Your thumbnail... NEXT TO MINE! GO CHECK IT OUT! QUICK

That's very cool. Also scary. I've never had a migraine, apparently. Sympathies!

my migraines tend to start with having a blind spot on my left side. it's a little scary and doesn't happen too often :B

oh... Mine's on the right side most often. Are you left-handed by any chance?

nope, full blooded righty.

Ah... Me likewise.
I thought there might be a relation between handedness and which side the blind spot is on.

most other handed-related occurrences follow right-handed tendencies for me (like when you clasp your hands together, my dominate thumb resides under my non-dominate), but for migraines it's usually on the left. not that i've really been keeping track...

yeh same thing happens to me!! and i get super nauseous too
and that pain where you can't even swivel your head ARRGH
NO FUN
this is a really accurate (and also cool) representation of that

Thank you. :)

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention nausea... I get it too. Yuck. ;6

Completely badass.

Flashback to my kidhood, when I used to get migranes. UGH. I had to tuck myself into a foetal ball and plug my ears. Nausea a-Go-Go plus hypersensitivity to sound. Man, you have my empathy AND my sympathy. *carefully hugs*

Thankies. :)

Funny thing is that I started having migraines only at about 20. The first one was brutal - in addition to all the migrainous "joys", I couldn't feel my right side for more than 10 hours. Scared the crap out of me... They've been getting less severe since then and have become quite bearable these days.

That's more than a little scary. What have the doctors said?

"It's a migraine". Just that....
The ones afterwards were less intense, so I didn't pay much attention to it, either.

A friend of mine died of an aneurysm several years ago. Ever since then I've not been able to think of migraine without thinking about Scott, and worrying. :P

My condolences.

Yes, that is scary.

We take for granted that everything going on beneath our skin is fine. So many things can be on the verge of breakdown and we don't know it 'til BOOM.

It's a reminder to live big and love lots. Life is too precious to be wasted.

ugh that is somethgin painful to get, thoe the efect on the iamge is really intresting it makes you look a bit longer to undertand its not the eye or the screen that is mesing.

gah, i can relate to a certain degree.
not so much pain-wise brain-wise, just intense soreness & stabbing within my eyes.
but yeah, imagine having those visual symptoms 24/7, and they're ever-so-gradually worsening.

yep... that's me :[

Actually I thought about you when making this picture... I wondered what your's would look like.
(Sounds like it'd look quite different (and scarier): afterimages, phosphenes & floaters vs. one-sided blindness filled with sparkles)

Take care, man!

Freaky, now I've got a headache, and my computer's making weird noises.

On a scale of 1-10 how would you rate your interpretation of the aura to the real thing?

Having never had one, it's interesting to have an illustration of what it is like.

It does look accurate to a certain degree... ~ 7/10. Maybe I could make it to 9/10 if I had stereoscopic output with twice the framerate instead of a flat monitor. The sparkles have a very weird dimensional quality to them - as if both eyes see different "snow" on one side. If you ever had a heavy blow to one side of your head (so that the opposite side went dark and then filled with sparkles) - this looks and feels similar.

I actually have had a heavy blow to the head, but don't remember much aside from losing sight in one eye and a heaping concussion. I think I know what you mean though, based on other experiences. Thank you!

that's so strange; it's never happened to me before. but, whoa, this reminds me of the headaches i get that stay right behind my eye. ughghg

I laughed hard! .. and I like the image too. Especially when it's not freaking out all over my screen.

I have a tendency for severe headaches and occasionally debilitating migraines if I don't take good enough care of myself or stay very hydrated.

interesting way to express the idea though.

Hmm, I get something like this sometime, but no associated headache.

That's probably what's known as a 'visual migraine'. Same visual and perceptual effects, but without the pain. My sweetheart gets those occasionally.

*shudder*

Since all the cool kids seem to be talking about their migraine:
I've had only one serious migraine attack that I was old enough to remember. That was while we were watching a 70's educational film about caterpillars in biology class. It was especially scary because I just suddenly noticed that I had complete tunnel vision with my field of vision being not much larger than the TV screen I'd been staring at for the last half-hour (don't remember if it was on both eyes or just one, though). Then my head exploded and I folded up.

What's also fun if you have very low blood pressure like me is getting up quickly and walking across the room after you've been lying completely still watching TV or sleeping for a while. When the blood drains from my brain and eyes, my vision clouds up completely and I see nothing but intricate swirling OP-Art patterns for a few seconds. It's actually quite interesting if I don't fall over or disorientedly (is that even a proper word?) walk into furniture. It's impressive how much geometry my blood-deprived brain manages to interpret out of the static.

Ah yes, the low blood pressure thing is fun too. I get it once in a while. If combined with stress, exhaustion and/or prolonged fasting it can lead to convulsions. (Trust me, that ain't fun...)

