BMC75

BMC75 Gala Closing Social and Reunion—June 27, 11:00AM ET

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BMC75 Gala closing SOCIAL AND REUNION*

Sunday, June 27 | 11:00 a.M.-12:00 P.M. EDT

After 27 days of celebration, 10 social and skills-development events, and countless (re)connections with fellow BMCers across the globe, it is finally time for the BMC75 Gala to come to a close. Come chat with old classmates and swap stories about your favourite BMClasses, or maybe even meet a new BMCer in breakout rooms. We'll also be announcing the grand prize winner of the Virtual Gallery Scavenger Hunt Challenge - so don't miss out!

*This event is hosted by the BMCAA, intended for AAM/BMC Alumni, Students & Faculty.

BMC75 Virtual Trivia Night—June 24, 8:00PM ET

BMC75 virtual trivia night

Thursday, June 24 | 8:00-9:00 P.M. EDT

The BMCAA is hosting another virtual Trivia Night! Play solo or in a team of up to 4, and there will be prizes!

"Doors open" at 7:30 - come early, hang out and meet folks in the main room or breakout rooms. The game will start at 8!

Once you register for the event, you'll find a link to a team sign-up sheet if you're playing with others (max teams of 4). All team members should register through EventBrite.

There will be prizes for the trivia champ(s)!

BMClasses: Professional Development Workshops—June 14-18

The BMC Alumni Association introduces BMClasses—short, one-hour professional development workshops in biomedical communications. These workshops are free and open to the public. Come learn a new technique or simply freshen up your skills!

Blender 101: An Introductory Crash Course!

Monday, June 14 | 12:00-1:00 p.m.

Instructor: Abeeshan Selvabaskaran (2T2)

Description: Blender is one of the fastest-growing softwares available and competes with the biggest 3D modelling and animation programs in the industry. A huge advantage of Blender is that it's completely open-source and free to use. I've been using Blender for several years and have seen it grow into the magnificent beast it is today. This BMClass will be an introductory crash course to get participants started and excited to use Blender. I'll go over the UI, some of the basics in modelling and texturing, and participants will end the session by creating some simple models.

What you’ll need: Access to a computer with a 3-button mouse and the latest build of Blender (2.92.0) downloaded prior to the BMClass.

 

Affinity Designer 101: The Antidote to Adobe Illustrator

Tuesday, June 15 | 12:00-1:00 p.m.

Instructor: Dave Mazierski (8T2)

Description: The dominance of Adobe Illustrator in the vector graphics market has not stopped little software Davids from emerging to take on Adobe’s Goliath. One worthy competitor is Affinity Designer, by Serif (Europe) Ltd. Competitively priced at $70 CDN (and it’s available at half price often throughout the year), Affinity Designer offers a suite of tools (with eerily identical keyboard shortcuts) that rival Illustrator’s, plus throws in a set of pixel editing and painting tools that, while not at the level of Photoshop, allows the user to create vector objects that serve as masks for pixel painting all within one file. Affinity can open most common (and Adobe-based) file formats, and save to them as well. This BMClass will feature an overview of the program’s interface and toolset, with examples of artwork created as part of my undergraduate teaching during the recent “work from home or die” academic year. If participants are looking to lighten their monthly software budget, Affinity Designer might be the solution.

What you’ll need: Nothing is required for the demonstration; however, if participants would like to follow along they may download a trial version of Affinity Designer prior to the BMClass.

 
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DaVinci Resolve 101: Your New Favourite Piece of Freeware!

Tuesday, June 15 | 8:00-9:00 p.m.

Instructor: Paul Kelly (1T1)

Description: Known for being the best app for colour-grading video, DaVinci Resolve by Blackmagic is an all-in-one video editing and development tool that also integrates audio editing and node based compositing. It's ridiculous that this software is free. Not only can you do all your video editing, audio editing and 3D compositing in one piece of software, but it renders out the final super fast. In this BMClass I’ll run through a demonstration of DaVinci and how it can be incorporated into participants' video editing workflow.

What you'll need: Nothing is required for the demonstration; however, if participants would like to follow along they may download DaVinci Resolve 17 prior to the BMClass.

 
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Facilitation 101: Digital Workshopping Using Miro

Wednesday, June 16  |  12:00-1:00 p.m.

Instructor: Marina Spyridis (1T6)

Description:  Running workshops and acting as a facilitator are useful skills to broaden your ability to creatively ideate on your own work, with teammates, or with clients. In this BMClass, participants will learn the basics of how to structure a workshop, communication & facilitation techniques, what type of assets you should create to run the session, and how to plan for output afterwards. Participants will finish this BMClass with an interactive working session in Miro, a free software that can be used for remote workshopping and facilitation. This BMClass would benefit those who want to improve their communication and facilitation, or aspire to work in strategic design, service design, or consulting. 

