This illustration depicts the development of the human hippocampus through gestation weeks 10.6-20. It was created as an introductory visual aid for Dr. David Nauen’s (Pathology, Johns Hopkins University) research on a population of neural progenitor cells and their migration due to the closure of the subammonic seam. To better understand the orientation and location of the hippocampus, each stage is accompanied by a developing brain diagram depicting the hippocampus and lateral ventricle, as well as a dashed line indicating the location of the cut anterior plane. Important structures of the hippocampus are labeled with the neural progenitor cells of interest label standing out. See how it all came together below!

Some of my initial thumbnailing using embryological plates of the human brain as reference. At this point, I am just trying to familiarize myself with the anatomy and determine the best way to portray all the information I want to show.

Some of my layout options. I scanned my rough sketches into Photoshop and played around with them. My original inspiration was the Fibonacci sequence, and it just spiraled from there. I also resorted to coloring the front cut at this stage, as all the swirly layers were extremely hard to keep track of without better differentiation.

My transfer sketches, rendered in graphite. The textures of all the cell layers were very fun to draw!

From here, it was just a good deal of rendering and minor but constant tweaking of the layout. After initially rendering the insets in a brainy pink color, I decided making them more glassy would have a cooler effect and help the hippocampus stand out a bit better.

I wanted the viewer to easily flow from the first stage at 10.6 weeks to newborn, and to do so, I had to play around quite a bit with the path of the assets and size of the canvas. The swirl detail in the background also proved to be surprisingly challenging. It went through many, many changes to the shape and color until I finally settled on an icy blue with faded ends.

And here’s the final look!