John Liebler – The Inner Life of the Cell from John Liebler on YouTube.
I make my living creating art and animation of the beautiful and often surreal world that exists within our living (and sometimes dying) cells. Although I’ve been doing it since the late 90s, It was in 2006 that The Inner Life of the Cell brought my work to the widest audience on Earth: Youtube.
Originally planned as a classroom tool, Inner Life takes the viewer through many of the inner workings of a leukocyte (or white blood cell) showing many of the cellular structures and organelles along the way. I spent about a year and a half creating about eight and a half minutes of animation under the guidance of Dr. Robert Lue and Dr. Alain Viel. As the footage was rendered, we started to get a feeling that this was something special.
When it was finished, I thought that the visuals could stand on their own to show the wonder of the cellular landscape, even without labels or explanation. So I made the three minute edit, and asked Matt Berky (Massive Productions) to set it to music. I submitted it to the 2006 Siggraph Computer Animation Festival, where it was shown in the Electronic Theater.
It ended up on Youtube.
And took on a life of its own.
So, to kick things off on this blog, I’ve uploaded a fresh, clean version of the three minute, music-only version that was shown at SIGGRAPH in 2006, using the original uncompressed frames. Yes, it was originally 4:3 standard definition, and I have cropped the frame a bit to match modern aspect ratios, so purists may be offended, but It’s not like I made Greedo shoot first or anything.
The Inner Life of the Cell was Supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and is Copyright © 2006 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Golgi Apparatus. Copyright © 2006 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
John, I love this! Is it possible to have some sort of transcript describing what is going on…I love just watching this, but would dearly love to begin understanding what I’m seeing…the blow by blow about what is happening. Thanks so much for making this and making it available!
Hi Charlotte, Thanks for your comment!
There is a longer version of the animation with narration on Youtube, and someone has written out a transcript in the comments, here:
This video is now unavailable. Can you provide a permanent link for the video?
Unfortunately, that video was not hosted by me. Harvard controls the copyright of “Inner Life”, and I do not have permission to post the full version on my YouTube channel. If you search around, you might be able to find another unauthorized copy, but I don’t have one. Sorry!
So beautiful…is this what is going on inside of the body?
Yes, although not as colorful. 🙂