greg kuebler

Suppression of Collisional Shifts in a Strongly Interacting Lattice Clock

2011-03-28T18:39:00.006-06:00

This was my last official project at JILA before I decided to make my move to NYC. I worked closely with JILA Fellows Jun Ye and Ana Maria Rey who asked me prepare a rendering for their paper they published in Science. The paper is centered around Jun Ye's Neutral Sr optical atomic clock where discovered tiny frequency shifts caused by colliding fermions. The collorbration with theorist Ana Maria Rey's group, Jun's group was able to solve the problem of colliding fermions, and reduced the inaccuracy of the optical atomic clock arising from atomic collisions (reaching the level of 1 x 10^-17).

I made a black verison and a white version for Science to choose between. My original renderings were then "replicated" for the NIST, CU ,and other press releases (currently without attribution with exception of Science). I used Maya for the 3D modeling and rendering where I used some costumed shader scripts for mental ray. The details of the project was changing at the time I was rendering, but luckily I prepared the Maya file to pretty flexible.

My project history with Jun Ye and his group has been extensive over the years, and I have thoroughly designing and creating for each new project which each have their visual/motion challenges and eccentricities. I was honored to have a opportunity to contribute to Jun's and Ana Maria's paper before I left Colorado to move to NYC, and I look forward to following the future progress of research coming out of JILA! While it was my last project I worked on in Colorado, I'm sure Ill probably work on a future project with some former connection or relation to science/research from JILA.

I am currently working on my own projects in NYC and working for The Wall Street Journal (doing IA/UX designing and ill post some of those projects sometime in the future), BUT I want to encourage anybody who has been following my blog or come across my blog (google analytics show a very wide international audience), feel free to email me anytime with any inquires/questions. I also encourage anybody to contact me about work opportunities and/or working colloboratively on projects that range in size of large to small (doesn't matter the field or area of research, education, or just to work on a strange idea). I work locally and remotely. I always have open mind and ear for anybody who wants to do something new and different : )

Science paper titled: Suppression of Collisional Shifts in a Strongly Interacting Lattice Clock. I worked on Figure 1C.

Full Science citation:
Matthew D. Swallows, Michael Bishof, Yige Lin, Sebastian Blatt, Michael J. Martin, Ana Maria Rey, and Jun Ye, Science Express, published online Feb. 3, 2001, DOI NO. 10.1126/science.1196442 (2011)

Be sure to check out the paper or check out the JILA and NIST press releases which explain research of the paper more broadly. You can read the research paper here: PDF . There are quite a few articles all over the internet from various science publishers as well.

Clients: Jun Ye and Ana Maria Rey

JILA NIST-CU website redesign/overhaul to Drupal

2010-10-15T20:06:00.018-06:00

[FRONT Page Design template]
http://jila.colorado.edu/

[ARTICLE Page Design Template]

When I first arrived at JILA in 2007, I wanted to immediately redesign and restructure the JILA website. However I did not not have the extra project time due to other demanding and pressing projects. It wasn't until the summer of 2009, that I finally decided that I needed shift my project load to make room for a JILA web redesign project (FINALLY). JILA is know for its renown research successes, and JILA's website should also reflect a sophisticated and highly accessible web interface to its demanding internet/intranet audiences. JILA needed to utilize nature of a Content Management System (CMS) and get away from the old early 1997-2000 web design which was just cobbled together system of HTML, CSS, and CGI files (see image below for a look of original JILA web site of the past). It was a great time for this new push since open source softwares like Drupal, Wordpress, and Joomla were getting to be really stable and standardized on the web.

During the summer of 2009, I decided that I would need a small team to effectively redesign and overhaul a huge website that would eventually lead to overhauling all the micro sites (JILA-AMO and the Fellows websites) and intranets at JILA. So I talked to Mike Paige from the Computing team at JILA about helping me with this project. Essentially we worked collaboratively with each other where I was leading with the front end development while Mike would emphasize the back end and hardware of website. It worked out pretty well since we both had to continue with our regular work projects and basically teach other about our discoveries along the way. Julie Phillips also helped with copy editing and writing of the new content for the website while Lynn was helping us transfer the preexisting content and giving us invaluable user experience feedback.

Mike and I spent the summer researching CMS(s) like Drupal, Wordpress, and Joomla and preparing our design/development proposal for the JILA Fellow Committee Meeting. We ended up choosing Drupal because it gave us the most flexibility, control, and security that we would need to for level of traffic and audiences we wanted the JILA website to target (plus it was a good sign when the whitehouse.gov launched their website using Drupal). We put our design/development proposal together explaining why JILA needed to utilize CMS platform to run its websites without hiring additional webmasters (Mike and I at that time) and make more content accessible to the global audiences and web search engines. The JILA websites were proving to be an ever-growing tool for grad/post doc recruitment and public outreach, so we needed a core system that could grow with the demanding needs of creating, editing, and managing content (includes text, high/lo resolution images, video, animations, podcast, data files, etc ). We also wanted the content to accessible with RSS feeds so as to have content easily organized and expand the viewing range to include newer mobile devices (blackberries, iphones, ipads, tablets etc). The Fellows and faculty were very receptive to our design and development proposal that Mike and I presented at the committee meeting, and we got full approval to pursue the web redesign project.

Mike and I developed the project in multiple stages since we had to do some experimenting/learning with the Drupal core. Plus we had to continue our other projects at the same time and couldn't hire any additional help due to hiring freezes by CU. We planned for the first stage of the website to take about a year (with just us two working on it with hectic schedules) to have a product to do a soft launch for the summer of 2010.

The web project is still under development with only two people solving the bugs, but progress continues.

About the Design:

I thought intensely about the web interface that JILA would possible need and how it would grow "organically" with the interface design. My design made interface flexible and expandable (i.e. new menu items/systems, RSS feed controls) with the idea that there will space for various features content items as they get developed and tested. I also wanted the interface to be more intuitive and constant and consistent than the previous design. You can check out the original JILA website to compare to:

[Original JILA website design in early 2000]

I designed the top 20% of interface with menu navigation system to be always be the same on all pages (original JILA website lacked these controls). I also colored the menu and various buttons to have a prominent blocking and intuitive function while keeping the background other blocking interfacing to be clean and not as intrusive (whites, simple backgrounds, washed out grays and shadowing) to give more emphasis to the menu functions. This also allowed the colors from the content images attract attention to the content. My goal was to make the interface clear and transparent so the user would explore the content more freely BUT also never feel lost with navigation and search features. I wanted the search function to be useful, quick, and well placed in this top 20% of the interface at all times. Mike really made the search function pretty robust and reliable (I believe he used Apache Solr search) and we spent a lot of time playing and testing it. I really really liked this website search tool compared to original JILA search tool which didn't work half the time.

I placed new content types such as JILA calender, News, and Research Highlights all to be RSS feeds, so that front page will be automatically populated with new content (or managed in any manner). I also wanted only important content types on the front page and reduce text copy and paragraph descriptions next to nothing. I wanted "keyword" text, menus, and graphic visuals to lead the user's experience AND NOT put lengthy literal text descriptions/explanations everywhere (this was a hard battle and compromises were made). The idea was to make the content "king" and have the interface and text be streamlined to emphasize the pure content. I also wanted to use intuitive menu labels and text identifiers that were more universally accepted by international web audiences.

The design for the article pages (or secondary pages) made a lot more room for text and have interactive features and functions located towards upper (flushed) right and bottom of the article page. This allows a user to focus on the text content of the research at their own discretion and then see what avaliable content functions might be accessible for that article. By placing a full column space on the right side of the article for content functions allows for future growth of the JILA website (i.e. podcasts, video embedding/streaming, etc).

The design for JILA webpage went through several design phases because I wanted to get feedback from a wide range of people ( JILAFellows, grads, post docs, writers, editors, admin staff, regular web users, outside designers, even my own parents) about my designs. Overall I am pretty content with my the final version of the web design, and I wish Mike and rest of the web team at JILA the best of luck with continuing the project through all its development stages. I strongly believe that JILA is on a good track with its website presence's and utilizing Drupal's CMS as a tool for both outside and internal communications.

Clients: JILA NIST-CU

Related Links: Drupal

NIST - Annual Report (2008-2009)

2010-10-08T15:56:00.000-06:00

Tom Perkins asked me to collect various images from my body of work at JILA and NIST from 2008-2009 to be used for the NIST Annual Report (view the PDF here). I submitted a whole library of my illustrations, figures, renderings, and photography for Tom to select from. Most of my work is in the Quantum Physics Division (Figures 1-8 pg 45-50). It is great honor to have a good amount of my work selected to be used for the Annual Review of Quantum Physics Division! The layout and design for previous years of the NIST Annual Report (Physics Laboratory) were pretty amateurishly designed, and I offered to assist with this year's design. Fortunately the people over at NIST hired another designer team to work solely on the print layout of the NIST Annual Report. The design is pretty safe and clean AND not terrible like previous years. I liked the colors they chose for cover which resemble my color schemes for lot of my body of work.

pg 46-47 Figures 3-4

pg 48-49 Figures 5-7

pg 50 Figure 8

Clients: NIST,Tom Perkins, Jun Ye, Debbie Jin, John Bohn, Ana Maria Rey, David Nesbitt, and Steven Cundiff

Related Links: NIST - Annual Report (2008-2009) [as a PDF]

Single Molecule Biophysics (SMB) - 2011 conference

2010-10-07T18:01:00.002-06:00

JILA Fellow Tom Perkins asked me to help him quickly design a logo/visual presence for Single Molecule Biophysics (SMB) 2011 conference that is going to be held in Aspen, Colorado. Tom was coordinating with Dr. Steven Block over at Stanford University who put together visuals for the previous years of the SMB conference (you can check out the 2007 design that I was told to redesign from).

The photograph for the final layout in the top image was shot by Dr. Steven Block.

This was a quick project, and I got the freedom to play around with some new ideas and illustrative techniques that have been bubbling around in my head lately. Below are some of the beta samples from my design process. The first one below is where I was toying around with images from Library of Congress public domain stock. The other images are more of my illustrative style and design where I would use abstractions of AFM in design or logo process. The last image utilized a Corbis stock photograph that I found to be fitting in case the clients were interested in using stock photography or professionally shot stills.

I just wanted to share my playground of ideas from this project. The typology and finishing touches for each of the images below are not in their final states since the client chose a different direction for the final selection (the top images).

Clients: Tom Perkins and Dr. Steven Block

Ultracold 'Polar' Molecules - Redux

2010-05-21T18:04:00.009-06:00

So...... I decided to make new rendering of the Ultracold Polar Molecules. Nobody asked me to do it, but it has been something I wanted to do for a long a while. I made my first version rendering of the Ultracold Polar Molecules a while a back and it has since been used for a cover of "Science News" (check out my older posting) and NSF has adopted the image and made the image accessible to everyone (see posting). So the original image got a lot of attention, but I was never really really satisfied with the rendering. When I made the first version, I only had a day to do it. I originally wanted to do a multi-pass rendering using Maya and Mental Ray.

Then my chance came along and I secretly decided to redo this image the way I originally intended. Jun Ye, Debbie Jin, and John Bohn were continuing to make headway with their Ultracold Polar Molecules research and the JILA Light & Matter Spring 2010 did a major feature article of their current progress on this research. The image made it to the cover of the JILA Light & Matter issue (which will be my last issued that I will be designing and producing). Its a good issue with a lot of good content and articles, and I encourage you to check it out.

Clients: Jun Ye, Debbie Jin, and John Bohn

Ultrafast Demagnetization Dynamics of Magnetic Elements

2010-05-21T17:02:00.005-06:00

I worked with Chan La-o-vorakiate and Stefan Mathias from the Kapteyn-Murnane Group on this illustration. Chan originally made a version of this visual for PRL, and allowed me to redraw the visual for the JILA Light & Matter Spring 2010 issue. Chan and I discussed a few different variations of his original illustrator file, and we eventually decided that a isometric perspective rendering and a few different technical details would be the best way to structure the information in this visual. I used Illustrator to redraw this image

Clients: Henry Kapteyn, Margaret Murnane, Chan La-o-vorakiat, and Stefan Mathias

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Cindy Regal photo shoots

2010-05-20T17:24:00.002-06:00

I was asked to take several photos of JILA Fellow Cindy Regal and her group. Cindy Regal recently became a JILA Fellow in January 2010, and she has been quickly been setting up your lab and group to begin research a.s.a.p. The photos were used for the latest JILA Light & Matter Spring 2010 issue where there was an article introducing Cindy Regal and a photo essay docuementing the JILA staff's redesigning of her new lab space. Cindy was pretty busy and I was pretty busy, but I broke up the photo shoot into two different quick sessions. Essentially they were lightening round photo shoots where I would setup my lights and explore the newly built lab. I believe the pictures came out pretty well despite my lightening shooting style and I was able to get some great expressions from her. Check out the JILA Light & Matter articles about her and her group! Sadly this will probably be my last JILA Fellow portrait shoot : ( Setting and shooting pictures of the JILA and NIST Fellows always proved to be an intriguing task. I guess now I have to have find new subjects to shoot in NYC. I can't wait to hang out with my photography friends once again to absorb some new techniques and maybe get back into the groove of doing some fine art photography once again (I haven't done much personal photography while I have been in Colorado).

