I made this illustration for my nephew, an 8 year old that is obsessed with Godzilla trivia and vintage video games. I hope he loves it, although I worry that my Godzilla will not be historically acurrate.
My eight-year-old asked me to draw with him using some markers he got for Christmas. I thought I’d try to draw a phoropter without looking at a reference image (although - full disclosure - I have some practice illustrating phoropters).
Why draw a illustration of rocker piranhas? Why not?
We were taking some family photos and my son picked up a long branch and lifted it over his head while screaming like a banshee. He looked so much like a crazy power lifter I just had to draw a barbell and an insane amount of weights.
Astigmatism is very common yet, for something that a LOT of people have, it’s very misunderstood. And it gets blamed for just about any deficiency people perceive in their quality of vision (and sometimes they’re right).
Perhaps this is because it’s a little tricky to conceptualize, or maybe it’s because the word itself sounds like it could be a horrible disease. If I didn’t know better, I certainly wouldn’t want to be told that I’ve caught a case of “astigmatism”.
When we try to explain astigmatism, we often do it by describing the shape of the front surface of the eye. “An eye without astigmatism is spherical, like a basketball. An eye with astigmatism has two curvatures, a steeper one and a flatter one. Kind of like a football.”
I think most people comprehend this analogy when they hear it but, like a lot of information, the passage of time eventually erodes this understanding and, years later, they only recall that there is something football-like about their eyes.
When I look at Edvard Munch’s The Scream, I like to think about what would make the subject of the painting scream. What could be causing the horrified expression on his face? What could be altering his perception of the world and transmogrifying it into a swirly, melty nightmare?
I can only think of one thing: Astigmatism.
Yes, the dreaded football-eye.
Why did I draw a picture of a Terminator refracting a Terminator?
I’ve been working on a tutorial to teach optometry students to refract a virtual patient, where my program would make the patient respond to questions and lens changes. At one point I started making a feature where, if the student got stuck or confused, they could turn on a “tutorial mode”. This was essentially another program that would try to think like the doctor to help walk the student through the refraction.
It suddenly struck me that I was pretty much trying to create a virtual doctor that would be refracting a virtual patient.
I’m pretty sure this is how Skynet got started.
To make a long story short, in the interest of saving humanity, I scrapped this plan (I certainly did not give up because it was proving to be too hard).
A Terminator using a phoropter to refract another Terminator.
My mom has been going through some boxes in her basement and came across some of my old school things.
She found a comic that I wrote sometime in grade school (I don’t know when, but it must be some time in the early 80’s given the boom box and the clothing styles depicted on page 5).
I'm thinking it is from around 1985 because I reference Neo-Maxi Zoomdweebie from The Breakfast Club. Even though I'm pretty sure I hadn't seen this movie at that time I remember people using that phrase and thinking it sounded pretty funny.
It’s weird that I only have a vague recollection of doing this, but it gave me a laugh and I thought I’d share it here.
Oh, and it must have been for school project because there’s an “A-” on the back: I was dinged for starting a sentence with a number on the last page. The teacher didn't catch my using the wrong “to” on the second page though!
It’s a little obscure, so if you’re not getting it: The guy’s name is Bib Fortuna.
