Regardless of the scientific or medical animation you’re working on, the first essential step is to look at and collect as much specific reference imagery as you can. Even if it involves looking at a lot of difficult "surgeon camera" shots that contain lots of blood and gore, this is the best way to understand the way our internal bodies really look. Really study the way things move and react to one another. The Internet is always a good source, as usual. Lennart Nilsson’s magnified interior body photos are a great source of inspiration for us (www.lennartnilsson.com). His images are romanticized by his photography and setup, however, and his work often has a very studio-lit feel to it. Decide early on the brief you want to follow and study different lighting techniques. We were going for a highly realistic look and recognized that most "real" internal body shots are front- and single-source lit. That single light source would often burn out and give the images an overexposed feel.
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