Client: Cindy Regal

Related Links: JILA Light & Matter Spring 2010 articles (pdf)

Cavity-Enhanced Direct Frequency Comb Spectroscopy

2010-04-28T12:08:00.007-06:00

I worked close with Florian Adler from the Jun Ye Group. Florian requested a schematic of their experiment setup to help explain the process how the Jun Ye group performs tomography on a supersonic expansion. Florian explained he need the visual for Annual Review of Analytical Chemistry which will be officially printing their article "Cavity-Enhanced Direct Frequency Comb Spectroscopy: Technology and Applications" (early online review release available now) on June 15, 2010 as part of 2010 Vol 3.

I worked on this visual over the summer 2009. Florian explained to me what he wanted for the visual and he brought me physical pieces of hardware from his experimental apparatus that I could use to model from. I started with an old-fashion sketch up the scene that Florian and I discussed. After that I decided this was going to be an extensive Maya project since I could use previous models I already built and texture/rendering scripts that I made for other projects. I essentially modeled the whole scene from my sketch layout and used the physical pieces Florian gave me. I used Illustrator and Photoshop to incorporate the labels and composite the overall layout. I think it came out pretty well and everybody seemed pretty happy with the end results.

If you are interested in learning more about research that Jun Ye Group and other JILA groups a doing in this area, I would recommend you checking out the JILA Research Section; Molecular Fingerprinting and Control.

Clients: Jun Ye and Florian Adler

Visuals for "Life from an RNA World: The Ancestor Within"

2010-04-04T14:27:00.012-06:00

Michael Yarus (aka Mike) came to me about helping him create all the insert visuals for his new book "Life from an RNA World: The Ancestor Within". The book is published by Harvard University Press and is now available on their website and on Amazon. Harvard University Press produced the cover visual (Ill find out who did that image once I get a copy of the book). The visual inserts that I rendered are below and I provided the B&W and colored versions together. The inserts for the book were printed in B&W.

Production notes:
After several meetings with Mike discussing the data and concepts for the visuals that to be included in the book as inserts, I had to do a bit of research finding the data and which visual scientific software I was going to use in my production workflow. I used PDB data file "2gis.pdb" for the model data which can be downloaded from the Protein Data Bank website. I was familiar with VMD (Visual Molecular Dynamics) software in past projects at JILA. I typically use VMD in coordination with Maya where I would use VMD to produce the models and then use Maya for its rendering environment. I like VMD, but I found its interface and functions to be difficult to use (it is an older piece of software). I heard about PyMol which is an open source molecular visualization system. I thought it might be a good software to use for this particular project because it has pretty sweet openGL rendering environment that I could use on Mac and PC computers. PyMol had better support and controls that I could use to create different visual representations of the data! I also discovered that it could render out some beautiful renderings without necessary having to port data model to Maya which help save me a lot of time in my work-flow (when compared to my work-flow with VMD and Maya). I still wanted to export the model data from PyMol and incorporate Maya, and PyMol made this much easier than VMD. I essentially export model data in PyMol by exporting it as VRML format (.wrl files) which I could then open in Maya. The hardest part about this project was learning how to use PyMol in a few days. I used Illustrator and Photoshop for layout and vector line work.

After completing the inserts and preparing them for print, there was some question about making a visual for the cover of the book. The editors at Harvard University Press had some plans already about creating the cover for the book and they did not really tell me about what they wanted to do for the cover. I am not sure who created the cover image or how the visual was created. I think it is an artist's conception of RNA. (ill find out which studio rendered that image eventually and update this posting) Regardless I wanted to attempt making a visual for the cover based on the data that was used for the inserts. I thought the possibility of using the data and visual that was already used for the inserts would help tie the book design together. The image below is my attempt. It is a multiple rendering of 2gis.pdb data file where you can see stick figure representation combined with the space filling representation. The rendering below was not published with the book, so it is for sale to anybody who wants to use it as a cover or visual for something. Just contact me. I still like this image and it has my art/design style. It is my interpretation of book title "Life from an RNA World: The Ancestor Within" as rendered from data. I think the editors at Harvard University Press probably thought the visual was too scientific or technically complex to be used as a cover visual. They wanted a more main stream visual that would probably sell more books. I thought cover image they used was pretty eye catching and will probably help promote their book sales.This was a fun project and I wanted to thank Mike Yarus for letting me work with him on the visuals. I also want to give special thanks to Julie Fiore from JILA for her help with giving me a quick crash course with PyMol!

Clients: Dr. Michael Yarus

Journal of Physical Chemistry A - front cover

2010-04-01T16:27:00.001-06:00

My work is on the cover of "Journal of Physical Chemistry A" (April 1, 2010 Vol 114, Iss 12 Pgs 4017-4470) ! The featured article is "Vibrational Autodetachment−Intramolecular Vibrational Relaxation Translated into Electronic Motion" which starts on pg 4017–4030. I worked closely with JILA Fellow Mathias Weber with the data for the cover image. This is my first offical Journal of Physical Chemistry A cover.

Cover Description: "Vibrational excitation of CH stretches in nitromethane anions leads to vibrational autodetachment. The photoelectron spectra of autodetachment processes encode the underlying dynamics"

Mathias came to me August to talk to me about his research and potential cover for JPC-A. I wasn't familar with his current research, so I read his research paper to poured over his scientific poster that his group put together. Mathias explained his research findings and showed me his MOLDEN simulations. Once I understood his research and data visuals that I had access to, I had to figure out how visualize his research on JPC-A cover which essentially a perfect square area in the middle. Mathias and I chose visualize the research in 3 part story panel. This led me to format the layout in the square with 2 vertical columns (column 1 shows the molecule structure and column 2 show details enacted on the molecule structure) and sequence the story with 3 horizontal rows. Row 1 shows the molecule getting hit with hv(IR) laser that causes vibrational excitation. Row 2 details the vibrational excitation and the specific areas of the molecule that vibrate. Row 3 details the end result of vibrational autodetachment and how it compares to direct detachment (the 2D spectroscopy data). I was pretty happy with this design layout and I think it describes Mathias group's research pretty clearly and effectively.

Production Notes:
I started this project opening the data in a program called MOLDEN. MOLDEN allowed me to view the simulations/animations that Mathias had collected. Unfortunately MOLDEN's rendering environment was a bit dated and the quality I desired was going to be difficult with MOLDEN. So I switched to gOpenMole for modeling and rendering the data. I performed multilple layer renderings with gOpenMole of the molecule structure to allow me the most visual control. I then used Illustrator and Indesign for the layout. Mathis introduced me to a new piece of software called Image-J which has some really interesting functions (like the Interactive 3D surface plot). I am hoping to incorporate this imaging tool for various future projects. I am probably going to play around with this tool for some various creative experimental applications.

Clients: Mathias Weber

Physics Today - front cover

2010-03-02T15:48:00.011-07:00

My work is on the cover of "Physics Today" (March 2010 Vol 63, Iss 3, pp.8-80)! The featured article is " Universal insights from few-body land" which starts on pg 40 (check it out!). I worked closely with JILA Fellow Chris Greene with the data for the cover image and I used Seth Rittenhouse's POV-Ray data files. This is my first Physics Today cover.

cover caption: "The four cobralike forms here represent one view of a wavefunction for a collision between two weakly bound dimers composed of fermionic atoms. The calculations underlying the figure are at the forefront of theoretical work that explores universal properties in few-body systems—that is, features that are independent of the details of particle interactions. Chris Greene’s article, beginning on page 40, surveys universal physics in few-body systems, from a startling prediction offered in 1970 to recent theoretical and experimental advances."

Chris Greene came to me in October to talk to me about helping him make the cover image for submission to Physics Today. We discussed several ideas and processes, but there were some factors that I had work around. The main one was that I was already working several other projects for some other Fellows, the deadline for PT submission was soon, and Chris's project involved a lot of 3D work (which are never quick projects to do). Even though these factors were daunting at the beginning of the project, I was super excited about it. I never work with his 3D data before and I thought Chris's and Seth's original models were interesting representations of their research. The idea was just weird enough that I had to do it. It has Cobras!!? naturally im into it and I couldn't pass up this opportunity. (shout out to my GDC crew!!!)

The project started with Chris giving me the POV-Ray files and showing me what he was doing with them. You can check out the older renderings of the cobras here. The POV-Ray model data files were Seth Rittenhouse's. Seth was graduate student at JILA, but I didn't realize he finished his thesis and was now at Cambridge, MA when I emailed him about doing some data re-renderings. He mentioned that files I was working with took 1.5 weeks to process (pure continuous processing on a pretty fast computer cluster at JILA (i think)). So doing some re-processing of the given models wasn't going to work with the time frame that I was working in.

Production Notes:
I work with a lot different 3D environments and softwares, but I typically avoided using POV-Ray. POV-Ray (Persistence of Vision Raytracer) is a great open source command line driven render, but I would rather work in more robust 3D package like Maya that have some great standard renders and mentalRay (i typically like to render with MentalRay if i can). Don't get me wrong, you can definitely render some beautiful things with POV-Ray, but it takes a veteran 3D coder (the recent versions of POV-Ray have been really impressive since the last time I checked out POV-Ray in 2004.) Also POV-Ray is primarily a render and lacks other functions that a lot of other 3D software come standard with (part of the beauty and downfalls of POV-Ray). The work flow of POV-Ray immediate brought back memories of me coding/modeling with OpenGL environment back in 2004. At the beginning I was working with POV-Ray's script files and I was getting some good results (I was running it on both the PC and Mac environments), but the work flow was really tedious and not efficient use of time to master POV-Ray's rendering commands and work flow process. I needed a better work flow that could use POV-Ray files and that could make some great renderings with a lot of easy to change controls. So I decided I need to incorporate Maya in this work flow which meant I needed to export/convert the model data. So I spent a lot of time reading forums about other people trying this and it appears that its not the easiest thing to do (or that common with the Maya and POV-ray communities). There weren't a lot of scripts or programs that would do this well (and cheap as in free). I was checking this software called Moray (which is kinda of GUI interface for POV-Ray), but it didn't really have what I needed. Then I found this program called 3DWin. At first 3DWin didn't look that promising or if it did do it, it was going to make the model come out looking like garbage. But I was surprised and super excited that it converted the model data pretty well (i still had do some operations to it). Now I was able to work in Maya's 3D environment. Unfortunately it took a while to convert the files and a lot of the rendering techniques and processes I was planning on working on for this project was going to take too long. So the final rendering that PT selected is hybrid of mutliple renderings using POV-Ray and Maya. I am glad I was able to work pretty closely with POV-Ray and actually incorporate it my work flow process of making a pretty good rendering.

I want to thank for Seth and Chris for the original files and for letting me work on this project. The project deadlines originally took place in October, and after a few months of not hearing back from PT, I was little worried we wouldn't get our submission selected for the cover. Physics Today has a pretty wide circulation and some pretty amazing past cover imagery. Physics Today's covers are pretty competitive to get and I am really happy that Chris and Seth's research was selected as the cover feature.

Clients: Chris Greene and Seth Rittenhouse

Carl Lineberger's cover - Journal of Physical Chemistry A

2010-02-03T17:25:00.005-07:00

Lineberger Research Laboratories in JILA Basement, 2001. Watercolor by visiting fellow Zdeněk Herman.

The Journal of Physical Chemistry A did a special cover and preface issue where they did a tribute W. Carl Lineberger (January 28, 2010,Vol 114, Iss , Pg 1225-1602). Check it out!

Carl asked me about scanning JILA visiting Fellow Zdeněk Herman's watercolor painting, and preparing it for print for JPC-A. He told me about the idea of using Herman's watercolor painting, and I thought it was a fantastic idea for cover layout. Scanning it was bit difficult due to the size of the piece but I was pretty careful when I was dismantling the frame and handling the art. I made sure the colors were mastered correctly and maintain high fidelity scans.

If you ever been to JILA before, you may have noticed visiting Fellow Zdeněk Herman's art work hanging in the JILA tower and in various Fellow's offices. It was one of the first things I notice when I first went to the top floor of the JILA tower. I expressed my admiration for the Herman's illustrations and Carl loaned me his personal reprint of Zdeněk Herman's sketch book that I could check out. It was pretty funny seeing the history of JILA through Herman's sketch book. When I get extra time, I am hoping to scan it to make digital version of Herman's sketch book and make it avaliable to the staff and faculty at JILA (and maybe for JILA's website).

