CD226 MOD

GSK
CD226 Mechanism of Disease

See full video on GSK's website: https://www.cd226axis.com/

A continuation of the work from the CD226 Axis webpage, we were thrilled to expand the story and bring it to life through video. Working again with an amazing team (thank you all for your hard efforts) the story really came to life!

Roles

Co-Creative Lead | Layout | Rigging | Animation

Software

Modo

Antibodies doing their magic and allowing the T-Cell (blue cell above) to recognize the Tumor cell below for what it is.

Once activated, the T-Cells can express cytokines triggering apoptosis (cell death) in the Tumor Cells they target. A beautiful cell death sim from a friend using Houdini, rendered in Modo.

Technical Notes

before

after

While not perfect, I was happy with the rigging in this project. The scenes (shots) were able to be built modularly, same with the rigging, which made animating much more enjoyable. Here is an example of how some Dynamic Parenting allows linking a couple characters, and because the ends are locked to separate surfaces you get very organic movements for free.

Here is an example of some modular scene construction. To facilitate easy editing, I kept the cell surfaces procedural including using layered procedural textures for their displacements. In addition, I linked some parameters on the rigs to materials to simplify the work of the shading artist. This approach not only made timing updates a breeze, but also ensured that animation and shader relationships remained intact. :)

These cells were really fun to animate with the cytokine (little blue particles) rigs. The little cone indicating the "target" for the cytokines really made the T-Cells feel like hunters.