Let's see that brain...

This semester I had a Surgical Orientation class, which provided an opportunity for us to get introduced to techniques and protocol in the world of surgery. For this assignment we were to illustrate a surgical procedure. Not from real life though, that will be for the Fall. :) I chose to do a temporal craniotomy. This procedure is the surgical removal of the skull to expose the brain, specifically the area of the temporal lobe. Treatments can vary for the procedure such as removal of tumors, aneurysms, or to treat the brain after injury. The first image includes some steps involved with descriptions. The goal was to render one of the steps. I chose to render mine in Photoshop. the other steps I left them as sketches. I think it would benefit the piece if I go back can fully render them in line later on. My references were videos of the procedure, neurosurgery books and websites, Biodigital Human, which helped in orienting the body to where I needed it to be. I first chose the position I wanted. Then searched for way I could get the skull into the position I needed. I also found this website that had 3D skull PDF’s which also helped clarify the skull. This proved to be helpful too along with the website because the Biodigital Human doesn’t have the best quality of anatomy, it just helped with orientation. Then I took pictures of hands in the position I needed them in and also made a pretend bone flap, so I could get the right kind of handling captured. Then rendered and all done for now :)