What you'll need: Access to the internet in order to participate and engage via a Miro board, which is free to use and edit as a guest.

 

Houdini 101: Getting Molecular with Houdini

Wednesday, June 16  |  7:00-8:00 p.m.

Instructor: Stuart Jantzen (1T3)

Description:  Molecules and Houdini are a beautiful marriage! In this BMClass participants will learn how to use Houdini to create a complex molecular structure using biological data. The model will be converted into a reusable tool with adjustable parameters. This session will provide just a taste of the strengths of Houdini, namely data manipulation, procedural model generation, and tool development. 

What you'll need: Access to a computer with a 3-button mouse and Houdini Apprentice (Free learning version) downloaded prior to the BMClass. Additionally, participants are strongly encouraged to spend 30 minutes following an introductory tutorial that covers the ultra-basics of using Houdini prior to the session.

 

Digital Painting 101: Creating Cohesive Colour Palettes 

Thursday, June 17  |  8:00-9:00 P.M.

Instructor: Brittany Cheung (2T1)

Description:  A relatively informal class on digital painting with an emphasis on colour palettes and layer styles. I will be going through how to pick pleasing, cohesive colour palettes, and how I use layer styles to adhere to the palette as the painting progresses. I will also facilitate a Q&A about my painting process and give impromptu demonstrations of specific techniques based on participants’ requests, as time allows.

What you'll need: Any 2D painting program (Photoshop, Procreate, Clip Studio Paint, etc.) that participants would like to practice in!

 

Blender 201: Creating a Sciviz Scene

Friday, June 18  |  12:00-1:00 P.m.

Instructor: Eric Chung (2T1)

Description: Blender’s rate of development has skyrocketed since the release of version 2.8, with a significant UI overhaul, and new, unique features continuously being added. Having used Blender since version 2.59, I’ve found that it excels as a jack-of-all trades concepting tool.

In this BMClass, I’ll show participants how to leverage its snappy, real-time Eevee rendering engine for faster iteration in final renders and lookdev. I’ll also introduce Blender’s new Houdini-esque Geometry Nodes, as well as its very comprehensive sculpting toolset. The session will go through how these features work through the creation of a sciviz scene, as well as how they differ from traditional 3D workflows.

What you'll need: Access to a computer with a 3-button mouse and the latest build of Blender (2.92.0) downloaded prior to the BMClass. Participants may also find the following free Blender add-on useful for the session.

BMC75 Watercolour Postcard Workshop with Joyce Hui (1T1)—June 13, 2:00PM ET

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Paint a watercolour scene and share it with a fellow BMCer!

Sunday, June 13 | 2:00-3:00 P.M. EDT

Instructor: Joyce Hui (@rurupoi)

Description: During this interactive workshop, you’ll learn how to capture, on a postcard, an outdoor scene in your local environment using traditional watercolour media. You’ll be guided through tips on tools and tricks for colour mixing, then paint along with me as I give a live demo. Q+A will be welcomed throughout as you create your watercolour postcard!

Workshop participants can choose to paint a scene en direct (for example, a view out your window / in your backyard), bring a photo reference to work from, or follow along with the reference photo Joyce will be using.

Following the workshop, you can exchange your watercolour postcard via snail mail with other workshop participants (facilitated by the BMCAA). Connect with a new BMCer and share a little slice of where you are with them!

Materials you'll need:

  • Basic watercolour set*

  • Watercolour or mixed media paper: recommended 5x7" postcard size

  • A watercolour brush (round size 10 recommended)

  • Pencil for sketching

  • An outdoor scene to paint: either one in your immediate environment (e.g. view out the window), or a reference photo

  • Optional: water-soluble pencils, markers, ink, white gouache, white gel pen, eraser 

If you plan on purchasing new materials for this workshop, please consider supporting local art stores! For those located in Toronto/GTA, we recommend Above GroundCurry's Art Store, and ARTiculations. For folks located outside Toronto, try DeSerres. And feel free to share any other gems you know of!

*Joyce will be using quinacridone red, hansa yellow medium, ultramarine blue, phthalo blue (green shade), cerulean blue, burnt sienna, and perylene maroon. But a basic triad of the primaries also works!

BMC75 Gala Opening Night & Alumni Reunion—May 31, 7:30PM ET

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Join the bmcaa for an evening of cocktails and "mingling" with your AAM/BMC cohort!

Monday, May 31, 2021
7:30 - 9:30 PM ET

The BMC Faculty, Gala Committee, and BMCAA Executive Committee invite all BMC alumni, students, and community members to join us in kicking off the month of events with an Opening Night of virtual mingling and cocktails. Reconnect with your (former) AAM/BMC classmates over a fun science-themed beverage using recipes curated by the BMCAA!