People: Carl Lineberger

Ana Maria Rey & Jun Ye - NIST Annual Report

2010-01-27T21:52:00.002-07:00

This was a photo shoot with Ana Maria Rey and Jun Ye for the NIST Annual Report (2008-2009) which is slated to be published and available in mid 2010.

Client: Jun Ye Group and Ana Maria Rey

Related Links: NIST Annual Report (2008-2009) [pdf]

Measuring red blood cells elasticity

2010-01-10T17:42:00.003-07:00

This was a project where I was 3D modeling (using Maya) a microfluidics device that was being used to measure the elasticity of red blood cells. This was for JILA Fellow Ralph Jimenez's group. I did version of this a few years ago (see posting titled "Mircofluidics Device"), so it was interesting to follow the updates/changes to this particular experimental apparatus and the applications it is being used for.

Client: Ralph Jimenez

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

PNAS: Phase-matched (coherent) addition of the high harmonic X-ray fields

2010-01-05T23:06:00.003-07:00

I worked with Fellow Margaret Murnane and Dr. Tenio Popmintchev from the Kepteyn-Murnane Group on this figure for PNAS. The paper was titled "Phase matching of high harmonic generation in the soft and hard X-ray regions of the spectrum". It was published June 2009, but I just recently found the article was finally published.

Caption: "Fig. 1. Extreme nonlinear upconversion of a femtosecond laser light to
shorter wavelengths. Phase-matched (coherent) addition of the high harmonic
X-ray fields emitted by many atoms in the medium is shown."

Clients: Kapteyn-Murnane Group

Related Links: PNAS article (30 June 2009, Vol 106, No. 26, pp10516-10521)

Facing Heisenberg at the nanoscale

2009-12-18T17:32:00.014-07:00

Nature Nanotechnology version

I worked closely with John Teufel (who now works at NIST) and with JILA Fellow Konrad Lehnert on making this graphic for the JILA Research highlight and for the JILA AMO site, JILA main site, and for JILA Light & Matter Winter 2010 issue. Then project expanded to have the visual for Nature Nanotechnology, and the article is called "Measurement: Facing Heisenburg at the nanoscale" (citation: Nature Nanotechnology 4, 796 - 798 (2009)doi:10.1038/nnano.2009.368). The top image is the Nature Nanotechnology version which was modified to meet the design/style guide for their journal. The second image is the original design that was mainly made for the spread layout of upcoming JILA Light & Matter issue (it looks pretty good in the layout) Check it out Nature Nanotechology article if you want find out more about visual and research. the links are below.

John Teufel use to be in Konrad Lehnert's group at JILA, but he recently graduated and started working at NIST. I worked with him before, so it was nice to have another project working and talking to him about his latest work with Konrad. It started out with emails and phone chats discussing the concepts and visual challenges of "how to explain" the research (Konrad's group always have a good visual challenges for me). John dropped by my JILA office a few times for a few discussions (its nice that NIST is only few blocks down the road from JILA). John made some schematic like figures how the device worked and had some SEM images of the device which was great start. I proposed isometric perspective style illustration which would help the visual with the scale and space a little easier. The device was dense with detail and John and I wanted to emphasis the nanowire area, but not loose sense of the whole device's architecture. I did all the line work in Illustrator using the SSR Method and then used Photoshop for the final touches and layout. Eventually I would like make a flash animation of the device to help explain the vibrations of the nanowire and zoom in and out of the areas of the device to explain how it works.

Client: Konrad Lehnert and John Teufel

Angewandte Chemie - front cover

2009-10-07T17:38:00.015-06:00

My art work is on the cover of "Angewandte Chemie" (2009 International Edition: published online Oct 6, DOI: 10.1002/anie.200905074). I worked closely with Carl Lineberger (at JILA) and Takatoshi Ichino (at University of Texas) in designing the cover image. It is my first cover for this international journal.

Cover and article description:
"Photodetachment of the oxyallyl radical anion leads to formation of the oxyallyl diradical, an elusive transient molecule involved in many organic reactions. As described by W. C. Lineberger et al. in their Communication (DOI: 10.1002/anie.200904417), the photoelectron spectrum reveals that the oxyallyl ground state is singlet and the lowest triplet state is only 55 meV higher in energy. The spectral profile indicates that the planar singlet state is the transition state for ring opening of cyclopropanone, while the C-C-C bending motion is activated upon photodetachment to the triplet state."

I want to especially thank Carl Lineberger and Takatoshi Ichino for entrusting me to work on this project and for working collaboratively with me. This project would not have been as successful nor would it have been completed if the project had not been approached with a team work mentality (working collaboratively is my favorite work style!). I also want to make a special mention about Takatoshi's contribution with helping with GNUplot surface plots and being available during that Saturday and Sunday to trouble shoot the graphics outputs from GNUplot with me.

Read the paper on the Angewandte Chemie journal website! Links below (check back for updated links and sourcing). For everybody else, yes it is rather complicated to explain, but JILA will be doing a research highlight this winter and I recommend reading that to get a general audience version of the research details and visuals (again check back for updated links).

THE SHORT SIDE STORY behind this project:

It was a pretty fun and intense project with a quick turn around of 3-4 days. I was working on several projects at once for several different Fellow groups at JILA. Also I was trying to make major advances on the JILA website overhaul to a CMS design and platform. I was pretty stressed about how I was going to manage all these projects at once and they ALL had really tight deadlines. So I arranged my project queue based on deadline and prioritized importance. Carl's cover project had the most immediate deadline, so I hyperfocused on his project. My project planning and time management skills made it possible to finish this project and stay on top of my other project productions (future posts coming soon!)

Usually when I start a project like this, I work in extreme close communication with the Fellow(s) and all researchers involved all the way through the project until it is finally submitted. The only problem was that Carl was going to be in Europe during the project and Takatoshi was in Austin, Texas. This particular communication setup initially opened up some logistic barriers, but I carefully figured out my game plan, and how we were all going to stay connected and work through this. How you might ask? extensive active Email threads (I think all of us were constantly checking our email accounts every 10 seconds) and cell phone calls (just got my iphone all app'ed up and ready to go). I figured out everybody's time zones and when the best times were to shoot off communications. Fortunately Takatoshi's time zone wasn't as drastic as Carl's. All n All, everything worked out just fine.

Carl was around for a day before heading off to Europe, so I quickly started going over the materials with Carl. We talked directly about how to make a cover design about his rather complex research. The title for the paper is "The Lowest Singlet and Triplet States of the Oxyallyl Diradical" which is not the easiest thing to explain visually. I spent a lot of time reading the research and pouring over the powerpoint slides and visuals. At this point Carl and I were emailing and calling Takatoshi about our discussions. The design changed quite a few times, but we all reached a rough consensus about what should and shouldn't be in the cover.

The game plan was roughly simpified as:

Model the (3D) molecules from data with GaussView in high resolution
Model the energy surface plots from various math equations with GNUplot (which is Linux based software)
Take the model pieces and combine them in layout, done in Illustrator
Finalize the design and master the file for print publication

While this seems simple enough, the process was more complex with the work flow process and communications. I never used GaussView before, so I had to install the software on my machines, quickly read the manual, and crash through some quick tests to make sure I was going to be able to use the software for my workflow. Using GaussView worked out perfectly. So far so good.

Then I had to do the same thing for the GNUplot application which I got running on my Windows and Linux. Jim from the JILA computing group helped me figure out how to get GNUplot running on the Linux box and my PC box (Thanks Jim!). Next Takatoshi wrote some GNUplot commands and equations which I was also playing with (again after crashing around GNUplot manuals). Takatoshi and I were in constant communication, swapping GNUplot commands back and forth between each other. Then BAM; GNUplot started being a difficult baby with me. Everything was going well until we all realized that GNUplot was rendering the surface plots kinda oddly at certain perspectives. While it was rendering mathmatically correct plots, they looked extremely odd from the particular perspective angles that we wanted. While it was rendering certain basic perspectives correctly, it could not handle 3D perspectives where any region of surface and contour potentially overlapped. Essentially, it was rendering the plots with contours and surfaces that had both hidden and viewable surface regions; that was causing some 3D optical allusions. While it was still mathematically correct, it was extremely hard to tell which parts of the surfaces were supposed to be in front, underneath, top, and in the back. GNUplot didn't have a ray-trace function to help it distinguish what was supposed to be viewable and what was supposed to be hidden (more-or-less Takatoshi and I couldn't find a corrective function nor did we have time to try to figure how to code one in about a day). This essentially made rendering images at high resolution RASTER worthless to us. So Takatoshi and I investigated the 3D and Vector formats. Takatoshi was able to pump out some pretty hot pdf vector versions. I was trying to do the same thing, but my PDF plugin library for GNUplot wasn't working! At this point I was about to pull out my hair because if I couldn't get the pdf version to work properly, then the whole project was in jeopardy. It was quickly becoming a "DO or Die" situation with GNUplot for the whole project. The pdf versions were extremely important in order to get visuals in a scientifically correct format (color mappings, vector contours, etc) that I could correct for the optical discrepancies with my other graphic software. Fortunately Takatoshi was able to render the pdf(s) from GNUplot correctly....So Takatoshi and I were working all day Saturday (until late in our nights) trading GNUplot code and pdf exports. Once Takatoshi and I were done with GNUplot exports, next came me spending quite a bit of time running corrections on the GNUplots exports. Even though it took a long time to fix the plots, the results were well worth it and the data still remains correct and true. Once the GNUplots were fixed, I knew the cover layout was going to be awesome and exactly the way I was originally planning it to turn out. I like it when I get my way.

After that it was just getting everything together and having a remote round table discussion by email and phone with Carl, Takatoshi and I. Those weren't held at normal business hours due to extreme locations we were all physically at. We all got excited about final results and after a few minor details were adjusted, we were ready for submission (which was hours away). done.

Full citation: Takatoshi Ichino, Stephanie M. Villano, Adam J. Gianola, Daniel J. Goebbert, Luis Velarde, Andrei Sanov, Stephen J. Blanksby, Xin Zhou, David A. Hrovat, Weston T. Borden, and W. Carl Lineberger, Angewandte Chemie Int. Ed. English 48, 8381 (2009).

Clients: Carl Lineberger and Takatoshi Ichino

Ti:S crystal in an optical frequency comb laser

2009-10-01T15:43:00.008-06:00

I was asked to come do a photo shoot in Steve Cundiff's lab. Julie has been updating the content on the main JILA website for Precision Optical Frequency Metrology section, and she thought it would be a good idea to get some photos of Ti:S crystal and optical frequency comb laser setup for the website and other potential future uses. John Willits, who is a graduate student in Cundiff's lab, showed me around the lab and helped me with the photo shoot (basically made sure I didn't break anything or touch the lasers). I originally thought I was going to have to do some laser trace photography, but that method was shot down very quickly after a fair warning from John that some parts of the laser arrangement were actually potentially dangerous. The laser setup was really bright bright GREEN, and I was a little worried about how DLSR would handle with this type of light. You could actually see the laser path for the most part, so I wanted to have long exposures in hopes of getting those laser paths to be visible. There wasn't really a lot of room and I was basically balancing ontop of a ladder with a tripod trying to get a steady shot in a dark room. I was getting frustrated with not being able to move around the setup easily, but in the end I got some pretty awesome shots that I am content with. The photos will be on main JILA website (link below) and will probably be used for various presentations and other things. I just wish it could be used for a journal or magazine cover because I think the colors are really vivid and it would make a pretty good print cover.

Client: Steve Cundiff

Ralph Jimenez Photo Shoot (MOABC website)

2009-09-08T13:33:00.005-06:00

Photo shoot Ralph Jimenez in his lab at JILA. Microintegrated Optics for Advance Bioimaging and Control (aka MOABC) needed a lab shot with Ralph for their website. The photo shoot was scheduled pretty quickly. I did not even have the time to bring my lighting kit, so I just worked with the lighting in lab which. We just turned on some lasers (bright green) and I played with the rest of the lights in the lab.

Client: Ralph Jimenez

Subsurface Circulations within Sun's Active Regions

2009-07-10T13:10:00.009-06:00

I worked closely with Brad Hindman from the Juri Toomre Group; he came to me about doing some figures for a paper he was publishing titled "Subsurface Circulations within Active Regions" for The Astrophysical Journal. Brad does a lot with Laboratory for Computational Dynamics (LCD) which supports fundamental research on helioseismology and convection and dynamo theory. The scientists at LCD study the dynamics inside stars with helioseismology and design large-scale computer simulations of convection, turbulence, and dynamo processes within stars. They work on a pretty intense TeraGrid network which is basically clusters of supercomputers tied together across the nation. Its pretty neat stuff!

I just realized that this is my first published astrophysics project. I'm breaking into the astrophysics scene!

