The A100 Playbook Podcast | Real Chemistry: Visualizing the future: Art, science and AI innovation

[00:02] The Agency 100 Playbook Podcast You create a piece of educational material like an animation or an illustration of what’s going on in a patient’s body. How do we know that was right for them in the Hat? How do we measure afterwards that it really it really works. So I think probably one of the most rewarding things I’ve done with AI so far was watching a wife like turned to her husband and say I understand now what you’re going through after having used a technology like this to help them express it to help that flavor results in a Real Chemistry first down. [00:34] Welcome to the Agency 100 Playbook Podcast sponsored by Real Chemistry. I’m Jack O’Brien digital editor at MM+M. On this episode we delve into the dynamic intersection of art science and AI innovation in the field of scientific visualization. We’ll be discussing the role of scientific art and communicating complex scientific ideas to stakeholders how AI has been integrated into this process and what the future may hold for scientific artists my guest today for this conversation is Brandon Pletsch president of scientific visualization at Real Chemistry. Brandon, how are you doing today? Doing good. Thanks for having me. I appreciate being on show. Let’s start off on a high level here. And can you describe your role as president of scientific visualization and what that entails for those who may not know sure absolutely. Yeah. It’s a weird title. So I oversee a team of about 50 people with an arrow chemistry, exclusively dedicated to making artwork animations and interactive media that explain how Medical [01:34] science works [01:35] So within that team we have a few dozen certified medical illustrators and animators, we have an interactive Innovation team and these team members are hybrid artists and scientists about half of them have graduate or PhD level science degrees specifically in Making Science art which is kind of weird, so I’m also a medical illustrator by training so if you’re not familiar with that strange Niche there are a handful of medical schools out there that offer this medical illustration degree where you you learn alongside regular medical students to Second average and taking histology and pathology courses, but where they go and they do their clinical training we draw and so I oversee that team mainly from like client relationship at this point and all so executive quality control and showing the advancement of innovation that we’re staying up to speed and that we’re telling good science fiction stories. [02:31] Awesome. I appreciate you tapping into your background there when it comes to medical illustration. I know that you’d worked at radius Digital Science talk to me a little bit about how that has shaped your Approach at Real Chemistry. Oh, yeah, like so I was a I was a small business owner. I started this group of animators and illustrators that specifically did this science art. And as a small Specialty Group, you know out there in the world of the big agencies. The only real way to survive is differentiation and our way of differentiating was to be more scientific and focus more on making the best quality work we could [03:08] And also being very Nimble that was something that a lot of you know as a small company something a lot of clients appreciate and so that that idea of like nimbleness real-time problem solving but never really accepting anything less than your best in the best of your team was survival at that point and it’s just become kind of part of our DNA at this point and Real Chemistry essentially is a is a group of entrepreneurs. So it’s still the same environment that we work in and that really did prepare me for for the culture of this agency. I’m curious from your perspective when you look at scientific visualization and how it’s evolved over the course of the past few years. What are some of the most significant changes like imagine it hasn’t said static [03:52] No, yeah, and it’s interesting too with all of the the buzz around Ai and generative Ai and things like that, you know, if you’re real, if you’re if you’re in the trenches illustrator animator graphic designer you realize that these these Innovations they’re they’re actually just a part of a Continuum that this technology that we have to produce Rich visuals and animations has been advancing every year for the last 30 years. And you know, when I compare when I started doing this work back in around 2002 to 2003 to what it’s like now it’s night and day and a lot of the tools that have evolved the use Advanced Computing in different ways. For instance, you know, you used to be able to like [04:40] I have a sphere on screen and it would grind your machine to a halt right now. You have millions and millions of polygons and particles and it’s all rendering in real time. And it’s beautiful kids today. Just don’t know what it was like back then and so all that’s been happening all the while and here there are new tools coming out right? There’s like different generative texturing tools like creating in real time based on speech input like like make this look like Moss or make this look bumpy and they’re you know, they’re elaborations on the workflow, but they’re not like it’s not like there’s this like before the era of AI innovation in this field and after the