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Serious Games As Medical Animation For Surgeon and Patient Education


Ghost Productions is a 3D medical animation studio that specializes in promotional marketing, surgical technique, and surgeon and patient education (please find also ghOst Productions: Serious Games As Inspiring Medical Animation).

Ghost Productions Exists To Explain Medicine 

According to Ghost Productions website, “nothing explains complex surgery, anatomy, or medicine as well as 3D animation. A study performed in 2005 found that medical students who viewed 3D Animation teaching methods outperformed a control group (who viewed only surgical videos) not only in topographical understanding but also in theoretical understanding”.

Ghost Productions explains medicine using the most advanced 3D animation technology and interactive experiences. Ghost produced and presented its first 3D medical animation at the North American Spine Society Meeting in 1994, making Ghost Productions the longest running computer generated medical animation studio worldwide.

Ghost uses the most advanced and efficient 3D animation software available. It is the very same platform used by blockbuster animation and special effects companies like Pixar, Industrial Light & Magic, and DreamWorks, but modified to specifically produce medical animation.

Ghost both specializes in medical animation and has mastered the art of character animation. This makes Ghost a first choice for clients who need to explain medicine accurately as well as inspire their audience with rich storytelling and novel characters.

Ghost has had the opportunity to work on some pretty interesting projects. On their Demo Reels page we may find animations created for Medtronic, Johnson and Johnson, DePuy, Osteomed, Biomatlante, Spiracur, Spineology, Cardiovascular Institute of the South, and many others. These demo reels highlight the strength of medically accurate surgical techniques as well as demonstrate Ghost’s ability to produce story-driven character animations.

About the Founder


Stephan Kuslich is the founder and Executive Producer at Ghost Productions, Inc. He is primarily responsible for the vision and workflow of 2D & 3D motion projects. Everyone at Ghost Productions, Inc. both creates and animates models, but it is his job to make sure that each frame of animation is perfect.

He began designing with a computer in 1986 with a Macintosh 512k. It was in a summer job as a presentation designer at Metropolitan Medical Center that he discovered his true calling. While creating a slide show, his boss asked him if I he could make the graphics move. He was sent to the computer store with the corporate card and purchased his first piece of animation software.

He remained a self-taught animator a few years until he was accepted into the last 6 months of a 2-year animation program at SCA. He graduated and took his demo reel to the Burbank Animation Opportunities Expo. He interviewed with Disney, Pixar, and Dream Quest Images–to name a few. Toy Story was still very new and computer animators were pretty rare. So his whole class got some great offers. He wanted to work on movie production at Dream Quest, but he had also been offered a position at a local medical development company.  Stephan Kuslich says: “I learned a lot working in medical development. I mostly learned that I couldn't stomach the rhetoric of corporate structure. I left, re-energized Ghost Productions and began making a new life beyond the constraints of the status quo.”