The full citation for the paper is:
Subsurface Circulations within Active Regions
Bradley W. Hindman, Deborah A. Haber, and Juri Toomre 2009 ApJ 698 1749-1760 doi: 10.1088/0004-637X/698/2/1749

Clients: Juri Toomre Group and Brad Hindman

Related Links: The Astrophysical Journal

Monodromy

2009-07-08T16:33:00.010-06:00

I worked with Fellow Heather Lewandowski on making this graphic for the JILA Research highlight and for the JILA AMO site. Heather's group did a series of experiments with the classical system of a pendulum on a spring which has monodromy. Monodromy is a term that has been applied in mathematics to systems that run around a singularity; however, there havn't been too many lab experiments involving monodromy. Heather's group decided to do several experiments in order to see if the systems tested had monodromy. I never heard of monodromy, but it was interesting learning how they were essentially doing these classical experiments which would help give them more insight into how other systems might also display these behaviors. The classical monodromy confirmed in the pendulum-on-a-spring experiment is analogous to the bending and stretching behavior of a CO₂ molecule.

I used Maya for this project because it was the easiest and quickest way to depict this classical experimental setup of monodromy (pretty easy to model the springs in Maya and I didn't want to draw it in Illustrator/Photoshop). In a three-dimensional spherical pendulum, for example, the singularity would correspond to the "straight up" position. However, pure bouncing motions around this position tend to be unstable. Because this instability is straight upward against gravity, any small deviation from purely vertical results in motion that could loop around the singularity. It is pretty interesting stuff and I recommend that you read the JILA Highlight article and article published in Physical Review Letters by Heather's Group to find more about the experiment and monodromy. Eventually I would like to take my Maya 3d file and really animate it. The motion is interesting in the context of monodromy. I hate "never having enough time" for the animating parts of these projects. There is always an endless list of new projects getting in the way (i need another me!).

They apparently used my JILA camera (Panasonic DVX100A) to record video data that they gathered from the experiments. I remember the camera being loaned out for several months (almost a year) which was fine because I wasn't using the camera for any immediate projects myself. I thought it was pretty cool that they were able to use the features/controls of that camera for their experiment. The DVX100A is a notorious camera (known for its low cost and pretty high quality) used widely in the indie film industry and various other productions. Now the JILA DVX100A has another checked "has been used for" use: a classical physics experiment camera.

Clients: Heather Lewandowski Group

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Feshbach Resonances in Soft X-ray–Induced O2 Dissociation

2009-05-08T13:06:00.009-06:00

I worked with Fellows Margaret Murnane and Henry Kapteyn from the Kepteyn-Murnane Group. I was originally creating this graphic to be published in an Science magazine article (Science 322, 1081 (2008)). Science is also making this visual available as a PowerPoint slide for teaching purposes.

The graphic explains the Photoionization. After a X-ray knocks an electron out of an O₂ molecule, it takes more than 300 fs before another electron is ejected and the molecule falls apart. The internal state of the molecule prevents the second electron from being ejected until the O nuclei move at least 30 Å (3 nm) apart. Check out the Science article for the research and the JILA Light & Matter article for a more generalized explaination of the research.

Clients: Kapteyn-Murnane Group

Related Links: Science article (Science 322, 1081 (2008)), JILA Research Highlight article

Atomic Force Microscope (AFM)

2009-04-03T13:05:00.001-06:00

I worked closely with Fellow Tom Perkins, Gavin King, and Allison Churnside. I was initially rendering an image for the JILA Light & Matter Spring 2009 issue and then after I was done, talk of using the image for everything popped up. I was excited about the possibility of getting the cover of Nano Letters, but the publishers at Nano Letters said they already have all their cover images for the whole year or something along those lines. I found this to be kinda weird and was wondering how they actually run their publication. Do they know exactly what research to publish almost a full year in advance? Regardless Science picked up the image for their Editor's choice which was also pretty neat.

I have worked on Tom Perkin's stuff on past projects, so I was familiar with some of the visual and potential animation objectives. The intial meeting with Gavin and Tom was pretty quick. I decided I wanted to use Maya for this project because I knew I could make a pretty beautiful rendering pretty quickly AND I could make an animation from 3D file when I had the extra time. The shapes were pretty easy to model (and I already had some 2D illustrator line work that I did previously to use for the "revolve" procedure in Maya). I spent most of my time working on textures, lighting, and colors. I was pretty happy with my lighting. I hate texturing in Maya, but I was able to get the results I wanted pretty efficiently. Of course I am running Maya 8.5 which is two versions old now and no longer supported by Autodesk. So Maya crashed a multiple times during this project which caused me an extra 2 days worth of Maya time. I think I am going finally break down get Maya 2009 Unlimited because the problems I am experienceing will never get fixed unless I upgrade (UPGRAYED!). I didn't use Mental Ray render because it was artifacting some weird stuff in there and I didn't have time to debugg that (and I would have to redo all my textures also). Hopefully the newer verion of Maya will support my current hardware configuration and work well with the latest OS that I am running on both the Mac and PC systems. All n All the final results were pretty good and I was happy with it. I am glad Perkins Group liked results as well and that NIST picked up the image for their press release thing. Hopefully I will get around to the animation part of the project after I get back from my trip this April.

Clients: Tom Perkins Group

SQUID(s) (superconducting quantum interference devices)

2009-04-03T13:02:00.003-06:00

I worked closely with Manuel Castellanos-Beltran on this project. JILA had research highlight article for this research, but I wasn't able to make graphic for this research concept at that time because of tight deadlines. Manuel came back to me a few weeks later and he told me that NSF was interviewing him and Konrad about their research. He was asking me about making a visual that would explain their research to wider audience.

I remember reading the papers and articles for this research, and I thought it would be a pretty hard to visualize some of the underlying concepts as a single image. Konrad and Manuel already had some pretty nice looking SEM images of the SQUID(s), so Manuel mentioned that an artist conception rendering of SQUID(s) might be a good thing for the NSF article. The SEM images of the SQUID(s) are interesting pictures, but they are kinda hard to interpret the actual shape and structure of the SQUID(s) themselves. So I proposed to make isometric illustration of the SQUID(s) which would see the shapes and pieces of the SQUIDs. Isometric illustrations are common for engineering diagrams, architecture, and manual diagrams. The SEM images kinda make the SQUIDs look like one piece when they are actually made up of multiple (very thin) layers and pieces. I did all the line work in Illustrator using the SSR Method and then used Photoshop for the final touches. I kept my colors palette to greens and blues to relate more to the original SEM images.

Read the NSF article to find more about the SQUID(s) research. The NSF article is pretty good with explaining the concepts to a general audience.

Clients: Konrad Lehnert and Manuel Castellanos-Beltran

JILA MONSTRs laser photography

2009-04-03T13:01:00.001-06:00

This was a fun photo shoot involving lasers from the JILA MONSTR system. I actually did this photo shoot the day before I left for the Christmas holiday (i think it might have been Christmas eve) which was a perfect time since everybody was gone and nobody was currently running experiments with the MONSTR system. Twas the night before Christmas, And all through the JILA hallways. Not a creature (or grad) was-ah-stirring. Not even a mouse… ha! sorry i had to do it, but it really did feel like that at JILA on that day...really. Nobody was there EXCEPT for Alan Bristow. Alan helped with the photo shoot so it turned out to be a really fun collaboration (plus he had the keys to the labs). AND he brought his sweet lovely precious, expensive DSLR Nikon camera with a decent lens! I only have SRO's lame Canon Rebel XT DSLR which is no where close to Alan's model. The Rebel XT that I use at JILA is "ok" and it works fine, but it is really a cheaper scaled back version of the more professional standard Canon 20D SLR which is what I currently use for my personal projects (with SIGMA lens). After being familiar with the Canon 20D and 30D models (and even the Nikon DSLRs too), lets just say Rebel XT has many short comings when it comes to its color calibrations, light metering system, and its auto focusing matrix (you get what you paid for is the only thing that comes to mind). I inherited the Rebel XT from my predecessor when I first start working at JILA, and I have been putting a new pro DSLR on my JILA Christmas wish list every year but the JILA Santa fails to deliver a sweet new Canon DSLR under the tree. Anyways......Alan had his camera, so I quickly abandoned the Rebel XT in favor of getting to use his camera. Alan and I were pretty excited about the photo shoot because it was problem solving game. It wasn't just a regular photo shoot where you just set up some lights and point-n-shoot. We wanted to turn on the lasers and doing some laser trace photography.

I heard about some of the methods for doing this, but I never had the chance to actually try it out. Even when the lasers are turned on, you can't see them with the naked eye. JILA MONSTR has all sorts of red and green lasers going every which way. Basically we setup the lights the way we wanted and then opened the shutter for a super long exposure. So we would put a white piece of paper attached the end of a thing stick or wire and trace the path with the paper. The only major problem was the tripod which was "janky" and broken, so it was pretty tough keeping it from falling apart. The shoot went well and we eventually got all the types of exposures I wanted to make my final blend of the images together.

Special thanks goes to Alan Bristow for collaborating with me on this photo shoot and for turning on the JILA MONSTR. If you are curious about what the heck is a JILA MONSTR and why its such a beast, then read the Highlight article below. JILA actually has two of these laser systems machined by the JILA machine shope.

Clients: Ralph Jimenez and Steve Cundiff

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Quantum Dots

2009-04-03T13:00:00.001-06:00

I worked with David Nesbitt who explained to me how quantum dots worked and how his research involved quantum dots. I made a simulation/animation that shows what turns a quantum dot off and on, but I haven't had time to finish that part of the project yet. My main focus to was to finish the still graphic before the deadline for the print issue of JILA Light and Matter and for the website. I really didn't know much about quantum dots before David's explanation and his research. I did some background research and I found out that quantum dots are fairly popular and that there is a lot of excitement about finding out more about quantum dots and their applications. It seems like one of the main questions centered around quantum dots was their ability to turn off and on and how to predict this (and potentially control it). So I wanted to make the visual that explains some the mechanisms behind the turning off and on feature. Its actually a very complex process, so it was difficult trying to figure out a clean and accessible way of explaining the process visually.

I use Maya for this project because I wanted model the quantum dots structure which consisted of a interior of cadmium seleide (CdSe) and then surrounded by a shell of zinc sulfide (ZnS).

Client: David Nesbitt

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Altered States

2009-04-02T17:30:00.005-06:00

Client: John Bohn

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

New ultrastable laser design

2009-04-02T17:30:00.004-06:00

Clients: Jun Ye and Murray Holland

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Quantum Computing

2009-04-02T17:30:00.003-06:00

I was initially excited about this project because I usually read up on quantum computing every now and then (its my computer engineer background in me). However the article the writer wrote for this piece was kinda confusing. I am not sure if the article really articulates the research very well. Because the article was mainly one big analogy I just made the art work directly reflect the words within the article. The deadline rush for the art and article made it hard for me to suggest a new direction for the article and art.

Clients: Jun Ye and Ana Maria Rey

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Fermions Transition Collisions

2009-04-02T13:50:00.003-06:00

Clients: Jun Ye Group

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Time Poster - Governor's Research Impact Award

2009-02-19T17:27:00.015-07:00

This a poster ( print size 3ft x 4ft) that I designed for Fellow Judah Levine for the Governor's Research Impact Award that he received Feb 17, 2009. The print version came out really well and actually looks better printed than in the digital format (usually its the other way around). The JILA chair and Judah came to me and asked me about doing a poster for his nomination ( and eventually onto being the finalist for the award) and I said I would do it. I was naturally excited about the prospect of designing a poster and doing the print work; however the problem was I was having too many ideas come into my head and I was having a problem trying to organize the information in a clear and clever manner. Of course Judah came by and made a quick list of items that needed to be on the poster. It was a start, but it didn't really help me because the ordering of the list didn't make much sense to me.

First things first. I need to absorb the idea and brainstorm. So I took this scratch paper list, looked it over, and spent all weekend brainstorming, organizing, and researching, and sketching. I spent a lot time on this part so that I could get a design that would work, grow, and would be able to finish within a week and a half. I had to think about my audience which were going to political types and business types.....basically as some scientists would put it "normal" people who only know a little bit of science. I had to think about the concept of time or precision time that Judah is involved with. I had to think about how to include both organizations of NIST and JILA into the design. I also had to think about whether I would need setup photo shoots or just use stock photography or both or none at all. think think think...draw, design, draw...... think think think

Finally I arrived several potential designs that I could really work into something for this project. I didn't arrive at any one golden perfect idea, but I figured I had the workings of several malleable ideas. I was pretty proud of myself by the end of that Sunday. I made a quick mock up of one of my more favorite ideas. I liked it, but it was kinda intense and radical which is why I liked it i guess. I showed a NYC designer friend of mine Tommy E. (i call him my Marc Jacobs designer) who was online working over the weekend with me. He was there chatting with me all weekend and he wanted to see my design. He peer pressured me into showing him my design. Short story: he commented that it was really a interesting idea and look...very Dada...very minimalistic ...very Sharp edges and lines. He caught the hourglass concept and etc. I said exactly! He mentioned that I should play around with making the edges smoother and more shading, but i said yea and no. While i understand that circles (hence clocks) and hour glass form itself have very smooth structures, I wanted the edges to be sharp and push the colors to be more flat to allude to the precision of time as a constant and not variable (as in curvatures and shading). So the main center graphic references to the abstraction of several time pieces such as hour glass, clock, interval rotation, and even the sun. I liked it because the shapes weren't directly saying what it was in a literal format. Depending on how you interpret the shapes you could arrive at any one or all those conclusions. Anyways I placed the two organization on either halves of the shape to make it look like both NIST and JILA work together on precision time. I organized essentially two contrasting columns on the sides of poster. The right column side is for "Time Services" that NIST and JILA actually provide. The left column side is for "Time Service Clients" which are types of people or fields of interest that actually depend on NIST and JILA's time services.