air of AI it’s really been a Continuum. So absolutely the world is very different, you know, you used to take for instance, you know, if you had an animation that was three minutes long you could be waiting weeks for that thing to render just the computing power of making the scenes look nice. And now these things are done in the cloud and they’re done in a matter of hours. So lots of changes over the years and somebody that’s still Clinging On to the last bit of [05:40] Their 20s, I won’t take any offense to the kids these days don’t know anything about how he used to be statement there. I did want to get your thoughts because you brought up Ai, and I know we teased of the top but talk to me a little bit about that integration because I think your points so well taken this idea that AI somehow a newfangled thing. It’s not the case at all and I imagine in terms of scientific visualization. It’s been around in some sort of capacity over the past few years. If for sure I mean, you know, particularly, I mean when you think about AI [06:07] Overall and the way that it’s found its way into Healthcare. There are a lot of different ways. My particular Niche is obviously in the visualization component. So like generative Ai and all of that but you know Ai and Healthcare, I mean that’s been that’s been advancing medicine for for years and years and discovering medicines and testing them and identifying populations who had best benefit all kinds of stuff. However, like the the integration of AI into what we’re doing now. [06:35] It’s funny. A lot of my team got very nervous. And I think most people in graphic arts Industries got nervous as all of this generative AI technology started becoming available to everybody and you know, we did a test. So we took the thousands of illustrations and animations that we had and we started to train our own AI models to see if we could obviate ourselves almost as artists just you know, if somebody was going to do it we want to be the ones to do it and what I guess is a relief what we’ve rediscovered I guess is that this discipline of creative but scientifically accurate storytelling is so incredibly precise and requires so much understanding of how humans learn that the really I mean certainly at this point, maybe things will change but there really isn’t much of a risk of that hurting anybody’s job who’s good at scientific storytelling and teaching really? Yeah, it creates shortcuts. [07:34] Here and there but you know, it’s like a quick example 2018 photoshoot with this thing called content-aware fill, which is like you have something in your picture you Circle it you make it go away and it’ll automatically fill it in with the background and it’s like magic and it works like maybe 50% of the time you gotta mess with it, but it was like incredible now, there’s generative Phil where you cannot only say, hey get rid of that thing, but make a car with wings flying in its place right and now it takes instead of five minutes. It takes like 30 seconds, but is that like a huge paradigm shift and how we’re doing our work absolutely not. It’s just new tools that are being added and I think really that the for me like the future of the integration of AI tools and into what we’re doing is that we just don’t talk about AI anymore. We just talked about that new feature that appeared in our software and it was in that cool it save me 20 seconds today. Yeah. It’s a little bit of a different perspective when you’re literally trying to use those tools and integrate them into your work still very manual and methodical. [08:35] And strategic process. Yeah, it’s interesting here. You talk about almost like the more normalized it becomes it. That’s it’s true value there. It doesn’t have to be this shiny object that everyone is is so Star-Spangled impressed with I’m curious from your perspective because you do have such a unique background in terms of being able to have the the medical education. But then also the artistic site talk about a little bit about that balance when it comes to creativity and scientific visualization because I’m sure that there is that part of you where it’s like, hey, I wanted to kind of look like this we have to balance it with that side of like well, what’s the clinical aspect that we’re looking at here totally? Yeah, like so the first thing we always do is anytime we have like a scientific story. Tell us let’s just say it’s like a molecular story we have to tell [09:15] The first thing that we do is we start by getting to know everything there is to know about the molecular Dynamics. The sell more follows is like the shapes of the cells how they interact with each other. [09:27] But then also more importantly like the Strategic contexts. Like how does this medicine that we’re illustrating fit into the overall Paradigm of the disease that it’s treating and then after we get all of that squared away then we start thinking. Okay. So now let’s talk about our audience. Okay. So if our audience is like an oncologist with a lung specialty they know this aspect but they don’t quite believe that aspect what parts of the science story do we do we emphasize but I would say even more importantly what part of the science story are we gonna subtract because if you were to actually have like a little microscopic spaceship Fantastic Voyage style or I guess interspace more recently flying into the body and see