Assignment 4 - Wing Anatomy and Kinematics
Trevor O'Brien

What was the most challenging part of having to show all the elements of the wing structure at once?

Things simply get too cluttered and visually confusing. It's easy to mistakenly create a portion of the visualization that becomes overly exaggerated or distracting without intending to do so. Designing a hierarchy of perceptual cues and assigning them to different anatomical or kinematic elements is very challenging.

What visual tradeoffs did you have to make to keep the composition "stable" throughout the wingbeat while highlighting the important part?

I really simplified my anatomical view in order to highlight the hypothesis I was after -- no bones, no bone-attached muscles or tendons. Also, rather than restricting myself to visual cues on the bat's body itself, I opted to move some cues slightly off the body to avoid visual confusion. For instance, my depiction of muscle activity in the wing membrane occurs slightly displaced from the wing itself, allowing details on the wing to be viewed simultaneously.

What visual characteristics did you use to represent each part of the wing and why?

I used gradient-textured tube stamps to create the bats wings, using color to encode the changing curvature over the bat wing. I used spiral-masked tubes to indicate various regions of membrane-muscle activity, since the spiral mask allowed for a more clear viewing of the relationship between curvature and muscle activity, which is what my visualization was designed to explore.