Curious George led Michael Jensen to the operating rooms at Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. What began as a career in animation in Boston and Hollywood turned into a career working side-by-side with surgeons, creating detailed anatomical illustrations used in medical journals and to detail complex cases.

A graduate of Brigham Young University with a degree in fine arts, Jensen worked for an interactive children's educational company in Boston, recreating illustrations and animation for "Curious George," "Monster Math" and "Blues Clues" books and learning CDs.

"My next career move to Hollywood fit right with my plan at the time, but after several years there, I saw the complexity of the system and realized it would take years to work up the ladder," he said.

At the same time, Jensen said, there was a huge drop in the quality of software. He also felt like his wasn't being challenged creatively.

"The '90s were the golden years in software, then the market shifted to games, and there was a decline in the quality of software across the board," he said. "I was ready to do something else."

Jensen had accepted sporadic freelance assignments in Boston as a medical illustrator and, in 2002, he decided to get formal training.

"At age 39, with a wife and two kids, I realized I wanted to go back to school and redirect my work," he said.

Shifting gears

After researching medical illustration programs across the country, he enrolled at the Medical College of Georgia.

"It was the hardest thing I've ever done because it requires the intellect of a medical student, and at first I didn't think I could do it," he said. "There I was, side-by-side with medical students, taking the same classes and being held to the same standards as the med students."

The medical illustration training lasted two years and Jensen stayed on at MCG in neurology. He's currently studying for his credentialing examination to become a certified medical illustrator.

His perseverance and dedication has paid off. Today he specializes in neurosurgery illustration, often making sketches by hand during complex surgical procedures, then enhancing them for study by physicians.

"The drawings have to be precise, because we're illustrating details that even a camera can't capture," he said. "We peel back the layers with meticulous drawings of abnormal tissue, tumors and the like. In some ways, it's like storyboarding when I did animation, but it's much more complex."

The challenges include incorporating a medical procedure's details over time into a single illustration.

"We literally make three-dimensional drawings in a largely two-dimensional medium," he said. "I go through horrible mental calisthenics to visualize the end result."

Not all artists are cut out for the demands of medical illustration. It's a creative profession, but one that allows little room for interpretation.

"Our drawings must be right every time or we lose credibility," Jensen said.

Typically, medical illustrators work in teaching hospitals or in the private sector. The typical starting salary is about $40,000. After several years of experience, salaries can be in the $50,000s and upward to the mid-$70,000s.

"There's a really small group of trained professionals who do medical illustration for a living," Jensen said. "We're capturing medical cases for future learning, helping the next generation envision cases beyond the textbook."

Although he stopped working with Curious George five years ago, the inquisitive monkey is still a part of Jensen's life.

"People around here still introduce me as the Curious George artist," he said. "I don't have any regrets about the past and how I got here. In some ways, George has been my biggest, single asset."