How to do your own goat fecal exam
The Biology of the Goat Laboratory

Please tell us a little about yourself?
Karin: I've been a freelance illustrator for over 25 years specializing in the field of biology. My background as a biology research technician, undergraduate teaching assistant, as well as a fine artist, developed naturally into a career as a science illustrator. I enjoy introducing people to the fascinating world of biology believing that if something is explained clearly enough it will be easy to understand. Over the years I've illustrated countless college textbooks, research papers, and developed science animations for the classroom and web. I think of myself now as semi-retired although illustrating an occassional textbook, developing and producing biology animations, writing and illustrating articles on animal husbandry, and running my small ranch in New Mexico keeps my busy.

How did you get your start with Swift 3D, How long have you been a using Swift 3D?
Karin: I started using Swift 3D with the very first version. I had been using Flash for some time and when I first heard about Swift I was intrigued to try it out to learn 3D. I have used Swift continuously since then, finding it to be an essential tool in creating Flash animations.

What Electric Rain product did you use for this case study?
Karin: Swift 3D version 4 and 4.5

What "real world use" led you to consider 3D as a solution?
Karin: One way to explain the small details of this home science experiment would have been to use photographs. But, I decided that 3D would give me the ability to focus in more clearly and emphasize important points.

What feature of Swift 3D did you find to be the most beneficial?
Karin: For this project grouping parts of the microscope in the hierarchy then positioning these parts as if using a real microscope made the project easy to accomplish.

What was the most challenging aspect of this project?
Karin: Again, showing the microscope from different angles was important for both discussing the technique and to help teach basic use of the microscope. It would have been time consuming to draw each view but once the microscope was created in Swift I had an ideal model to illustrate steps of the procedure from different positions.

What types of projects do you plan on using Swift 3D for in the future?
Karin: I have more plans for projects using Swift than I'll ever find time to do.
But, a few plans include producing Flash animations on the life cycle of several viruses. One of my first projects using Flash was an award winning series of animations on the life cycle of the herpes virus. That series greatly needs an update and Swift will be very helpful for improving much of it.

What Swift 3D projects have you done in the past? Any other work you'd like to share?
Karin: I turned to Swift often while developing a series of animations on CD which teach the biology of the goat. I raise dairy goats and found that other owners wanted to learn about the unique biology of these animals. These successful animations appeal to all ages from young 4-H students through college professors who use them for teaching in the classroom. All through the series I used Swift for still images and short animations. For instance, the structures in these two screen shots were created in Swift.

I've also used Swift hand-in-hand with Adobe Illustrator in a recently published textbook on viruses. I made 3D templates of various viruses or structures then exported them as AI files or for more complex structures exported a jpg image to use as a template in Illustrator. Swift was also used in many of the web animations that accompany several textbooks. For example, all of these animations use Swift in one way or another.

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/wagner/animation.asp#