Cones are the photoreceptor partners to the rod cells in your retina. There are three types which respond to different wavelengths of light and allow you to see colour. They work a bit like the pixels on your screen in reverse – magenta, as in the small drawing here, is a mix of cyan and […]
Your retina has two types of photoreceptor cells, rods and cones. Rods detect light intensity rather than colour, they are what enable you to see in the dark. This is why as light levels drop it gets harder to see colour. Photons of light are detected by chemicals within the outer segment of the rod, […]
I can’t really claim a deep interest in manga as the inspiration for this and much as I like Japanese artists like Hokusai (my toilet wall is a giant mural of the Great Wave) neither is his influence evident here. I’m afraid the reality is that I was a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja […]
Trying to weigh up the relative importance of different types of neuron is pretty much a waste of time. Despite this many neuroscientists have their favourites, just as many geneticists have their favourite gene and I imagine astronomers have their favourite galaxy. Some will glory in finding the most obscure or quirky example, some will […]
Every developing axon has a specific target that it wants to reach such as a motor neuron growing to a certain muscle. However, the axon does not the luxury of a video feed: when it leaves the spinal cord it cannot see its target which might be a muscle at the end of a limb. […]
My first venture into the flickering world of GIFs. Animation brings infinite possibilities but as many overenthusiastic Powerpoint users have found to their cost, just because you can do something doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Effective animation is a highly skilled artform in its own right, as beautifully explained in the classic Animator’s Survival […]
When the electrical signal carried by a nerve reaches the end of the cell there is a physical gap before the next nerve cell. To maintain the connection, neurotransmitters, such as glutamate or serotonin, are released by the electrical impulse. These diffuse across the gap, called a synapse, and bind to receptors on the next […]
The final part of the trilogy after part 1 and part 2.. I’m pleased with Sylvester’s chin and eyebrows and the slight grin of triumph as the montage reaches its climax! Rocky! Rocky!! ROCKY!!! And if you’ve got the tune stuck in your head now, my work here is done… This design is available on […]
This is the sequel to part 1. In the first one, the background steps and the blue hat are visual clues to the film sequence that this parodies. These iconic features are not visible on the indoor shots so I started developing the resemblance to Sylvester Stallone. As I’ve discussed elsewhere, combining the cell with […]
This is the first of a trio of cartoons that were inspired by a trip to Philadelphia. I drew them before I went and combined them into an animated montage in the style of film credits for a talk I was giving. I did of course climb these same steps to visit the fantastic art […]