what is actually happening on a molecular level. It is very very full and very busy and complicated in there like you wouldn’t be able to tell what was going on. No space is wasted. So the first thing we always have to do is start subtracting. Okay, we don’t need all the water molecules because [10:27] they’re not part of the story and then we don’t need all this connected tissue that that’s actually just getting in the way too. [10:32] And then you start to refine and refine until you get the absolute core pieces that people need to understand and see and then tell your story. [10:41] Now on the other hand, you’re right. Like there is always an eagerness to become, you know to be very creative and hey, maybe we do like a metaphor. Maybe we tell this whole thing through an analogy and it’s always been my perspective that as long as you’re not violating the sort of the spirit of the science and what somebody comes away with is a true accurate understanding of what’s going on in the body. There is a lot of flexibility there, but the other side of that too is you have to be very aware of [11:08] Contexts and tonalities so a way you might tell us scientific story for say the parents of a child with cancer is gonna be very different than somebody who is living with a gastroenterologist in neurological disease and needing to you know, improve their lifestyle just very very different situations that you’re going to tell a story brand. I’m curious because this kind of relates to what you’re talking about their when you look at some of the challenges in terms of turning these Concepts into visual formats what comes to mind for you because you kind of touched on it there, but I’m wondering if you expand on that a little yeah, I think some of the challenges are that like, you know, we work with a lot of scientists and scientists love their science and they should but much of what gets emphasized when scientists want to talk about their research is not really what’s going to stick and help somebody learn it tends to get very nuanced and overly complicated. That’s that’s one challenge. It’s just kind of helping the people who are [12:07] be passionate about these discoveries understand that like [12:10] there’s only maybe like two or three things that anybody’s going to remember from what you tell them. And so let’s pick those two or three really important things. The other side of the challenge is is you know, [12:22] teaching like teaching is hard and I think like anybody who has ever tried to teach anybody anything would in fact, I think a lot of parents got a good taste of that during the pandemic, you know, like, oh my goodness. This is such a hard thing. Like I didn’t realize that I was gonna have such a hard time teaching my teaching my kids to multiply or whatever do on division. This is not your kid is like teaching is hard period like, how do you actually [12:46] Remodel the plasticity is somebody’s brain to like rewire and remember a thing and be able to recall it. And so, you know, that’s that’s certainly just a challenge in general no matter what discipline of teaching you’re in. [13:00] I think maybe the last thing is that there’s this assumption. [13:04] that [13:05] people of different educational levels learn inherently differently meaning. Oh, well this you know, this story is for a doctor so you can make it complicated and fast-paced and use long sentences and you know complicated language and but this is for a patient. So let’s dial it down to a fifth grade level and let’s make it you know short the truth of the matter. Is that doctor? [13:28] Largely learns at the same Pace as that, you know fifth grade learner and you have to post the information in a very methodical very slow way so that they can process incorporate and build on it. So that’s a challenge trying to explain that sometimes is that you know, you really have to treat everybody the same when you’re creating educational stories. [13:51] I like that example there talking about you know, ultimately on the day. I feel like I hear it from Brand leaders all the time. We are consumers and there’s this kind of idea of oh, you can overthink it but the other day we’re all consumers. We all want to receive information in ways that we can fully understand. I want to backtrack a little bit to the AI of it all and talk a little bit about how you see evolving in the field of scientific visualization, maybe saying the next three to five years kind of in the short term run. Yeah, like there are things that unnecessarily take a long time that will take less time. And that’s great like going from a wire frame of an object to like a fully beautiful lit textured object, you know, the process of rendering will come down things like producing 4K material and using AI to scale lower resolution material is going to help a lot. There are other you know, other things that are being incorporated into the tools that are pretty amazing like things like generative modeling where you know you go I want to [14:50] Table, you know with four legs and you know, whatever around shape and it actually just like appears as a model, you know, the process of creating 3D models is very arduous. And so I do anticipate that’s going to be well integrated in a lot of the tools. I mean, there’s a lot of other AI based technologies that I think are going to make it’s hard. It’s hard to say if it’s gonna make