On Friday, Sept. 26, a presentation and evaluation session for the Science Visualization Assignments was carried out. The expressive illustrations by the art students and the progress in artistic representation made by the science students were all amazing. Sayoko Tanaka Sensei evaluated the works from a visual design perspective and the instructors, who had assigned the themes, from a scientific standpoint. While there were some harsh comments, some received high praises with the instructors remarking that they would like to use some of the pieces for their academic conference presentations. It turned out to be a very animated and lively class.
The photographs of the works are Mito Kuragano’s (3^rd Year at School of Art & Design) “The Mechanism of How An Earthquake Occurs: Elastic Rebound Theory” (one image), and Chizuru Kanda’s (3^rd Year at School of Art & Design) “An Illustration Summarizing the Fundamentals of Radiation” (2 images). Though the themes are not something that the art students are used to portraying, both works are easy to understand and well thought out. There were many other wonderful works, which will be introduced at another occasion. (Takasaki)

On Aug. 28 and 29, Science Visualization Assignments carried out an intensive lecture course.  The objective of the course is to learn to visually and effectively illustrate scientific themes.  This year, a total of 36 students attended: 20 students from the School of Art and Design, and 16 students from the sciences, including the School of Medicine and Medical Sciences, College of Biological Science, College of Geoscience and College of Chemistry.  The students split up into 6 teams and, using graphic software and with support from specialists of the fields who offered the students their professional knowledge, began to work on illustrating themes such as “The earth’s evolution” and “The mechanism of how an earthquake occurs”.  The arts and design students had to grapple with understanding scientific systems, while the science students had to tackle with the drawing of the images, which they are not used to.  But the two groups are cooperating to wrap up their assignments.  After a check midway through the project, a presentation and evaluation session will be held on the afternoon of Sept 26.  The results will be introduced then.  (Takasaki)

【Instructors】
Sayoko Tanaka (School of Art and Design), Matt Wood (Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences), Makoto Kobayashi (School of Medicine and Medical Sciences), Koji Nomura (Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences),  Yoshihiro Miwa (School of Medicine and Medical Sciences), Yuji Yagi (Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences), Hiroshi Wada (Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences), Masataka Watanabe (Tsukuba Communications, Science Communication)

The classes were carried out on Aug. 22 (Thursday), 23rd (Friday) and Sept. 25 (Wednesday) as a 3-day intensive course. The instructors were the following seven: Koji Nomura Sensei, Yuji Yagi Sensei and Hiroshi Wada Sensei from the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Makoto Kobayashi Sensei and Yoshihiro Miwa Sensei from the School of Medicine and Medical Sciences, Masataka Watanabe Sensei from the Office of Public Relations Science Communicator, Sayoko Tanaka Sensei from the School of Art and Design. About 20 students from the School of Art and Design, as well as from the School of Medicine and Medical Sciences, the College of Geosciences and College of Physics took part.
Both the art and science students formed groups under each science instructor, and undertook the themes, “Expository Illustration” and “Art-Oriented Illustration”. This year, we briefly took on the topic of science writing as well. After group discussions based on each student’s draft of ideas, illustrations using Adobe Illustrator were created. At the end, each group gave a presentation. The objective of this class was to effectively visualize science, by having the art students collaborate with students from other fields.
The idea of the exercise was for the art students to acquire practical communication skills to comprehend the subject of the visual design and to apply the themes and views of science to their artworks, and for the students who are studying science to expand their knowledge and experience in visual expression techniques and acquire the communication skills required to collaborate with illustrators and designers in the future. (Tanaka)


Exercise Theme: From the onset of the earthquake to actually feeling the tremor. (Illustration with emphasis on explanation.)
Exercise Creator: Yuji Yagi. Illustration Creator: Emi Kobori (4th Year at School of Life and Environmental Sciences, College of Geosciences)


Exercise Theme: The biology of ‘the smaller the ice the faster it will melt’. (Illustration with emphasis on explanation.)
Exercise Creator: Hiroshi Wada. Illustration Creator: Junko Takanaka (3rd Year at School of Art and Design)