I felt pretty good about the various ideas I was working with. The next part was involving my boss (she is the writer in our office and likes to be involved with anything involving written content). I figured this would be a great project to team build together which I desperately needed help on because I was juggling several other projects with tight deadlines for some of the other Fellows at the same time. I figure I had enough rough visual ideas that it would help jump start dialogue with my boss about "melding" the visual components with the potential content. I like thinking and designing within a collaborative team. So that Monday I eagerly set up a meeting with my boss to show her my visual ideas and all my notes and concepts for the project. Well things didn't turn out so well. She looked at my sketches and I explained all my ideas. She said it was interesting, but she said it in that hesitant way. Designers know this reaction from clients. Then she said that it didn't look like it would really work (and this i am assuming was for all my sketch ideas) and that Judah would surely not care for it. BASICALLY rejected. At this point I was fine with that response and I figured she would have this sorta opinion or not get it... which happens. I figured "great!" , now lets deconstruct and/or reconstruct something and figure something out that WILL work. But this didn't happen either and i wasn't able to get tangible feedback. So I left and went to my office trying to figure out why all my designs was treated with doubt. Felt like someone throat punched me (ask ian about throat punching. ian's stories seem stick in my mind in an uncanny and unhealthy way sometimes). Anyways, Judah happened to come by the office "great! rub the failure directly in my face with the Fellow also". Well Judah took a quick look and said "Wow this is great". I thought he was being sarcastic or just nice. But i looked at him and he genuinely "figured" the designed out. I even asked several direct questions to test him. He knew exactly what i was trying to do with the shapes and organization. He just said keep going with it, and I was like GREAT! I felt like i got my voice back and I could get to work with some tangible feedback and support. From then I basically worked on it directly with Judah and relied on his feedback and opinions.

My design was throat punched and then resurrected. The main point is that I finished the project as I projected and everybody liked the final product (well nobody said anything negative about it abo). The poster was on display at the governor's mansion or wherever the award ceremonial was done.

I kept getting some really good comments from the other staff, grads, post docs, and Fellows. Thanks for the support guys! The poster was also on displayed in JILA reception lobby. If you get a chance, go check it out because the physical version is definitely better than the digital version. I was walking past and I overheard a post doc from one of the groups talking to his a colleague say "Yeah its intense!". I just smirked and continued walking down the hallway almost about laugh out loud with the feeling that I got away with something (making it eye catching and not traditional). Its interesting seeing people view my art work and hearing their reactions with my wondering ear.

Eight Days A Week did the printing, and they did a pretty decent job. Also I didn't realize that 3ft by 4ft is actually pretty big....physically. When I was designing I kept visualizing a more standard poster size; the kind you see hanging up in a classroom or something. I realized how big it was when I was printing a proto-type with JILA's printers and it was taking a long while to do.

All the art and photographs were done by me except for a few off location photographs that were provided by: NIST, NASA/JPL-Caltech NAIC - Arecibo Observatory (a facility of the NSF), and the close shot of the wall clock was done by Sanja Gjenero.

If you want a larger higher resolution version to read the details, just email me. Also Judah might put the pdf up on his website at some point.

Client: Judah Levine

Related Links: Press Release - CO Federal Research Labs Receive Gov's Award, ThomasNet; Industrial News Room, NewsWise, eScience News, Daily Camera

Optical traps for single molecule biophysics

2009-02-18T16:48:00.007-07:00

I worked closely with Fellow Tom Perkins on this techincal illustration of biophysical signals and optical-trapping geometries. I made the illustration late in 2008, but it did not get published to Laser & Photonics Reviews until Feb 2009. The top image is the final layout for the journal article with some visual adjustments by Tom Perkins.

Caption Text for Figure 3:
(online color at: www.lpr-journal.org) Comparison of different biophysical signals (a–g) and optical-trapping geometries (i–vii) used to study nucleic acids and nucleic-acid enzymes. (a) A “tug-of-war” signal between the biological molecule and the trap develops as an anchored protein (gold cone) moves along a nucleic acid (red and green) pulling the bead (blue sphere) in an optical trap (pink). (b) A ”conversion” signal uses the conversion from dsDNA (red and green) to ssDNA (green), or the reverse, to change the elastic properties of the tether and thereby measure enzymatic motion. (c) Opening of a nucleic-acid hairpin (through increased force, enzyme motion, or protein melting) leads to more single-stranded nucleic acid under tension and, therefore, motion of the trapped bead. (d) A “popping” signal occurs when sequestered nucleic-acid segments are released as the force in the trap is increased. This signal can be used to measure binding or looping of a protein (purple). (e) Fluorescent tracking of the motion of an enzyme (red cone) either by dye (green halos) displacement or a small fluorescent particle (green sphere) attached directly to the enzyme under study. (f) Fluorescence-resonance energy transfer (FRET) of two nearby fluorophores (D and A, donor and acceptor) leads to emission of red (acceptor) light if the fluorophores are close together. If the strands were separated by force or enzymatic motion, the FRET efficiency would change. (g) A torsional signal (enzyme rotational movement, nucleic-acid supercoiling) can be obtained by using birefringent particles (grey cylinder) and an optical trap which measures torque. (i) The nucleic acid is stretched between an anchor point on the surface and the trapped bead in the surface-coupled geometry. (ii) A micropipette holds one bead via suction while the other bead is optically trapped. (iii) Fluid flow (arrows) extends DNA attached to an optically trapped bead. (iv) Two traps holding two beads connected by a nucleic-acid molecule, often called a ”dumbbell” geometry. (v) Vertical stretching of a nucleic acid, similar to (i), but pulling straight up. (vi) A double dumbbell geometry, or ”quad” trap, allows precise manipulation and measurement of two nucleic-acid molecules for studying a protein (purple) which binds the two molecules together. (vii) Pulling a DNA molecule through a nanopore using an optical trap. Figures are schematic representations from references found in the main text. The biophysical signals shown can be measured through a variety of trapping geometries. For example, the enzyme moving along a nucleic acid which creates the “tug-of-war” signal could be anchored to a cover slip (i), a bead held by a micropipette (ii), or a second optically trapped bead (iv).

The Full citation: Laser & Photonics Reviews [article Fig 3], "Optical traps for single molecule biophysics: a primer", February 2009, Vol 3, Issue 1-2, Page 207

Client: Thomas Perkins

Chemcial Physics Letters - front cover

2009-01-20T12:14:00.013-07:00

My art work is on the cover of "Chemical Physics Letters" (January 13, 2009 issue)! I worked closely with Mike Thorpe in designing the cover image. This is my first CPL cover, so I was pretty excited about doing it.

Mike showed me some his figures and graphics he worked on and we figured out a combination of elements that we wanted to emphasize. The covers of CPL tend to have a wide range of graphics that can be really just technical graphs and dense figures usually submitted by the researchers themselves. I thought this would be a good opportunity to make an awesome graphic with some simple schematic elegance. Yes, I understand the typical reader of CPL probably doesn't care whats on the cover nor about the accessibility of the information that could be gathered from the image. Regardless I wanted to make a graphic that visually worthy for a cover AND be able to be used by Jun Ye's group for whatever purpose (website, powerpoint, etc). Plus, I believe the visual front of someone's research should be well considered and accessible. I decide to make a really clean figure-like image of the experiment and showoff the actual end result data. The resulting image data is depicting the interactions of the C₂H₂.

Mike did me the great favor of letting me know of this cover project early on and made himself available to me. This gave me the time and feedback to design and create the graphic pretty efficiently. Also I was balancing several other projects at once, so it was nice to be able to plan for the project balance. I used Maya to model the C₂H₂ at different angles and to get the correct lighting on the molecules. I used Illustrator for the line work and then Photoshop to compile the image together and put on the finishing touches (lighting, texture, etc).

This is my fourth cover in the past few months. Covers are fun to design and produce, and I am happy that they are all different and focus on several of JILA's major research topics. My goal was to make all my covers different AND for different types of publications that range from main stream science magazines to hard science journals.

Client: Mike Thorpe, Jun Ye Group

Related Links: Chemical Physics Letters

Nation's backup time scale WWV station photoshoot

2009-01-14T14:39:00.003-07:00

Fellow Judah Levine invited me to come out to the WWV remote transmission station, located 12 miles northwest of Fort Collins to shoot some photos for the upcoming JILA Light & Matter article titled "Spare Time". Naturally I was pretty excited about getting away from the desk (which is currently messy with my sketches from other other projects) and checking out this backup time scale WWV. I have heard about it, but I never experienced it myself. Driving out there in a government suburban with computer parts in the back felt like we playing a part in some kind of X-Files episode. Questions like "what does a place housing the backup time scale look like?, What consitutes a time scale?, Is this location top secret?" kept popping in my head. Of course the WWV station rather simple looking, but if you are geek like me then you get excited that time is counting right there in front of you and who is depending on these numbers. The WWV site is really just a bunch of radio towers and building fool of computers and vintage equipment. The computer vault itself was kinda crazy. I felt like it could absorb a missle strike. There were a lot of water bottles in the room, and I was just imagining that were for the person who would have lock themselves in the vault to protect the Nations Time or else all hell would break out. But no, they were just there to absorb the massive amounts of heat that computers were generating. Regardless it was really fun and see a new part of Colorado.

I really did feel like Fox Mulder from X-files and that I needed a gun (and having Scully next time giving me sound and objective advice about my suspicions would be pretty hot too) because some aliens or foriegn governement agency was about come fuck with AMERICA's TIME....also i had my camera so I could finally get the proof that Scully is always nagging me about.

Clients: Judah Levine

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Quantum Computing

2009-01-14T13:41:00.003-07:00

Fellow Jun Ye came to talk to Julie about his "vacation" at Caltech where he worked with former JILA Fellow Peter Zoller on coming up with the basic theoretical framework for a quantum computer. I was asked to make a visual that explain's Ye's and Zoller's potential quantum computer. So I fashioned this graphic after doing some 3D Maya modelings that depicits how the optical lattic is used to cycle between various of combinations of the atoms and their spins. Read the article and look to future journal publications. I hope Jun Ye continues his quantum computing stuff, so I can make some awesome motion graphics for it. I already have some of the 3D modeling done. The visual got a little complex with the n-bit register formula thrown in there, but Jun Ye insisted that right type of people will know what that means. I think Jun Ye, wanted me to put that formula on the computer screen, so he can use it for powerpoint presentations.

Clients: Jun Ye Group

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Cold collision of OH and He/D2

2009-01-14T12:00:00.001-07:00

I worked with Brain Sawyer and Ben Stuhl from the Jun Ye group. My main goal with this image was to organize all the types of cold collisions that were occurring and organize them in a clear layout and in relation to the collision energy associated with each type of collision reaction.

Clients: Jun Ye Group, Brain Sawyer, Ben Stuhl

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Science News front cover

2008-12-11T16:16:00.005-07:00

My art work is on the cover of "Science News" (December 20, 2008 issue)! I think it turned out pretty good. I originally made the rendering to be submitted for the front cover of Science for Jun Ye's and Debbie Jin's article, but it unfortunately was not selected. Well I'm glad it was used for Science News cover instead. The article "Physicists Hot for Ultracold" by Laura Sanders is the article that Jun Ye was quoted in. I highly recommend you reading this article for those of you who are curious about whats up with Ultracold quantum physics AND don't usuaully read the hardcore science journal publications. Laura did a pretty good job writing article in terms that the mainstream public can understand.

I already posted a blog entry about the details of the image titled "Dense Gas of Ultracold 'Polar' Molecules"

Client: NIST,Jun Ye Group, Debbie Jin Group, Kang-Kuen Ni

Related Links: Science News article, NIST, JILA Research Highlight article, National Science Foundation Article, Research.gov Article, Joint Quantum Institute article, CU News Release article, e! Science News article, Science Daily article, EurekAlert article, PhysOrg news article, First Science News article

Science & Technology Review - N204 Cover Image

2008-12-01T11:10:00.008-07:00

(published Science & Technology Review cover)

Dr. Wen Li sent me the cover of "Science & Technology Review" which is a Chinese scientific journal. I already posted a blog entry about the N₂O₄ titled "Science Cover and Figures - N₂O₄ Probed using High Harmonic Generation" so check out the details from there.

