Scientific lecture animation
Client: National University of Singapore
This project was a three-part animation series created for the National University of Singapore, visualising how alpha-synuclein protein misfolds, spreads between neurons, and drives the cell damage seen in Parkinson's disease. The videos were built to run underneath live lecture narration, giving professors a visual track to teach from rather than a finished, self-contained explainer.
The challenge
The subject sits deep inside a specialist field of neuroscience, worked out from primary research papers rather than a settled explainer brief.
Key communication challenges included:
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Working from dense scientific literature and direct input from the research team, without a formal script to begin from
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Visualising a molecular process, protein misfolding, membrane transport, mitochondrial damage, that has no visual reference point for a general audience
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Keeping three separate but related videos (aggregation, membrane transport, cell death) consistent enough to be taught as one series
The approach
Triken worked directly with the NUS research team through multiple rounds of feedback, turning dense scientific literature into a visual sequence built to carry a lecturer's narration, not replace it.
Key decisions included:
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Video 1 tracks alpha-synuclein aggregating from monomer to Lewy body
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Video 2 visualises synuclein crossing the cell membrane
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Video 3 follows synuclein into the mitochondria, causing cell damage
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Every structure was labelled directly in the animation, and paced to hold for live lecture narration
Every round of feedback came from the scientists themselves, refining the biology as much as the visuals until the sequence matched exactly what they needed to teach.
Deployment & outcome
The three videos were delivered to NUS as part of their neuroscience curriculum, built to run with live narration rather than as standalone explainers.
For students, structures that otherwise exist only as diagrams in a textbook, Complex I, the PTP pore, exosome propagation, became a sequence they could watch happen.
The result was three animations precise enough for a research team to teach from, and clear enough for students meeting the material for the first time.
