Thomas Heising | Visual Science Content

Thomas Heising here! I work on creative ways of visually displaying scientific topics – relying on 16 years of professional experience with graphics and video plus an academic background in natural and social sciences.

At times, I leave the desk to explore the natural world or to meet people to talk about our environment. Based in Cork, Ireland, I work mostly for clients with projects aiming at changing public perceptions on certain topics related to our environment, health, society and history.

Or sometimes it just starts with:
“Do you do computer stuff?”
and then I say
“yes, why?”.

Examples of completed visual science projects

(2023) Animation on the Story of Maude Delap – 2D-animation production

Worked with Aperture Media in creating an animated video exploring the Iveragh peninsula’s fascinating natural history. The brief for this project completed for Discover Iveragh involved summarising the life of pioneering marine biologist Maude Jane Delap while showing her achievements throughout.

Traditionally, I would have gone for a mix of computer-generated 2D and 3D-elements. For this I employed traditional 2D-animation techniques – designing and drawing all animals, characters and effects in hand before animating and colouring elements frame-by-frame digitally. It was a huge, but rewarding undertaking about a person with a fascinating legacy.

(2022) Animation on the geological history of Iveragh
– Full 2D and 3D-animation production

The eco-museum LIVE in Iveragh commissioned Aperture Media to do an educational animation video on the geological history of the Iveragh peninsula in Kerry. The latter asked me to create visuals and animations for this. County Kerry has some spectacular geology sites and the goal was to feed the imagination of the viewer and let them see what the area looked like hundreds of millions of years ago.

Fortunately, I live a double life as a rock enthusiast and had already visited the relevant locations a few times before, so I started developing concept art early. I illustrated and modelled everything from scratch for this. An exception was the myriapod that capable animation student and Aperture Media-intern Emma O’Keefe illustrated and animated.

Having plenty of creative freedom on this, I played with a range of animation techniques from rigged 3D-character animation to standard 2D-animation to frame-by-frame animation.

(2022) Anatomy of a thunderstorm – 2D-schematic animation

Simulated a cumulonimbus cloud (thunderstorm) for a project using 3D fluid dynamics. The motivation came from seeing a lack of content on YouTube visualising deep moist convective processes in an easy and comprehensible way.

(2021-2022) Hardcore Cork – Geological heritage project

A personal science outreach project conceptualised and created by former UCC palaeontologist Dr Aude Cincotta and myself. Starting as a passion project, we applied for and received funding in 2021 from Geological Survey Ireland to create all relevant materials and an online platform to communicate Cork’s geological heritage to the wider public. This involved working with scholars, local historians, quarries, artists, web developers and editors in creating educational content and promotional content.

A particular focus was on turning decades of scholarly work into content that non-geologists could understand while respecting terminology and conventions of the field. Thus we checked in with both UCC scholars and Geological Survey Ireland to make sure the content was aligned with current knowledge on the local geology.

A major task for me in particular was feeding the audience’s imagination with animations and 3D-rendered visualisations of Cork’s prehistoric environments. Finally, we uploaded photogrammetrically scanned 3D-models of key rock types for viewers to interact with and virtual geoheritage tours they could undertake.

This has carried over in a project for Cork City Council’s Heritage Office in 2023, where I developed a geological heritage brochure to summarise Cork’s geological heritage.

From my understanding there’s a great interest in geological heritage in Cork city and it’s been a pleasure to encourage more people to immerse themselves with a topic that many find too technical or outright uninspiring.

(2022) No Plastic. Period.-campaign – Full 2D-animation video production

VOICE Ireland do an incredible amount of environmental activist and awareness work in Ireland. They are behind many campaigns and policies towards the country becoming more environmentally friendly.

I helped them create visual content and 3 animated videos for their No Plastic. Period.-campaign that they could use for online communication and for offline communication on-site at organisations and institutions. The campaign material aimed at convincing people to use reusable menstrual products and to show that they are ease to use.

I felt privileged to be awarded this job as a person who has no firsthand experience with periods and period products. A key thing we wanted to tackle were the visual taboos around period products (ever noticed how pads in ads are often shown to absorb blue liquids? Well, I hadn’t). We discussed colours and overall mood to reflect something that seemed pretty straightforward without being too offensive to more conservative audiences.

(2021) Educational videos for ShoutOut – Full 2D-animation explainers

ShoutOut do amazing work talking about queer issues in Irish schools, giving queer students the tools to understand their own identities, and showing other students how they can be allies and respectful around their classmates. Some modified vector graphics stock elements were used in executing this project.

I animated and edited 4 educational videos that educators from ShoutOut could use to communicate topics on various queer topics; including intersex, explaining the diversity of queer identities and on Irish queer history.

(2021) Climate change video for UCC – Full 2D-animation production

Another close collaboration with Aperture Media. UCC Environmental Research Institute have a few scientific initiatives that they disseminate information and create awareness on climate change through, and I was happy to contribute to this one.

This was specifically centered around the impact our rapidly changing climate is having on human health, hence a lot of relatively light character animation work. Some of the visuals were comprised of modified stock content.

(2021) Crossroads report – Social science work, report writing and graphics

From June to November 2021, I was contracted by the Gay Project to develop ‘Crossroads’ – a small research project where I completed qualitative interviews of LGBTQ+ people of colour in Cork. The name was suggested by another queer activist to hint at the Irish tradition of meeting people at actual crossroads from different areas.

Using the analytical and research approaches I learned during my Master’s programme in African Studies I wanted to provide a contemporary look into how certain people experienced life in Cork and to understand where attitudes of discrimination came from. Often we get caught in what is being said, but not why it is being said.

The final report highlights issues groups with different intersectionalities, primarily brown people, go through in Cork society (and also mentions good things) and suggests a look at current policies and attitudes towards integration in Europe.

(2018) Flower and atmospherics animations – 3D-animation and compositing

My last job in Copenhagen before moving to Ireland involved providing animated graphics for a product launch by a well-known Danish brand. Two artists had developed a 3-metres tall inverted pyramid suspended from the ceiling at the venue of the launch.

My task was to produce original 3D-rendered animations of two flowers floating inside a liquid environment before combusting and turning into ash. These were then projected up on each side of the inverted pyramid.

The animations were each 10 minutes long (2 pyramid faces and 1 per flower) amounting to a full 40 minutes of high resolution compositions with many layers of reflections, caustics, lights rays and interactive light (that all took a long time to render) when the fire started.

The final product was a hypnotic and surreal art installation with a clear visual narrative that thankfully all came together for the final product launch.

Feel free to get in touch about something:

motion@thomasheising.ie
(this link forces your email software up)