I don't know if I will be able to score a physical print version of the journal, but Im going to try. If anybody runs across one and doesn't want their copy, let me know.

Client: Kapteyn and Murnane Group, Wen Li

Related Links: Science article, PhysOrg News article, Information Center for Basic Science news article, Science & Technology Review (http://www.kjdb.org/cn/dqml.asp)

Science cover and figures - N2O4 Probed Using High Harmonic Generation

2008-11-24T13:38:00.024-07:00

(published Science cover)

(published Science schematic and graph)

(mock up idea for Science cover)

My art work is on the cover of "Science" (November 21, 2008 issue)! This is my first cover for Science, so I am pretty excited about it. I made several other potential Science covers within the past year, but they didn't get selected (i think they were pretty good one's too which you can find in this blog). Apparently it is a pretty competitive process to get a cover on Science. Anyways... now for the details:

I worked closely with Dr. Wen Li, Fellow Margaret Murnane, and Fellow Henry Kapteyn. I was originally just helping with the experimental schematic figure and the graph figure (the second image), and that expanded to coming up with cover images for Science. The schematic and graph figure was mainly done in Illustrator and I was mainly focusing on making the schematic pretty clear and clean looking so that two images could be group well each other. I am really happy how the schematic and graph figure images tie very closely to the cover imagery of the selected cover. The version in this blog is slightly different than the Science published version, but only a few of the colors were changed. The Science article and the caption text that was publish explains the schematic and graph figure pretty well if you are curious about it.

Covers: Why yes it was a pretty intensive process. It started out pretty simply with the schematic which was really just illustrating and arranging the objects in logical space. The real question next was how to describe the research concepts where the paper was titled "Time-Resolved Dynamics in N₂O₄ Probed Using High Harmonic Generation". This was a pretty daunting task, but Wen really worked with me and explained some of the core concepts to me. This whole project really turned out to be a really productive team play between me, Wen, Margaret, and Henry. It was the only way this project was really going to succeed. So it all started with Wen making his own sketch to show me some of his ideas. This helped me realize and focus on some of the key visual points for the rest of the project. I was really glad when I saw Wen come in with his own sketch. I usually encourage the people I am working with to sketch anything they can as part of the initial brain storming precess. Some researchers get shy about their drawing skills, but I keep telling them that it will help immensely no matter what they draw. So the brainstorming process went on for a while actually. I would make some mock and test renderings and we would get new ideas and I would try some new objectives. From the start I knew that I would be working in 3D environment, so I mainly used Maya and Photoshop for all the cover images. Working in a 3D environment paided off because it was much easier to make changes and create new variations in 3D package like Maya than if I were to draw/illustrate it.

to keep things short and sweet here, I will write briefly about each of the images in this blog.

The cover that was selected (top image), was showing the molecule N₂O₄ in two states where one is in an "excited" state (the one closes to front). I thought it would be a good idea to make the connection of these two different states of the N₂O₄ molecule to the actual data set of the High Harmonic Generation from the vibrating N₂O₄. Basically I wanted the viewer to be able to see where in the 3D space of the data that molecules were changing during the peaks of the data. The first step was to convert the data from Matlab to a 3d files that I could use to import into the Maya. I have done something similar to this before for PNAS figure and cover, so I passed Wen the matlab script to adapted to this his data. Wen converted the data from Matlab to a .OBJ file and I then imported it into Maya. The next step was to model the N₂O₄ molecules based on some information Wen provided me. It wasn't too bad to model in Maya (the excited state one was a little bit more complicated b/c the shapes were a little more atypical). After that I did a lot render tests for the lighting, colors, and textures. Then I used photoshop to add the final detail touches.

The other two images were mockups that we submitted to science as well. These images were basically showing the general and simple idea that the N₂O₄ molecules were being manipulated by several laser beams. They are both similar but one really emphaises how a few N₂O₄ molecules gets "trapped" in the laser beams amongst a cluster of N₂O₄ molecules. I thought these turned out pretty well and the main goal was to make a really simple visual concept that would work for a Science Cover. The main goal for all the covers was to show as much of the science as possible without overloading the viewer with too much technical jargon, arrows, and labels. We submitted all three of these as potential covers and the selected the top one because it showed the most science as directly related to the research. I was glad they picked that one because I was pretty attached to it myself. I liked all of them, but that is probably because I get personally attached to my 3D models and line work.

I really enjoyed working with Wen, Margaret, and Henry. I was also interacting with the art director and editors at Science via the phone for this project. They had some very postive comments about my work and efforts which made feel pretty good. I even blushed on the other end of the phone (good thing it wasn't a video conference or in person ha!). It feels good to finally get the cover and i am planning on trying to get few more Science covers in the future. Im hoping one of the Fellows at JILA discovers how to Time Travel. I bet I can make a bad ass cover for Science for that one.

Client: Kapteyn and Murnane Group, Wen Li

Related Links: Science article, PhysOrg News article, Information Center for Basic Science news article, Science & Technology Review (http://www.kjdb.org/cn/dqml.asp), Steacie Institute for Molecular Sciences (SIMS) of the National Research Council news article, JILA Research Highlight article

Dense Gas of Ultracold 'Polar' Molecules

2008-09-18T16:05:00.018-06:00

(mock up Science cover)

(Ultracold 'Polar' Molecules flow process)

(Ultracold 'Polar' Molecules flow process NIST version)

(mock up Science cover - ideaA)

(mock up Science cover - ideaB)

(mock up Science cover - ideaA+B)

(mock up Science cover - idea A+littleB)

I was asked create an illustration that explains the process of Fellow Jun Ye’s and Fellow Debbie Jin's Ultracold 'Polar' Molecules. I was originally just working with Kang-Kuen Ni, Jun Ye, and Debbie Jin, and then some people at NIST heard I was making some graphics for this scientific breakthrough, so it turned out to be collaborative effort with NIST as well. Jun and Debbie wanted the the graphic for their own presentations and press releases. NIST wanted an illustration that could be used for the news press release that would be easily understood by the general public. Jun and Debbie's research was being published in Science Express very very quickly, so this project turned out to be a pretty big with some tight deadlines. Everybody wanted something for their thing (websites, press releases, presentations, print, etc ), so it was kinda difficult meeting everybody's demands and needs in a very short time frame. It was a tedious process, but in the end I think the results were pretty positive. Everybody was running around everywhere and about everything. I was getting phones calls from NIST everyday and everybody was updating me about what the Science editors were saying or doing or whatever.

I was also asked to make a Science cover within 1-2 days (i think i really had a 24 hr turnaround) before it was absolutely due. Usually I need a little more time to make cover art, so I did the best I could. Since the deadline was almost immediate, I tried to recycle some of the imagery that I already made from the Ultracold 'Polar' Molecules flow process. I liked my ideas, but everybody had their opinions which just led to making multiple cover mockups. I had an amazing idea that was going to look beautiful and simple (basically bad ass), but I would need to do it with Maya with at least 4-5 days R&D time. So I did the best I could and developed the mock up (top image) using Illustrator. I thought it was pretty quick and simple solution in the end; however Science didn't selected it. I have been researching Science's past covers and their asethetics they go for which appears to be pretty fancy 3D renderings (and ontop of that, they were mainly of biology and chemistry concepts). So getting cover with the Ultracold 'Polar' Molecules was pretty slim to begin with. Nonetheless, I thought I came up with some pretty good visual ideas for covers given the time frame I had to work with (and the amount people involved).

It was fun and I wouldn't mind doing it again. The only thing I would ask for the next time was a little more time (and maybe their first born sons. however i think if they gave me a few of their grad student slaves, that could work out alright too. ha!)

The graphics were published in a lot of places, and I have to find them all. So I will be updating the links below as quickly as I can. If anybody finds a place where the images were used, let me know. Once the graphics get on the NIST's press release, a lot of different news sites pick up graphic for their reports.

Client: NIST,Jun Ye Group, Debbie Jin Group, Kang-Kuen Ni

Related Links: NIST, JILA Research Highlight article, National Science Foundation Article, Research.gov Article, Joint Quantum Institute article, CU News Release article, e! Science News article, Science Daily article, EurekAlert article, PhysOrg news article, First Science News article

Get Smart Spoof shoot

2008-09-07T15:51:00.001-06:00

My boss wrote a JILA Light & Matter article that was centered around "Get Smart" which is apparently some old tv show. My boss wanted Fellow Eric Cornell, Fellow John Bohn, and Ed Meyers to dress up like the characters from the show and do a shot like from the show. Obviously I didn't really know what the reference was too since that show was way before my time and even then wasn't that popular (correct me if im wrong), so I had to look it up some screen shots of the show. The deadline for the printers was coming up quick and I didn't have a good location to do a good "secret base/lab" shoot for. So I went to the NASA site and found some images (i love public domain image databases) that I could use to composite Eric, John, and Ed into. The high res background image was black and white, and I was going to re-color, but I didn't have enought time. Read the article to really get whats going on. It will make you want to find out more about Perturbation Theory.

Client: Eric Cornell, John Bohn, Ed Meyer

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Nanomechanical Beam

2008-08-08T12:20:00.008-06:00

John Teufel from the Konrad Lehnert group came to me about fixing up this scanning electron micrograph (SEM) image. I believe Cindy Regal took the original SEM image. SEM images the sample surface by scanning it with a high-energy beam of electrons in a raster scan pattern. I just basically helped him clean up the image and colorized it to help emphasize areas of interest in the image and to bring more of 3d depth back into the image. The image is taken from a top view angle. The area of the interest in the image is the very thin string strip run inning horizontally from the square like plates. Thats where all the action is taking place.

Clients: Konrad Lehnert group, John Teufel

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article, NanoTechWeb.org article

CO2 Splash Collisions

2008-08-08T10:51:00.006-06:00

I worked closely with Brad Perkins from the David Nesbitt Group. Well I actually started this project in December 2007, but my project queue was being overloaded with immediate deadlines from the Jun Ye group, Kapteyn Groups, and yes yes even NIST. So I put this project on pause for about 5 months which was fine because Brad's research was being embargo by the publishers forever (don't ask me why). The embargo was just lifted early this august 2008 which was just in time for the new JILA Light & Matter issue. blah blah this project took a while b/c of the dynamics and weird publishers holding onto the rights.

Here are the technical details behind this image. Ok so Brad has all this data (yea numbers and stuff) and put them into a computer program called "VMD (version 1.6.5)" which converts the data trajectories to visual simulation in 3D. This was great because he showed me what he rendered, but they didn't look that good and looked pretty blocky. VMD is open sourced and sometimes updated. Well VMD is not the easiest program to figure out how to get it render with better shapes and resolution, so I told brad that we should try to get the model in Maya and pull off some really good high res renders. Sounds simple, especially since I figured out how to get VMD to export the model as an .obj file. But NO! VMD DID create the .obj file but DIDN'T do it incorrectly (remember guys ....VMD is an open source program and support for it is not top notch), but I figured out to make a 3d file that could be brought into Blender (last ditch efforts) and then from Blender to Maya. Well this worked. I got it into Maya, but I couldn't do auto smooth on geometry to increase the shape qualities for 2 reasons: (1) the geometry was in triangles and not quads (Maya likes quads, but all these open source programs like putting their geometry in triangles ) (2) the whole object was one big mesh with intersecting parts going everywhere. I naturally cursed myself. Well i just recreated the whole thing in maya with better geometry using the original data points. It took too long (really a full weeks worth), but I got it finished, colored, and fixed up. phewwww all that work for regular to minor improvements. Well I had a week's worth of down time to dedicate to working in Maya. The good news is that I did get more familiar with using Maya's short cut key strokes and using Mac version of Maya. Sometimes I really do miss Maya and doing 3D projects and Sometimes I don't.

Brad made some simulations that I spliced together and put on the web and you should check them out on the JILA website (link below)

Client: David Nesbitt Group, Brad Perkins

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Machine Tooling Analogy

2008-07-29T15:12:00.007-06:00

Tom Perkins asked me to record and edit some video footage of a Electronic Machine Tooling that was shaping a machine part. He wanted to use the video as an analogy how this machine tooling will be similar to how science will be able to "tool" DNA on nano-scale. The hardest part about this video was slimming the video down from 5 minutes to 30 seconds. The robot machine was pretty cool. You just program the machine with some code and an autocad model file and the machine goes to town on the piece. I want one now, but apparently they are kinda expensive and cumbersome to store. The coolest part about the video shoot itself was how the metal shards actually shot out right towards the camera. Fortunately the metal shards didn't damage the lens or the camera.

