{"id":37500,"date":"2019-12-24T17:30:55","date_gmt":"2019-12-24T12:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/?p=37500"},"modified":"2025-08-28T17:34:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T12:04:09","slug":"use-animation-to-breathe-life-into-scientific-figures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/use-animation-to-breathe-life-into-scientific-figures","title":{"rendered":"Use animation to breathe life into scientific figures"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve already looked at infographics<\/a>\u00a0and how they are a great way to talk about a study concisely and in a visually appealing manner. Let\u2019s focus on something different here \u2013 let\u2019s look at making static scientific figures come alive using animation.<\/p>\n

Animated figures bring science to life<\/h4>\n

Science is complex and cannot always be explained with text. One of the most important parts of a scientific manuscript is the figures it contains. Often, these figures are technical in nature and contain complex statistical data understanding which might be time consuming. Moreover, figures are static and expect the reader to make connections between data points themselves.<\/p>\n

What if I told you that scientific figures could talk? Not literally, but visually, you can bring scientific figures to life with the help of animation. The idea is to make scientific figures more appealing in a way that it is easy to understand the findings they are presenting. They are also a great way to make figures interesting to look at.<\/p>\n

How I create an animated scientific figure<\/h4>\n

I first understand the primary focus of the figure. This helps me decide what to animate and how so that I can show the relevant correlations and\/or phenomena. I often get help from our team of subject-area experts for this. The simpler a talking figure is, the more impactful it will be. When animating the figure, I stick to the bare minimum and animate only what is necessary. I also make sure that the animation is not too fast or too slow \u2013 either could hamper a viewer\u2019s understanding of the figure.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look at an example<\/h4>\n

Here is a figure from an article published in the Cell Press journal\u00a0Joule<\/em>\u00a0about 4.0\u00a0V Aqueous Li-Ion Batteries (\u00a0Yang et al., 2017\u00a0<\/a>)<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"
(A and B) Snapshots of inner-Helmholtz interfacial regions of the anode surface in WiBS (21\u00a0M LiTFSI\u00a0+ 7\u00a0M LiOTF in water) at (A) 2.5\u00a0V and (B) 0.5\u00a0V versus Li, respectively. Water molecules adsorbed or closer than 4\u00a0\u00c5 to the surface are magnified, while water molecules further removed from the surface are shown as slightly reduced in the picture.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

This figure is a typical illustration of water molecules. While trying to bring this figure to life, I used simple animation and tried to present the findings in a more visual way.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

How was that? Weren\u2019t you more engaged in following the animated figure? So the next time you find yourself thinking about how you could make your research more engaging, consider talking figures for your display items.<\/p>\n

Quick tips on animating scientific figures<\/h4>\n

Here are few things you need to remember when you\u2019re working on animating one or more figures from your paper.<\/p>\n