Mike Medicine Horse | Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Mike Medicine Horse

Image
Medical animation frame by Mike Medicine Horse.

Alumni
’00

Education
BFA in Animation
Current Career
Animator at Hybrid Studios
Location
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Montana-native Mike Medicine Horse arrived at MCAD "dead-set on doing computer animation," he recalls, "but with zero experience!" Thrilled with the college's state-of-the-art technology, he was a fast learner and realized that collaborating with other students on a team was very important to him.

Now, he leads a team of animators at Hybrid Studios in St. Louis Park, doing medical animations used for health-care industry. (His boss Geoff Stewart and coworker John Wichlacz are also MCAD grads.) It was tough at first; an early project creating monthly videos with a surgeon was like medical boot camp. He puts muscles and veins and corpuscles into motion, making visible microscopic events that humans will never witness first-hand.

An interesting byproduct of his work, for which he has won both national and global awards, is Medicine Horse's new medical expertise.

"People ask me about their ailments or science issues in the news. I recall when the avian flu scare was at its peak and I understood the science enough to know there was little chance [an epidemic] would happen."

Medical animation frame by Mike Medicine Horse