the work better. I’m not sure that it is because to be honest with you. I don’t know that there’s ever been a better scientific story teller than Leonardo DaVinci and like we haven’t actually gotten better at making art period or scientific art, but it certainly has gotten easier and quicker to produce well-made pieces. And so I think that’s probably the speed of production is what people are going to notice the most and and I hope all so [15:41] kind of like lowering that barrier of Entry to people because you know like using [15:47] 3D animation software and compositing software you modeling software like zbrush and stuff. It’s like really really hard to get started you sit there for like three days. Just poking at the interface breaking it not knowing what to do and I’m hoping that a lot of these AI advancements more go into making the user experience of creation more more pleasant and more accessible. I appreciate the shout out to Leonardo da Vinci there because I think people do have to really give it up to the fact that he still like you said to this day. Those are still some of the most scientifically accurate and beautiful piece of art and scientific visualization that will ever see I want to throw it back to you though. And and this is not to say that you’re not da Vinci. But you know what what in terms of the work that you’ve done at Real Chemistry makes you feel like Da Vinci what really exemplifies that kind of integration of AI and art in this successful way. [16:37] Oh, yeah, you know we’ve had actually a few amazing opportunities to experiment using some of the newer AI generative Technologies and not to like [16:49] Not to just make art fast, but to actually use them to help patients Express themselves and done some really interesting projects where we you know have patience talking about symptoms of a disease where the symptoms are really hard to explain or maybe they’ve been minimizing them and trying to express them to their loved ones or their Health Care Professionals and just can’t seem to accurately depict them actually use the words of patience to generate descriptive imagery and help Express that experience to their loved one. So we’ve done these sorts of more experiential ideas and initiatives with working with patients and it’s been incredibly moving you forget. It’s AI, it’s not a bad at being AI it’s just like there’s this really cool technology it facilitates. [17:44] Communication and it facilitates empathy. So I think probably one of the most rewarding things I’ve done with AI so far was watching a wife like turned to her husband and say [17:55] I understand now what you’re going through. [17:57] After having used a technology like this to help him express it. [18:02] It’s very meaningful. I’m glad that there’s a example that’s not only oh that we’ve used this and we’ve seen it be successful but on such a personal basis because that’s ultimately what Healthcare is. It’s a very Patient to Patient experience there and I think that’s something that can resonate with our audience. I’m curious kind of on a go forward basis. What role you think Innovation is going to play in keeping scientific visualization relevant and engaging. Yeah. I think your plan Leonardo da Vinci is so telling because it’s like this has been going on for forever. It’s going to continue to go on but how is innovation a spirit forward? [18:32] I mean there’s different, you know. [18:35] A lot of different ways when we talk about Innovation broadly. It doesn’t necessarily have to [18:41] Apply to the execution of the piece of art it can also be using Innovation to better understand an audience understand what patients really need and then measuring the actual efficacy of the work that you’re doing. I see like that’s that’s something we talk a lot about on our team. It’s like, you know, when you create a piece of educational material like an animation or an illustration of what’s going on in a patient’s body. How do we know that was right for them? And then how do we measure afterwards that it really it really worked? So I’m really hopeful that Innovation can help us do that better. And yeah, I mean, I also think that these things like I mentioned before like using Ai and Innovation interactive innovation in a way to connect with patients is going to be like we’ve been doing some experiments with like [19:33] Like speech to world like using like immersive Technologies like the Apple Vision Pro and this is like only a few degrees away from the Holodeck from like Star Trek, you know where you you’re talking and as you’re talking the world around you is just becoming the thing that you’re saying like those kinds of things I think are going to make visualizations incredibly relevant for everyday users. I’m curious from your perspective too. How you stay up to date with the various technologies that come forward in this field because I talked to Brand leaders all the time and they’re like, oh, yeah, like we’re working with this certain Chachi BT and then you mention oh, there’s a new one out there and they’re like no idea about that. So when it comes to your field particularly, how do you stay abreast of all that? Yeah, we have so we have a center of excellence model within my team and we have four key areas and what that does is that puts the responsibility on the leaders of this centers of excellence to stay. [20:29] At the Forefront