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.

Currently busy helping creating videos, websites and resource libraries on sustainable solutions towards sediment management and marine pollution.

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 had already visited the relevant locations a few times before, so I started developing concept art early. I illustrated and modeled 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.

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.

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.

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.