Hmm. That's quite different from what I see. Mine look like weird thick noise/fog with sparkles sprinkled over (can't see anything there, not even black or white - it's like one huge blindspot), covering the entire right field of vision and edges of the entire peripheral vision.

That sounds bad. :( I sometimes get black/white lights at left, but they're random and rare. If it's daily, it might not be migraine anymore. Have you paid a visit to the doctors on the neurologic side of medicine yet?

Makes me want to be in intes

nse cerebreal pain. What the hell? Yeah, like that.

Looks fun. :P

Since everybody's talking about vision problems I might as well mention mine: TV Static, or 'snow' if you will. Translucent and constant. It never goes away and actually gets worse when I'm having a bad day. It's like another channel or television waves are interfering with my eyeball transmissions.

This is definitely more fun, though.

Ah, I sometimes get that (frankly, slight noise all the time, but it's too faint to be a bother), accompanied by tinnitus. I can imagine it's a huge annoyance when it's constant... *shudder* I'd choose headaches anytime...

you nailed it I think O___O;

ACK ACK ACK OW MY BRAIN IS MELTING ARGH.

._.

huh, yeah, this is definitely an interesting interpretation of it. i don't get the visual static quite as heavily, but it's definitely noticeable and mostly one-sided. good job on it, haha.

I've had a few bad headaches in my life, and i figured they were migraines (i felt nauseous and such) but apparently they weren't because i never saw any of that stuff or had any problem seeing at all... or loss of cognitive ability. It just hurt to have my eyes open, and any noise seemed amplified to the point of being painful.

Anyway, this is really interesting, both in subject and execution.

Those might have been migraines, too. Actually migraines are more common without auras. I wonder if auras and loss of cognitive abilities are linked. Seems so...

you're the only other migraine sufferer i've encountered yet that also has aura symptoms.

ever notice that, depending upon what side of your brain the migraine originates from, those cognitive abilities are most affected? when i have left sided migraines, reading becomes difficult, and on the right side, i can't enter a phone number correctly to save my life. i used to get left brained migraines only, where my right eye would have a blind spot, then sparklies, and then numbness in the hand and face, but i've had the dubious honor of side-switching migraines lately.

nailed it with the drawing, by the way.

Ah, now that I remember, I have had a right-brain migraine or two. They were different, but not much; I only remember I didn't have trouble speaking (as often happens for left-brain ones), but drawing was... well... different - couldn't imagine space, perspective and volume at all.

Auras are fun. :)

great animation but it gives me a headache just looking at it lol.

AHHHHH!!! Oh man that'll give anyone seizures still its real cool!!

Don't have them as often these days, but when I used to mine looked like this: http://www.kopzorgen.nl/images/aura.jpg

That's one beautiful aura...

WHOA! That's.. interesting. Not interesting enough for me to want to have one to experience it, but certainly interesting none the less.

You know, I think this is the first time I've seen an aura animated. o_o
And yes, it does feel like a headache. :3

thats...the best...
And...poor you ;__;
*patpat*
That must be hard O.o

Wow! You captured the aura look perfectly. I hate those! Mine would start off in my right eye and grow bigger until I was completely blind. Then it would disappear and the pain would hit. No fun at all.

Absolutely, mind-numbingly awesome.

I really really love these kind of art pieces. Art that shows actual physical pain or hallucinations caused by massive pain.

I've only had a couple migraines (they're hormone migraines and apparently it runs in the family), but I don't remember ever seeing auras or anything. I'm pretty sure they were migraines, though, because I remember crying because the light from the streetlights outside was really overpowering (even though everything in my room was turned off) and that the sound of my computer humming made me want to vomit.

Great job on this piece, by the way. This is turning into an interesting series.

this ROCKS! I get migraines too and the auras have always looked like I was looking through a windshield that was slowly shattering until it consumes my entire field of vision. my mom sees colors in her auras... it's a fucked up condition. the nausia and pain are worse than the temporary retardation - (i'm used to having impaired cognition)

*drags his feet in the dirt and aww gee gawrshes as he feels a wave of regret at being left out of the migraine talk, never having had one himself.* I hit my thumb with a hammer REALLY hard once! Left a splat ring around the nail! Does that count? :P though I didn't see stars.. heck, I didnt even throw the hammer.. I just dropped it, got down off the roof. Cleaned up my thumb, got a beer, and turned on the tv and watched tv for teh rest of the day. Uhm... *cough* Yeah..

Srsly though. That's.. an interesting interpretation. Makes me wonder what Van gogh might have done for "the scream" had he had a flash player... (Or was it munch? Hrm.. )

I had migraine constantly so i understand this pretty well, i know that when i start to see the aura i have to leave all what i was doing and keep a rest before tha pain started. Unfortunaly i can´t stop it with nothing.

I like this very much cause represents a lot how you feel

You almost hit it right on the head, in my case at least. I get them too. Would be a little faster methinks. It's scary looking at this. I'm afraid to get one now haha.