of innovation on all this technology and so we have one that’s dedicated specifically to Scientific visualization. So like how do we know what we know about the way things look and how they work together. We have one specifically dedicated to design [20:45] Um, we have a center of excellence dedicated just to 3D animation and then one just to interactive Innovation. And that’s where the AI tracking comes from. So those those leaders of that centers of excellence their job is to just scour the internet all the time and provide the team with updates on relevant new technologies and even test them out and just report back. Hey, we should be trying this so we should be trying that if you don’t have people dedicated to staying on top of the technology it is impossible to keep current. [21:15] I’ve really appreciate you making the time to speak in the Brandon. I have a couple more questions for you. One is aimed at some of the younger listeners in our audience. Maybe people that want to go into a career in scientific visualization what sort of advice would you impart to them having obviously had so much experience in your own career. [21:32] For sure. Yeah, we had this freeze in grad school called time on tool. [21:39] And it was basically that like Malcolm Gladwell 10000 hours kind of theory. There’s no way of getting good at something other than just doing and so if you’re young student and you’re interested in something like this just keep drawing doesn’t matter what it is. Just keep going. [21:57] Get as comfortable as you can with the actual medium. If you’re interested in animation, just keep animating and just make up projects for yourself. There’s there’s literally no shortcut or replacement to just spending the time and investing the time in learning and learning a particular craft. If you’re interested specifically in scientific visualization, then just get lost in the in the beauty of biology. You know, I mean, it’s like there’s an infinite World to explore in the human body and it just gets more and more fascinating and confusing and beautiful the closer you look so, you know, those are the best pieces of advice I could give just keep working on your craft and keep staying curious. [22:40] I think it’s a universal one that you talked about there with working on your craft. And the best way to Perfection is going through practice. So that’s something that now not only the people interested in scientific visualization can take home but certainly others in our audience and from my final question Brandon. I wanted to ask you going into Nostradamus mode if you will or pulling out your your crystal ball talking about what are some of the new technologies and methods you are most excited to explore in your field. So if I were like be so bold as to like yes where things are going. I mean in my field my particular field of visualization and scientific education. Like I said, I think that some of the best work, [23:23] Has been done a long time ago. I hate this but like that doesn’t mean that there aren’t going to be more Geniuses. There are a lot of amazing artists right now, and I don’t mean to, you know, say there aren’t but [23:33] You know from a technological standpoint though. I like the thing that I would foresee happening with certainly the integration of AI into these tools and the the actual practice of creating our [23:46] is that the technology will become invisible will feel invisible to us and it will feel more like a pure active creating a piece of art then a bunch of hotkeys and coding and clicking buttons and stuff like that working in wire frame you grids, you know, like if you watch [24:04] Like a typical animator work right now. It’s like watching. I don’t remember who the character was in The Matrix, but remember he was like, you know, I used to see like, you know all the coding and stuff and now I just see the stuff right right when you watch somebody anime right now. It’s just looks like a bunch of rooms and like weird menus and stuff popping up and shutting down all the time and I would hope that the technology would be evolving so that it feels more just like making art, you know, instead of a bunch of words and keys and shortcuts and stuff. I don’t know that’s a guess but that’s what I would hope for for future creators. [24:42] I mean more specifically there’s really crazy stuff happening with like the capture of real world scenarios and recreating them digitally. Like I don’t know if you’ve heard of gaussian splatting it’s one of these types of photogrammetry type captures where you have a real world scene and you take just like two or three pictures of it and boom you have a completely recreated 3D model on your computer. I’m hoping that sort of thing happens on a microscopic level where we’re able to like have some sort of microscopic like say it’s like a tumor of environment or something like that and in seconds we can have that entire 3D landscape on our computers to manipulate and use to teach that’s that’s where I hope the technology is going to be exciting to follow and see where it actually ends up and if any of those Productions are close to being realized and actual life, so Brandon again, I really appreciate you being on here. It’s certainly a very fascinating field one. I think that our audience is particularly interested in and I appreciate you sharing your insights. Thanks, man. I appreciate