LOPSY

Design an Anatomical Plate Data Visualization Poster

Build a Victorian anatomical-plate bar chart in Lopsy with sepia skull engravings, muscle-shaped bars, a magnified inset, pattern gridlines and serif type.

  • Advanced
  • 150 min
  • 14 steps

Published

The finished Zoological Jaws poster, styled as a 19th-century anatomical plate on aged cream paper with a double-rule frame. Under "Plate XVI." and the title, the subtitle reads "The greatest bite of five species, measured in newtons". A left column holds sepia engravings of a crocodile, tiger, lion, human and grey wolf skull, each captioned "Fig." with its Latin name in script. To the right, each bite force is drawn as a red striated muscle with pale tendons. The crocodile's reaches 16,400 N across the whole chart. A framed, tinted inset labelled "Fig. 6 · The mammals at eight times the scale" redraws the tiger (1,470 N), lion (1,320 N), human (850 N) and wolf (490 N) against its own 0–1,500 axis. A pale strip on the main chart marks the enlarged region. Footnotes give methods and sources.

This poster is a bar chart dressed as a page from a Victorian anatomy atlas. The data is the maximum bite force of five animals. Each bar is drawn as a jaw-closing muscle: a pale tendon springs from the zero line, a red striated belly swells out, and the tip of the insertion tendon marks the value.

The crocodile's 16,400 N makes every mammal a sliver, so the four mammals are drawn again in a framed Fig. 6 at exactly eight times the scale. That's the classic "detail enlarged" device from scientific plates, and it keeps the chart honest.

The skulls are public-domain engravings from Wikimedia Commons:

  • Tiger, lion and wolf: Blainville's Ostéographie (1839–64).
  • Crocodile: a Brockhaus Konversations-Lexikon drawing.
  • Human: the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.

The values and their sources:

  • Saltwater crocodile: 16,400 N, measured in a live animal (Erickson et al. 2012).
  • Tiger: 1,470 N, estimated at the canine tip (Christiansen & Wroe 2007).
  • Lion: 1,320 N, estimated at the canine tip (same source).
  • Human: 850 N, measured at the molars of adult men (Waltimo & Könönen 1993).
  • Grey wolf: 490 N, estimated at the canine tip (Christiansen & Wroe 2007).

The palette:

  • Paper: #EDE0C4
  • Sepia ink: #3A2718
  • Plate red: #7E2A1E
  • Muscle carmine: #9E2A22
  • Muscle hatching: #6B1A15
  • Tendon: #FBF5E6 → #C9B994

  1. Age the paper

    Create an 1800 × 2400 px document and Edit → Fill the Background with #EDE0C4. Build the paper on three layers:

    1. Paper Grain: fill with mid-grey, then run Filter → Add Noise (40, Mono, Gaussian) and Gaussian Blur 2. Set it to Overlay at 35%. The grain has no direction, so it reads as rag paper, not wood.
    2. Mottle: run Filter → Clouds (scale 6) and set it to Soft Light at 14%.
    3. Edge Toning: draw a radial Gradient from transparent brown at the centre to #7A4A22 at the corners. Set it to Multiply at 32%.

    For foxing, use a soft Brush (Hardness 0, Opacity 14) at a few sizes. Dab a few irregular clusters of rust #8C5A2E in the margins, away from anything you'll print on.

    A blank 1800 by 2400 document filled with warm cream paper, faint mottling, darker toned edges and soft brown foxing spots in the margins

  2. Rule the frame and set the title

    Click the rulers to drop guides:

    • Vertical: x 132 (skull column), 700 (the zero line) and 1660 (the right edge of the chart).
    • Horizontal: y 500 (top of the chart) and 2040 (the axis).

    On a Plate Frame layer, marquee-fill a 7 px sepia ring 60 px in from the edge, and a 2 px ring 84 px in. The ring recipe is: marquee, Fill, Select → Shrink, then Delete.

    Set the type with the Text tool, centring each line with Align center horizontally:

    • Title: "ZOOLOGICAL JAWS" in Castoro Titling, 146 px, letter spacing 8.
    • Plate number: "PLATE XVI." in Cormorant SC SemiBold, 38 px, in plate red.
    • Subtitle: Cormorant SC Medium, 44 px.

    Under the subtitle, draw a thick and a thin rule the same width as the subtitle, and a small diamond lassoed at the centre.