The virtual reunion social will take place over Zoom. All you need to do is sign up and let us know your graduating year, and we’ll get you set up in a breakout room with other members of your cohort. Curated cocktail and mocktail recipes will be circulated in advance of the event for those who’d like to share in a drink with the community (or feel free to make your own creation!). We hope to see you there, and can’t wait to see your cocktail and mocktail creations!

This is a BMCAA event. Registration for the Opening Night is open to BMC students, alumni, and faculty.

2021 BMC speaker series: Whitney Taylor, Cartoonist, Editor and Comic Writer

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Why Graphic Medicine? A Chat with Whit Taylor

Whit Taylor, award-winning cartoonist, writer and editor, makes comics about public health, social science, race and gender.

Her comics include Fizzle (2020 Ignatz Award Winner for Outstanding Series), Finding Your Roots (2017 Glyph Award Nominee for Best Webcomic and Best Female Character), and Watermelon (2012 Glyph Rising Star Award Winner). Taylor's webcomics have appeared in such publications as NewYorker.com and TheNib.com.

Her next project, Toward Freedom, a story about abolitionist, activist, and hero Harriet Tubman, comes out next month.

Join us this Friday, May 28 to learn how Whit Taylor became a cartoonist and editor, about her path that led to graphic medicine, and about her process of making a comic from concept to finished story.

Date and Time:
Friday, May 28, 2021
2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET
(One-hour presentation followed by Q&A.)

Missed the presentation? View the video recording here:
https://vimeo.com/556376929/a0fa99f9d0

The road less travelled–BMC Speakers Series 2021 full program: https://bmc.med.utoronto.ca/news-events/2021/1/31/the-road-less-travelledbmc-speaker-series-2021

Links:


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Speaker bio coming soon.

2021 BMC speaker series: Eleanor Lutz, Information Designer and Science Communicator at The New York Times

Sharing data with charts and maps

Eleanor Lutz is an information designer who began as a Ph.D. biology student. She now uses many of the skills she learned in graduate school, such as coding and statistics, for her work in science communication.

In this talk, Eleanor will share what her daily life was like while working as a freelance science designer, and now, as a graphics editor at The New York Times. She'll talk about several different kinds of freelance science design work—like working for large textbook companies vs. small businesses—and what you might experience in these different roles. She'll also share how her science background ties into her current work in journalism. 

Eleanor will also chat in-depth about a couple of graphic projects she found particularly challenging and explain how she worked through the design process from start to finish. 

Date and Time:
Friday, May 14, 2021
2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET
(One-hour presentation with question-and-answer session)

Missed the presentation? View the video recording here: https://vimeo.com/552017907/349386890f

The road less travelled–BMC Speakers Series 2021 full program: https://bmc.med.utoronto.ca/news-events/2021/1/31/the-road-less-travelledbmc-speaker-series-2021


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Eleanor is part of the 2020-2021 Fellowship class at The New York Times. She works in the graphics department making charts, maps, and data visualizations. Last year, she worked on coverage of the 2020 election, Donald Trump's taxes, and coronavirus risk levels in counties across the United States. Eleanor completed her Ph.D. at the University of Washington where she studied biology and data science.

2021 BMC speaker series: Ivan Phelan, Senior Research Fellow and Game Developer at Sheffield Hallam University

How Engaging Content can Aid Rehabilitation and Reduce Pain

Virtual Reality is generally viewed as a technology only for entertainment purposes, but in recent times it has shown incredible potential in the area of healthcare. There has been previous research into how effective it is with pain distraction. ImpactVR at Sheffield Hallam University has been exploring how the new advancements in VR hardware and development tools can produce innovative healthcare interventions.

This talk will discuss work that spans a wide area from pain distraction, upper and lower limb rehabilitation, and prosthetic training systems. It will provide insights into how the systems were designed and developed along with details on ImpactVR’s next project.

Date and Time:
Friday, April 9, 2021
2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET
(One-hour presentation followed by a question-and-answer session)

Missed the presentation? View the video recording here:
https://vimeo.com/537387278/941733b6ef

The road less travelled–BMC Speakers Series 2021 full program: https://bmc.med.utoronto.ca/news-events/2021/1/31/the-road-less-travelledbmc-speaker-series-2021


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Ivan Phelan works as a Senior Research Fellow in Sheffield Hallam’s Research Institute (Centre for Culture, Media and Society) where his research focus is on how Virtual Reality can be used in healthcare.

Ivan's primary area of expertise is with the Unreal game engine which is a great tool to create high-quality game content.

He is currently involved with multiple VR projects funded by NIHR and the MRC, exploring virtual reality training for upper limb prosthetics, pain distraction during burn treatments, and rehab for children after arm injuries and lower limb surgery.

