A screen recording of the interactive article experience in which scrolling guides the reader through the animated 3D explainer.

This 3-D Simulation Shows Why Social Distancing Is So Important

Organization: The New York Times

Date: April 14, 2020

As news about Covid 19 was beginning to emerge around the globe and social distancing guidelines put in place, our team in the Graphics department set out to explain why such measures were necessary. I co-led the reporting and research, conducted interviews with subject-matter experts, translated our findings into storyboards and assembled and animated the 3D visualization in Maya.

The 3D simulation of a cough was shared with us by Masashi Yamakawa of the Kyoto Institute of Technology and interpreted for use in our interactive format by Or Fleisher.

I worked with Or Fleisher to translate the 3D visualization into an interactive “scrollytelling” format, using the Maya-to-WebGL pipeline I helped develop over the last few years.