    The paper with a heavy outer rule and a thin inner rule, blue guides at x 132, 700 and 1660, and the Plate XVI title block above a double rule with a diamond

  3. Draw dashed gridlines with a pattern

    The main scale is 0.058 px per newton, so 2,000 N is exactly 116 px. Make a dash tile to match:

    1. On a scratch layer, fill a 2 × 9 px sepia dash at x 4.
    2. Marquee a 116 × 20 box from x 0 and run Edit → Define Pattern.
    3. On a Gridlines layer, marquee the chart area (x 700–1664, y 500–2040), run Edit → Fill with Pattern… and set the layer to 45%.

    A pattern fill anchors to the document origin. Because 700 ÷ 116 leaves 4, the dash at x 4 in the tile lands on x 700, 816, 932 and so on.

    Draw the zero line and the x-axis as 4 px marquee fills. Add ticks every 58 px, with a long tick every 116. Label 0, 4,000, 8,000, 12,000 and 16,000 in Cormorant SC.

    The empty chart area with fine dashed vertical gridlines every 2,000 N, a solid zero line, a ticked x-axis labelled 0 to 16,000 and the axis title in red

  4. Paste a public-domain engraving

    Make a Skulls group. Copy the human skull engraving from your browser and press Cmd+V. Lopsy pastes it at full size at the top-left of the canvas, with transform handles. Press Cmd+D to drop the transform and rename the layer Human Skull.

    Clean the engraving now, while it's full size and the lettering is easy to hit.

    The 1911 Britannica skull engraving pasted at full size in the top-left corner of the canvas, with its bone labels Pa, Fr, Sq, Mx and Mn and the hyoid bone still visible

  5. Retouch the lettering away

    This old engraving has bone abbreviations printed all over it:

    • Labels on white paper (Pa, Fr, SO, MT, Mn) and the hyoid bone under the jaw: marquee each one and Edit → Fill it white.
    • Labels on the hatching (Sq, As, Ma, em): use the Clone Stamp at about 36 px. Alt-click clean hatching just beside the letters, then paint over them. The stamp keeps the same offset for the whole stroke, so the hatch lines carry straight through.

    Finish with Filter → Desaturate so every engraving starts neutral.

    The human skull engraving with every label removed; the Clone Stamp has replaced the letters inside the hatching with matching hatch lines

  6. Scale the skulls into their rows

    Paste the tiger, lion, wolf and crocodile the same way, desaturating each one. The crocodile drawing is pale, so give it Brightness/Contrast (−12, +45).

    Draw a marquee around each skull, switch to the Move tool and Cmd-drag the bottom-right handle to scale it uniformly:

    • Mammal skulls: 190 px tall.
    • Crocodile: 420 px wide.

    Press Cmd+D to commit, then drag each skull to x 390 in its row. The rows are 308 px apart, starting at y 500.

    The tiger skull pasted at the canvas corner with a transform box, being scaled down by dragging its bottom-right handle

  7. Multiply the skulls onto the paper

    Set every skull layer to Multiply in the effects drawer. White multiplies to nothing, so the paper shows through, and the grey engravings sit on it like printed ink.

    The human engraving has much thinner lines than the lithographs. To thicken them, run Layer → Duplicate Layer, click the copy's row, and nudge it so it sits exactly 1 px to the right of the original. Keep it on Multiply too.

    The skull column zoomed in, with the five grey engravings sitting directly on the cream paper and their white backgrounds gone

  8. Tone the set to one sepia

    Two layers make the mixed engravings look like one printing:

    1. Ink Lift: fill a rectangle over the skull column with #4A2E1F and set it to Lighten. Any ink darker than that brown is lifted to it. The paper is lighter, so it doesn't change.
    2. Sepia Wash: for each skull, marquee its box, then use the Magic Wand with Alt-click on the white background to subtract it, leaving only the ink. Fill that selection with #6B4A30 on the wash layer. Set the layer to Color at 55%. Then wand the pure whites with Contiguous off and Delete them from the wash, so bare bone stays paper-coloured.
    The same skull column now in a warm brown ink, with the tiger, lion and human reading as one family of sepia engravings

  9. Caption each figure

    Under each skull, add two centred lines:

    • "Fig. 2 · Tiger": Cormorant SC SemiBold, 32 px, sepia.
    • Panthera tigris: Pinyon Script, 30 px, plate red. Google Fonts' italics don't render, so a copperplate script plays the italic.

    Place every caption 16 px below the lowest ink of its skull, counting faint tooth tips. That keeps each caption clearly with its own figure, and at least 45 px from the skull below.