2021 BMC speaker series: Ryan Green, Creative Director and Head of Narrative at Numinous Games

Ryan Green, Creative Director and Head of Narrative at Numinous Games.

Ryan Green, Creative Director and Head of Narrative at Numinous Games.

The Stories Written into Us

Ryan will talk about how the stories he didn't write, the ones that he had no control over, have shaped his work and his studio’s journey. He will speak on how he sees the root of empathetic design being a journey of compassion and consideration, and how video game technology can unlock new forms of expression and connection for artists, designers, players, and patients.


Date and Time:
March 26, 2021
2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. ET
(One-hour presentation followed by Q&A.)

Missed the presentation? View the video recording here:
https://vimeo.com/534511692

The road less travelled–BMC Speakers Series 2021 full program: https://bmc.med.utoronto.ca/news-events/2021/1/31/the-road-less-travelledbmc-speaker-series-2021


Ryan is a digital interactive artist, programmer, and video game designer currently focused on narrative VR, serious, and accessible games. The first decade of his career was spent as a UI/UX designer, programmer, and software architect for Davita Healthcare, a Fortune 500 company. Ryan currently serves as a Creative Director and Head of Narrative for Numinous Games, a studio he co-founded in 2012. 

Numinous Games’ first title, That Dragon, Cancer, was created as a poetic memorial to Ryan and his wife Amy's third son Joel, and Joel's fight against terminal brain cancer. That Dragon, Cancer went on to receive broad critical praise, winning a BAFTA award in 2017 for innovation as well as a 2016 Peabody / Facebook Futures of Media award.

A still from That Dragon, Cancer. Watch the trailer on YouTube.

A still from That Dragon, Cancer. Watch the trailer on YouTube.

BMC 75 Online Gallery–Call for Submissions

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Calling all BMC medical illustrators!

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Biomedical Communications program (formerly known as Art as Applied to Medicine) at the University of Toronto, we are organizing a juried virtual exhibition and catalogue of work that spans the history of the program. We invite alumni to contribute their work to this collection.

We are organizing the exhibit and catalogue along the theme of disruptors and have identified three areas on which we’d like to focus:

D1–Societal disruptors

Our focus here is on societal changes that may have impacted our approach to illustration either based on response to change or increase in demand resulting from the impact of societal disruption; for example World War II, the women’s liberation movement, the equal rights movement, Truth and Reconciliation, the Accessible Canada Act, the equity, diversity and inclusion movement, climate change, and COVID-19.

D2–Scientific, Pharmaceutical, and Medical Innovations

Here we are concerned with advances that have impacted our understanding of medicine and greatly enhanced our ability to depict human health and disease; examples of this include advances in imaging technologies, surgical techniques, marketing changes in the pharmaceutical industry, growing awareness of non-Western medical practices, and patient-centred medicine.

D3–Visual Communication Mediums and Technology

These perturbations we tend to recognize more readily as they directly impact our workflow, and include innovation in traditional techniques such as carbon dust or airbrush, print technologies, computer graphics (2D and 3D), interactive design (remember Hypercard?), the World Wide Web, video technologies, extended reality (AR and VR), and 3D-printing.

We are accepting submissions between March 8 and March 31.

Formatting

Work in the form of illustration, animation, or interactive environments may be submitted under each of these categories (D1, D2, D3). Before considering a submission, please ensure that you have the right to share this work and for it to be included in a virtual exhibition. Submissions should be formatted as follows:

File naming convention: LastName_Initial_abridgedfilename_category

Static media

Resolution – 300 ppi; Dimensions – width no more than 2550 ppi; and height no more than 3300 ppi; Colour – CMYK.

Animation or video

Animation and video should be at least HD quality, and up to 4K in resolution. Please provide the highest quality files you can easily transfer to us. Professional mastering formats such as ProRes are preferred.

Interactive media

A representative screencast highlighting the work should be submitted, preferably with an explanatory voiceover. Video should be formatted as per the video requirements above.

All animation and video entries should include a representative image following the image requirements described above.

All entries, both static and dynamic should include a separate figure caption providing both the name of the piece, medium, and additional details and any anecdotal information you might like to include.

How to submit

All submissions should be uploaded via the UTSend dropbox at send.utoronto.ca.

Provide your name and e-mail address; the recipient name and email (Graduate Program Administrator at bmc.info@utoronto.ca), and select the files to upload. If the files are successfully received, an email is sent to the recipient indicating that a drop-off has been made.

Please note that there is a 1 GB limit to file size on UTSend. If you have a larger file that you’d like to share please contact us at bmc.info@utoronto.ca and we will make other arrangements.

On behalf of the BMC 75th Anniversary committee we look forward to receiving your work!