Client: Tom Perkins Group

Mental to Experimental

2008-07-29T09:22:00.008-06:00

I worked with Fellow John Bohn and Ed Meyer who do a lot of theoretical work, but they were getting a lot of attention from researching the physics of a baseball and how humidity affects the spin of a baseball. John wanted to take theories about this subject and put it to experimental test and was trying to involve pitchers from the major league baseball team "The Rockies" in Denver. He was doing several presentations and wanted some pictures to help supplement his presentation. The photo shoot was rather fun because John Bohn is a really nice guy and has a pretty healthy sense of humor. He really enjoyed over exaggerating the experimental environment of his project because everybody knows that he is a theorist and theorist don't really have a budget for expensive lab environments.

If you are curious about John Bohn research about this subject, check out his pdf on his group's webpage here.

Client: John Bohn Group

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

BEC controlled by Feshbach physics

2008-07-15T13:46:00.005-06:00

I worked with Juan Pino from the Deborah Jin group, and he was having a hard time trying to figure out a visual that would explain his research clearly. Of course he could have pull out his hard science data, but we wanted to make the information more accessible. I have been inspired by the Higgs Mechanism illustration which was a series of abstract cartoon illustrations that explains the concept almost perfectly. Explaining the Higgs Mechanism is not an easy thing to do and doing it visual was probably pretty tough to conceptualize initially. Check out the Higgs Mechanism illustration here and you get what I mean.

Anyways I thought Juan's concept would be the perfect testing ground for trying to do an abstract cartoon to make the idea of behind the science more clear and accessible. So I did a lot playing around with Illustrator, Photoshop, and just plain old pencil and paper to come up with a system of characters. Essentially these are little Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) hanging with a few "excited" atom wondering around. Juan's experiment basically cause the BECs to be more interactive with each other by using the Feshbach techniques.

The illustration took a little while hammer out all the exacting details from Juan, but it was a fun project. I even involved my assistant Mohamad Zainuddin to help me draw all the arms and legs. Everybody in the office was curious what we were doings because they kept seeing the sketches of body parts all over multiple desk.

Clients: Deborah Jin Group, Juan Pino

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Microfluidics Device

2008-07-15T10:01:00.003-06:00

Photo shoot for Ralph Jimenez's and Emily Gibson's microfluidics device. Ralph wanted some experiment apparatus shots for a grant proposal that he was putting together. I did a 3D rendering of one of the experiment's functions a littel while ago, so it was kinda cool to see the actual device that was performing the experimental process that I visualized already before.

Clients: Ralph Jimenez Group, Emily Gibson

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

X-ray Frequency Comb

2008-07-03T13:03:00.005-06:00

I worked with Thomas Schibli and Dylan Yost from the Jun Ye Group on updating a laser schematic graphic that my predecessor created a few years ago which can be seen here. I just finished up a laser schematic graphic for Margaret Murnane a week before, so I was excersing a common style with the angle and color. I did add a new touch which was to add direction indicator arrows for this graphic because I want to emphasis that light is being repeating bouncing light in a cycle that is increasing. I wanted to make the graphic earlier so that it could have been used for Thomas's presentations, but my work load got in the way of having the graphic completed sooner. This schematic graphic actually represents several experiments, so I am probably going to be adapting this image more in the future, and this one might be turned into an animation.

Clients: Jun Ye Group, Dr. Thomas Schibli, Dylan Yost

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Photoemission spectroscopy

2008-06-15T11:15:00.004-06:00

I worked with the Debbie Jin group which didn't really give me that much feed back, so I had to do a lot of research and designing on my own. It felt like a lot of guess work that could have been answered if Debbie's Jin's grad students would have give me the minimal feedback. Regardless I pick up with an old design of the the magnetic quantum well that I did before. I did a "before n after" (aka "compare n contrast") technique. I was loosely told that here is this system of potassium atoms and then they "turn off" the magnetic quantum well at the same time as an RF pulse passes through. So I designed the whole "turn off" look of the right side which causes the reaction of the potassium I think it clearly shows how the some of the potassium atoms eject out of the well.

Client: Deborah Jin Group

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Gravitational Potential

2008-04-15T11:50:00.004-06:00

This illustration depicts how the gravitational potential on Earth varies during the year. Jun Ye was researching to see if the gravitational potential had any affect on atomic clocks position all over the world.

Client: Jun Ye Group

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

OSEP Industry Fair Poster

2008-04-11T10:54:00.002-06:00

Ricki who helps runs the OSEP came to me to ask if I would make the Industry Fair Poster. She explained she wanted to attract as much attention from potential grad students and post docs as possible at JILA and around CU's campus. So I created the art work and designed the layout of the poster.

I took the job because I really wanted to make that one center piece. It has modern design and utilized a pretty wide color pallet. I wanted to make the center piece kinda data/technical/scientific related using simple circles and lines connecting the "Them" to the "You's". The circles and lines make the dramatica case of the connection of "Them" and "You's", but I also wanted it resemble a kinda hot air ballon if you stand back and look at casually. This would re-enforce the event type. Essentially the art can be easily interpreted in several ways, and I think all of which relate back to core princple idea that its a Industry Fair and the idea is to "GET A JOB". I also think the art isn't too distracting, and the information is still accessible.

Client: Optical Science & Engineering Program (OSEP)

Electron wave function recolliding with CO2

2008-03-19T09:55:00.002-06:00

Clients: Henry Kapteyn & Margaret Murnane Groups

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Jim Bergquist photo shoot (@ NIST)

2008-02-29T12:50:00.002-07:00

Photo shoot with Jim Berquist who currently works at NIST, but he has also works with a lot of the scientist at JILA. The photo was used for an Alumni Profile article that Julie and I started adding to the JILA Light & Matter publications. Jim is really an interesting and friendly character, and I enjoyed taking pictures of him. I had the opportunity to tour Jim's lab at NIST. I love field trips, but the security at NIST is very tight. We had to be questioned and have my gear checked out before entering the facilities.

Quantum Logic Clock

2008-02-29T10:16:00.005-07:00

Looks like I am clock animation guy because NIST came back to me to work on the Quantum Logic Clock. I was asked develop and create an animation that explains how Till Rosenband’s Quantum Logic Clock works. NIST wanted an animation that could be used for the news media that would be easily understood by the public.

This was a very important project both because of the attention the scientific community giving for atomic clocks and establishing stronger co-op on projects with NIST and JILA.

This was a very difficult project mainly because of the organization and the very difficult schedule that Till Rosenband had. I also had to coordinate with the NIST people in Maryland on this project. The inner workings of the clock was very complicated, and I had trouble having people who are actually involved explain to me how it works and what possible ways to visualize this clock. Animation with a lot of specific details is tough because there is only so much screen space to put things. Personally this is one my failed animations as far being simple, clear, and actually makes the concept tangible. Part of the problem was not getting the technical feedback, and having non-science people in charge with dictating visual techniques. The deadline was very quick too, so things had to be done basically the way NIST wanted to be done.

The sad part is that after a week of completing this animation, I designed or figured out an amazing way to re-sequence the animation to be 20 times more effective and clear and visually awesome. I might re-design this animation if I have time, but thats impossible since at JILA I am booked on projects for the next 2 years. !yea! This project did re-enforce one thing for me. Working with busy client(s) who request something without explaining what is actually desired (so its a game of mind reading).

The figures and animations are published on the NIST’s website.

Clients: NIST, Till Rosenband

Related Links: NIST press release news article, Laser Focus World

Strontium Atomic Clock

2008-01-22T16:47:00.014-07:00

I was asked develop and create an animation that explains how Jun Ye’s strontium atomic clock works. NIST wanted an animation that could be used for the news media that would be easily understood by the public. NIST also asked me edit the press release footage.

This was a very important project both because of the attention the scientific community that Jun Ye was getting for his research and establishing stronger co-op on projects with NIST and JILA.

The figures and animations are published on the NIST’s website, Science Express, United States of America Department of Commerce website.

Clients: NIST & Jun Ye Group

Related Links: NIST news article, JILA Research Highlight article, Science Express article,Department of Commerce news story, The Futurist article, Science Centric article, Information Center for Basic Science

NIST & Jun Ye Atomic Clock press release

2008-01-22T12:06:00.001-07:00

NIST (public affairs) asked me to edit the press release for Jun Ye's Sr Atomic Clock. This meant they would send me the interview footage from their Maryland office archives they already shot, and I would edit the footage with the new animation sequences I also creating. The press release can be viewed on the NIST website with captions.

Clients: NIST, Jun Ye Group

Related Links: NIST news press release

DNA Laser Trap Schemes

2008-01-10T16:31:00.002-07:00

These are technical figures that involves double helix of DNA and laser trap schemes.

Client: Tom Perkins Group

Sleeves

2007-12-20T16:30:00.001-07:00

Sleeves is an experimental digital video that consists of two separate screens or frames that are stacked upon each other. The two cubes related to each other as constructive space.

This piece is presented as a picture medium or video painting where it relies on a constant motion cycle and not a linear narrative. The looping video of the boat constantly sinking and remerging is intended to represent the idea of innocence and fascination. The cube constructions make up a minimalist environment of cycles and perspective edges.

I was inspired by Jerry Uelsmann's Untitled [boat and cube] piece. I emulated Jerry's technique of taking 2D photo image and overlaying two faces that simply tints the image thus creating a natural optical illusion. The shape, shading, and motion transforms the otherwise flat image into a 3D perspective construction.

Run Time: Loops every 6 min. 59 sec.

Intented Viewing: 2 screens projecting on gallery wall

Watch the Video Here

Microfluidics Device

2007-12-14T11:16:00.002-07:00

This was an interesting 3D project. I had to take a model that was created from data in a program called VMD that was then placed a 3D Program Blender and then convert to .obj file that Maya could read. Converting the .obj file to workable format in Maya took a while to get handle on, but it was worth it in the end. I got a pretty good rendering from Maya along with the control and adjustable-ity

Clients: Ralph Jimenez Group, Emily Gibson

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Imaging steps in an X-Ray microscope

2007-12-04T10:03:00.001-07:00

Richard Sandberg came to me asking for assistance with this designing this image for a potential PNAS publication cover. He came to me about 2 days before the deadline of the cover submission, so I just worked up what he had put together and gave it more professional touch. This image is not really cover type material and I explained to Richard how these editors at PNAS select their cover images. It is very hard designing covers for the type of research at JILA because the concepts are very complex and most of research hasn't been effectively visualized (nothing like medical field).

Clients: Richard Sandberg, Henry Kapteyn & Margaret Murnane Groups

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Laser Atom Trap Graphs

2007-12-03T09:47:00.001-07:00

This was quick 3D project that had to be done in Maya because illustrator couldn't handle the 3d components very well. This was a very quick project where I had only about a day to complete in all. I believe Jun Ye uses this figure for a journal paper and presentations. I forgot the scientific details of these graphs.

Client: Jun Ye Group

DNA: Force Scale

2007-11-20T21:03:00.001-07:00

The object of this image was to make a cover image that portrays tiny forces measurable via optical trap (atomic force microscopy). I worked with Tom Perkins who was doing research on the idea of using a double helix of DNA that acts as “spring” to measure the atomic forces. I imagined that best way to portray this scientific concept to a general audience was to design a compare and contrast metaphor to that of a traditional force spring scale that you would find in a physics class in a high school classroom.

I invited Jay Fittipaldi to work remotely with me on a few 3D components. He model the apple using Zbrush while I modeled and rendered everything else using Maya, Photoshop, and Illustrator. The team play with Jay helped me expand my experience with the Maya and Zbrush production pipeline.

Client: Tom Perkins Group

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Atomic Clocks Sync

2007-11-07T08:38:00.001-07:00

I worked very closely with Jun Ye and Andrew Ludlow on this project. I really like working with Jun Ye because he lets me actually design a new perspective about how visually comprehend the subject. I stepped away from the more traditional design asethetics that you may see in Science magazine, and used colors and saturation levels to really make the illustration figure pretty distinctive. I wanted the image to be accessible to wide range of audiences such as the public to the international science communities. The image can be interpreted very technically with the details, but only when you really want to get into the details and break the image down to speceifics. Otherwise I still think the image is pretty clear with it over-all visual literacy that this how two very complex atomic clocks sync and relate to each other in Boulder.

