Storyboard One (click to see full storyboard)
Storyboard Two (click to see full storyboard)
After review we chose to proceed with Storyboard One. The story was complex with a script read time of two minutes. It focused on introducing the novel anti-cancer mechanism that some microRNAs have.
Style considerations
I prioritized a simple look and feel. The content of the story is complex and fit into an efficient runtime, therefore a style adorned with extraneous details could drown out the clarity of the story instead of enhancing it. I also incorporated references to Northwestern’s branding, including using their preferred typeface and making the backbone of the hero microRNA ‘Northwestern purple’.
I planned the color choices in advance to make the three types of microRNAs and both the cancerous and non-cancerous environments identifiable yet unified.
Animation test microRNA
Once I had a finalized storyboard, I anticipated there would be a number of technical animation challenges ahead. The first was creating a system to unwind and move microRNAs.
The helix spline in 3ds Max contained presets I could use to drive most of the movements I was looking for.
I used a path deform modifier on a group of nucleotide objects to have each spline act as one RNA backbone.
The path deform modifier can be used to animate the object along the path. This was an easy way to create the unwinding animation I wanted.
Going into the project I was already familiar with a method of animating double-stranded DNA along a single. I built off of that framework to create a microRNA spline rig that was able to unwind and deform without warping the individual bases.
Animation test messenger RNA
A visually striking element of the animation is the messenger RNAs being pulled down. Hand animating a string of nucleotides being pulled down is not an easy thing to make believable; I wanted to find a dynamic method to create a string of nucleotides that could be pulled down realistically.
This was one of my early tests. As the strand elongates, bindings between nucleotides became too spread out.
Here is my final test; nucleotides are spawned and bound to each other sequentially. A test box binds some nucleotides using a distance test and pulls the string down.
A view under the hood of the tyFlow simulation. I created a cycle that allowed me to spawn a new nucleotide from the position of the most recently spawned nucleotide.
A couple months after completing this project, fellow BVIS student Sam Palahnuk introduced me to a simpler way to create something like this using tyRopes. Although I have learned my original method is a sub-optimal approach, it was a great opportunity to become familiar tyFlow’s toolset.
Animation test cancer cells and compositing
Another challenging aspect of this project was transforming a healthy cell into a cancer cell. In the final shot of the animation, the cancer cell undergoes cell death - another visual puzzle to figure out!
My early cancer cell death simulations were plagued by a phenomenon I termed ‘string cheesing’.
The cancer transformation scene depended on layering many fairly simple tyFlow simulations with lots of compositing.
To assemble the synthetic microRNA, I used a simple but effective animation trick where I keyframed the microRNA being disassembled and played it backwards.
Final animatic
If I could give one piece of advice to those looking to improve their animations, it would be to spend more time on the animatic phase. In the first version, I rendered at a low resolution using primitive objects that would be replaced. This allowed me to make changes almost instantly. In total I went through three iterations before moving on to the next phase.
Below is the last iteration of the animatic. This version was like a wedding rehearsal to make sure everything would flow smoothly. Once complete, I began final lighting, texturing, and compositing.
By doing the animatic, I uncovered some problem areas in my story. To address them I condensed one section which improved the flow and fixed some sub-par cuts. The animatic phase was also useful to evaluate the composition of my shots and quickly tweak them.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, our class did not have access to a render farm so keeping render times down was a priority from the beginning. The animation was rendered in Vray, with most shots taking 2-3 minutes per frame. Compositing was done in Adobe After Effects and sound design was done in Audition.
In January of 2021 the animation was used by Dr. Marcus Peter while fundraising to potential investors in his biotechnology startup.