    Close-up of the tiger, lion and human skulls, each with a Fig. caption in small caps and a Latin name in red script beneath

  10. Frame the enlarged inset

    This is the honest way to show the small bars. In an Enlarged Inset group:

    1. Magnified Tint: fill a strip over the main chart's 0–1,500 N range (x 700–787, down to the axis) and the inset box (x 860–1660, y 770–1962) with carmine, at 6%. The shared tint links the two.
    2. Knock out the main grid: on the Gridlines layer, marquee the inset box and Delete, so the two scales never mix.
    3. Inset grid: the inset scale is 8 × 0.058 = 0.464 px/N, so 250 N is 116 px again. Define a second 116 px dash tile with its dash at x 80, so it lands on the inset zero at x 892. Pattern-fill it inside the box.
    4. Inset frame and axis: add the frame, its own axis and ticks, and labels 0, 500, 1,000 and 1,500.
    5. Leaders: draw two thin lassoed lines from the strip's corners to the inset's corners, at 60%.

    Title the inset "Fig. 6 · The mammals at eight times the scale", centred on the plot area.

    The chart with a pale red strip over the first 1,500 newtons of the main axis, joined by two thin leader lines to a larger tinted inset frame with its own dashed grid and 0 to 1,500 axis

  11. Rotate a label into the strip

    Type "Enlarged in Fig. 6" in Cormorant SC, 20 px, in plate red, and click Rasterize Layer. Rasterize before transforming, because a rotated live text layer can re-flow. Marquee it and switch to Move. Hold Cmd and drag the rotate handle, just outside the top-right corner, to snap to −90°. Press Cmd+D.

    Centre it in the strip at y 1383, in the gap between the lion and human bars.

    A small red "Enlarged in Fig. 6" label, rasterized and rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise with the rotate handle, still showing its transform box

  12. Draw the muscle bars

    Plan each muscle as a polygon, and let the length carry the data:

    • Origin tendon: a strap from the zero line, about 8% of the bar's length (capped at 38 px).
    • Belly: an asymmetric spindle, 56 px deep. On very short bars the depth shrinks with the length.
    • Insertion tendon: tapers to a point exactly at the value.

    For the crocodile, 16,400 × 0.058 = 951 px, so its tip is at x 1653. The inset muscles use 0.464 px/N from x 892.

    In a Muscle Bars group:

    1. Bellies: lasso each belly and fill it flat #9E2A22.
    2. Muscle Fibres: lasso thin tapered strands in #6B1A15 that follow the spindle. Pack them tighter toward the bottom, so they shade like an engraver's hatching. Set the layer to 85%.
    3. Tendons: lasso each tendon and fill it with a #FBF5E6 → #C9B994 gradient.

    Run Gaussian Blur 2 on Bellies and Tendons to soften the lasso steps. Then give both a 2 px outside Stroke in #3A2718, like an engraved keyline.

    Close-up of the inset: carmine spindle-shaped muscle bellies with dark fibre hatching, pale tapered tendons at both ends and thin sepia outlines

  13. Label the values

    Right-align each value to its tendon tip, 10 px above the bar:

    • Crocodile: "16,400 N" in Cormorant SC Bold, 40 px.
    • Inset values: 34 px, with a dagger (†) on the three estimates.

    Then marquee around each label, 10 px out, and Delete the dashes on the gridline layer underneath, so no line runs through a number.

    Close-up of 16,400 N above the crocodile muscle's tip and 1,470 N† above the tiger's, each right-aligned to its tendon tip, with the dashed gridlines knocked out behind the numbers

  14. Add the key and sources

    Under the axis title, set three lines of Cormorant Garamond at 24 px, left-aligned to the title's left edge (x 144). The lines explain three things:

    • How to read a muscle bar.
    • What the dagger means.
    • Where every number and engraving comes from.

    Leave equal space above and below the block. Check the whole plate at 100%, then File → Quick Export PNG and File → Save Project.

    The finished plate in Lopsy with three lines of footnotes under the axis title explaining the muscle key, the dagger for estimates and the engraving sources
Lopsy editing the finished LIGHTS OUT neon poster, with the layers panel open beside a glowing pink headline, an amber ring chart, cyan bars and violet tubes

Design a Neon Data Visualization Poster

Build a neon infographic poster in Lopsy with glowing tube type, a to-scale bubble chart, a neon bar chart, a Bloom glow pass and a mosaic tile wall.

  • Intermediate
  • 120 min