This is illustration basically compares to two clocks (one at JILA and the other NIST) and how they relate to each. Essentially these two clocks are sync together or they are used to compare the times to help measure accuracy levels. The clocks are located in two different places in Boulder and they are connected to each via fiber optics cable that run underground. Basically this a compare n' contrast of two systems. Jun Ye wanted to use gears as metaphor for the system to describe the frequency comb spectrum. The arrangement and types of gears are actually very specific technically and in their arrangement in the figure. The JILA Research Highlight article explains this figure pretty well if you wanted more information

Clients: Jun Ye Group, Dr. Andrew Ludlow

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article, NIST news article

Excitons confined in quantum wells

2007-08-27T09:24:00.001-06:00

This image is excitons confined in two-dimensional quantum wells inside a semiconductor. I worked closely with Sam Carter. We started off with multiple tangents about how to visualize this subject matter. I was working originally with Adobe Illustrator, but the discussion about the visuals quickly migrated to 3D schemes. I recently got my copy of Maya, and I thought it might be good project to work in Maya. The dots/spheres are very specifically arranged (mathmatically spaced from Matlab data) which reflect density and potential energy levels of the excitons. I was just very excited about making Maya be very detail oriented with the data and objects. Maya crashed a ton of times due to the heavy nature of the spherical geometry, but I got (3D) wise and converted all the polygon geometry to particle data which seemed to help with the computer processing. I didn't have my work horse Mac Pro yet and I only had my PC which basically only has good amount of memory and a 3d gamers graphic card (which mean slow slow when it comes to processing rendering and even displaying)

Clients: Sam Carter, Steve Cundiff Group

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Jun Ye Photo Shoot

2007-08-23T11:00:00.000-06:00

I had the pleasure of taking Jun Ye's photograph in front of his newly completed next-generation atomic clock. His lab is jam pack with lasers and multiple experiments running almost 24/7. I had to come to his lab in the early morning when non his experiments were not booting up to do their routines just yet. I brought my lights, but it was very difficult since there wasn't that much physical room in his lab and there were not many outlet plugs. But I got a good setup and Jun Ye was doing very good with me when I he posed for me.

Client: Jun Ye Group

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article, NIST news article

Rosalba Perna Photo Shoot

2007-08-17T10:44:00.001-06:00

I was asked to take photo's of several scientist that were 29^th Street Community Outreach Activities. Rosalba Perna was one of the astrophysicist I needed to photograph, so I went to her office with my camera and lights. The shoot went pretty well

Client: Rosalba Perna

Mathis Weber Photo Shoot

2007-08-17T10:32:00.004-06:00

I was asked to take photo's of several scientist that were 29^th Street Community Outreach Activities. Mathis Weber was one of the scientist I needed to photograph, so I went to his lab with my camera and lights. The shoot went pretty well

Client: Weber Research Group

X-ray Excitation

2007-08-10T19:08:00.002-06:00

I worked very closely with Dr. Arvinder Sandhu and Etienne Gagnon on developing figures and cover art for Science Magazine. I had a week to develop a cover image using Maya as my 3D tool set.

My image was not selected for the front cover since Science magazine already used an attosecond science cover image in their previously issue. Apparently its Science’s political policy not to run similar subjects on their front covers consecutively. Even though it was not selected for the front cover image, it was printed on an inside page.

Clients: Henry Kapteyn & Margaret Murnane Groups

Related Links: JILA's Research ighlight article Air Force Print News Today Wright-Patterson Air Force Base

Invent an Elementary Particle

2007-07-27T16:50:00.003-06:00

Leapton (image 1): particle created anytime someone jumps on the bandwagon in support of an elegant, but unprovable theory.

Agiton (image 2): An overstimulated exciton formed when semiconductors are simultaneously illuminated with ultrafast optical and X-ray lasers.

Q Brothers (image 3): Two brothers, Quack and Quirk who share similar properties but relate to each other on two different spectrum's. Both believe they are elusive quasi particles, but partial evidence of their existence is relatively easy to locate.

I made these pieces for the Symmetry magazine' s conteset "Invent an Elementary Particle". The contest was inspired by Roz Chast is best know for her cartoons and illustrations in The New Yorker. A short description supplements each piece.

The editors for Symmetry wrote me an email back explaining how much they really liked my pieces. I knew my pieces were basically coming out of left field for this contest thing, but it was kinda cool to get a personal email from top editors expressing their enthusiasm for submissions. I didn't get first place (I was robbed!), but I did get second place which is about the same difference as first i suppose. I got the "Leapton" piece published in their print and online and I got a hand signed poster by Roz Chast.

I had fun with this project. I usually make these types of collages for my friends and send the pieces through mail (internationally too). art humor I suppose. My little brother, Matthew, came to visit me in Boulder while I was working on these pieces, so Matthew contributed his evenings with me putting together "Q Brothers" piece (hence the title). that piece is dedicated to you Mathew for your help!

Read the Symmetry article HERE

Optical 2-D Fourier transform spectroscopy of semiconductors

2007-07-20T21:16:00.001-06:00

This was my first 3D project at JILA. I worked closely with Tianhao Zhang who wanted a cover image to be used for PNAS magazine. He came to me with some 3D renderings from Matlab which were too basic and limiting. So we worked together in figuring out how to import 3D information based on data samples from Matlab into Autodesk Maya. Basically there isn’t any function in Matlab for this need and I couldn’t find anybody in the Matlab or Maya communities that had any solutions. So Tianhao and I develop a Matlab script that created/formatted .obj files based off the data points. It worked and I was able to make some very good high resolution renderings using Maya.

Client: Steve Cundiff Group

EUV illustration and animation

2007-07-15T14:27:00.002-06:00

I worked closely with Etienne Gagnon and Arvinder Sandhu who wanted an illustration and animation for their powerpoint presentation about using High-order Harmonics with Momentum Imaging Techniques to study atomic and molecular dynamics. They were basically presented their presentation internationally and need some really strong and clear visuals to supplement their talks.

This was one of my first laser schematics that I ever illustrated and also to animate as well. I used flash to make the animation, so that I could script in some controls for the presenters to utilize while they giving their talk (controls that let them start and stop and replay certain sections of the sequence again)

Clients: Henry Kapteyn & Margaret Murnane Groups, Etienne Gagnon, Arvinder Sandhu

Attosecond Science & Coherent X-rays

2007-06-20T16:39:00.002-06:00

I worked closely with Margaret Murnane and Dr. Oren Cohen on making this technical figure and animation. My goal was trying to keep technical side intact and make the concept accessible to a general audience as well.

Client: Henry Kapteyn & Margaret Murnane Groups

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article, Watch Animation

JILA Machine Shop Course

2007-06-05T10:11:00.001-06:00

My writer/boss wanted to make a JILA Light & Matter story about the machine shop course that is available to all employees at JILA, so I was the one who volunteer to take the course and also take photos for the story.

Client: JILA's Instrument Shop

Reflection Grisms

2007-05-30T08:59:00.002-06:00

Photo shoot of Ralph's laser reflection grisms.

Client: Ralph Jimenez Group

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article

Rolling Wheels & Friction

2007-05-11T14:02:00.001-06:00

Ralph came to me asking to re-design a image he had for a text book that was going to be published in the following months. He told me he wanted a more visually clear image of the concept of how the rolling balls reach the bottom of the slop due to varied friction and uniform friction.

Client: Ralph Jimenez

Casimir-Polder Force

2007-04-25T16:43:00.002-06:00

This illustration and animation was designed to show how the casimir-polder force works on a quantum atomic level to a general audience.

Client: Eric Cornell Group

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article, Watch Animation

Yotta Computer

2007-04-15T10:01:00.002-06:00

The computing group at JILA asked me to take some photos of their new computer cluster they just designed called the Yotta computer. AMD donated 8 cutting-edge-dual-core processors which were used to build the ever growing Yotta computer cluster.

Client: Computing Team at JILA

Sympathetic Cooling & Simply Pathetic Cooling

2007-04-10T13:48:00.002-06:00

Client: John Bohn

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article, Watch Animation

Breathing Cloud of ultracold fermions

2007-03-02T13:34:00.003-07:00

This was one of my first animations/illustrations that I made at JILA. The animation is essentially a simulation that is driven by math equations and randomness algorithms using flash's actionscripting. Making this simulation was very similar to the animations and simulations that I had to make for my engineering course (Computer Simulations) using program called Processing (JAVA-based).

Clients: Seth Rittenhouse, Javier Von Stecher

Related Links: JILA Research Highlight article, Watch Animation

Intermixture

2006-06-18T16:38:00.000-06:00

Intermixture is an experimental piece that consists of three separate screens or frames that are stacked upon each other. The three screens are objects that form a networked sequence that relate the motion and the objects to a vertical spatial level of depth.

Each frame contains objects of symbolic elements that represent a primordial birth of nature and time. The elements in the frames map to the other frames through their natural kinetic properties that persist as a constant cycle. Man is a symbolic element to this sequence that represents his involvement with the natural world through the constant fall and rise of man.

Intermixture is presented as a picture medium and not as narrative medium because there is no beginning, middle, or end. It instead relies on a constant motion cycle that can be viewed as a digital video portrait of the natural world and time.

Run Time: Loops every 2 min. 50 sec.

Intented Viewing: 3 screens projecting on gallery wall

Watch the Video Here

Cowboy/Wild Strut

2006-05-22T16:03:00.004-06:00

This is a personal project that Chris and I wrote and designed. It is a western, fantasy story about a young cowboy who struggles with apathy while the Wild West is ready to devour him. He fights for control against forces that seem to lead his destiny. The cowboy is plagued with an unwanted subconscious companion who guides and protects him. He is unsure about his path, and he has no choice but to see what beckons him.

This story is the first episode to the major epic. Chris and I were heavily inspired by Clint Eastwood Western movies.

Chris and I worked together on all project aspects. Chris illustrated all the images for this project. For more detail information about this project please go here

A Boy and His Leech

2006-04-06T16:46:00.002-06:00

"A Boy and His Leech" is a video journal documentary featuring amateur naturalist Greg Wilde. Greg had become dissatisfied with common pets and human companions, so in early 2005 he decided to adopt a leech as a pet to fill this void.

What Greg intended to show was his companion as a loving and sensitive creature that he could co-exist with just the same as any other pet or human friend.

What he wanted to convey was simple and literal; but deeper within his video journal lies a depiction of human nature's constant need for attention, affection, and companionship. These most basic of humanistic needs led Greg into a dangerous dance with the natural world; a dance he would ultimately pay for with his life.

Artist Statment:

I wanted to experiment portable video's intimacy and low-tech immediacy in order to create idiosyncratic narrative comedy. Basically I wanted to make a one-man reality produced documentary that spoofs pop reality movies such as The Grizzly Man where the original creator dies during production and another indivdual finishes the piece. The second producer popularizes the documentary's original intent by taking the stance as an outside observer who anaylzes the isolated reality of the original creator.

Run Time: 22 min. 40 secs.

More Details about this Project Here

n/a

2005-11-18T15:26:00.000-07:00

This is a series of depictions of childhood fears from the perspective of a child. I used the digital medium to emphasize the lights and environment to reflect the haunting and surrealistic visuals.

Loading Barrel

2005-10-25T17:11:00.000-06:00

Loading Barrel strings a network of pre-loading screens found on the Internet and other multi-media sources and projects them as a simplistic narrative with anticipated climax. Traditional writing, theatre, and movies are typically designed with climaxes that contain the elements of a beginning, middle, and end. I propose the loading screen as a narrative that is essentially a climax entity. The loading screen tells the viewer when the beginning occurs and how long until the conclusion.

We gladly wait for the meaning. We wait for the end of a movie, we read the last page to a novel, and we wait for the last act. The loading screens use increments, shapes, and symbols that map to a progression and time of the narrative/experience.

Then we can recursively move onto the next bit of content.

Visual Details:
Loading Barrel is currently 18 minutes long. The longer loading screens are arranged progressively with the longer at the beginning and shorter ones the end. I made one audio track of a computer processing hum that also progressively gets louder towards the end. After the last loading screen, the anticipated content appears. The content consist of edited scenes taken from a Clint Eastwood western movie. Eastwood is casually loading his gun in preparation to kill predicatable villains sneaking up on him. The content is choppy to emphasize a streaming effect (which is another form of a loading). The DVD is then scripted to repeat the loop constantly.

Run Time: Loops every 25 min. 50 sec.

Intented Viewing: Projection on gallery wall

More Details on this Project Here

Scuttle

2005-10-18T15:40:00.000-06:00

Scuttle is a collection of portraits that combines elements of photography and painting. My intent was to create a sublime and eerie feeling by skewing the proportions of the anatomy slightly causing the viewer to question the truth of the images as photographs or paintings. I was fascinated by the inherent human perception of proportions.

n/a

2005-10-18T15:15:00.000-06:00

The objective was to focus on taking images of small or minature objects. I decided to explore objects that have potential power/importance but become useless with neglect to their size.

n/a

2005-10-01T15:18:00.000-06:00

Surveliance of information and censorship was the premise of this project. This image combines photographic with illustrative elements.

Crowd Simulation Plug-in for Maya

2005-05-06T15:48:00.001-06:00

The goal was to create a Maya plug-in that simulates crowds of intelligent agents in a 3D environment. Agents have individual and flocking behaviors that can be customized to give the user complete control over agents' action. This will be a versatile tool for smaller, low budget productions that allows the generation of high quality crowd simulations for 3D animations. Our tool will allow digital artists to design complex animations without extensive programming ability. I was responible for Flocking/Steering Behaviors of the 3D agents. My teammates were: Jay Fittipaldi, Chris Dang, and Josiah Greenewald.

For more detail information and video demos please visit my site here.