t-cell meets dendrocyte
agency: Digizyme — concept & art direction
client: Cell Signaling Technologies
use: brochure cover, 9 x 12 in
This image shows a T-cell (green) being activated by interacting with an antigen-bearing dendrocyte. The challenge here is that active dendrocytes take on a huge variety of forms. The name means "hairy cell," and the cells usually do have long, thin protrusions — but they have also been called "veiled cells," spreading sheets of cytoplasm like butterfly wings. Do an image search for "dendrocyte" — it's worth the time! All the images are different, many of them are beautiful, and some are hardly recognizable as cells.
For this image, we went for something more cell-like. The model was built and rendered in modo, using a combination of subdivision surfaces and procedural displacements, taking advantage of modo's vertex maps to combine the two techniques.