Zoetropes

Zoetropes are an awesome older form of animation we learned about in my animation class a few years ago. If you don't know, they are a circular device with each frame of an animated movement drawn around the circle. You then look through a viewing window and as the zoetrope spins, it appears to be moving. Here is an example of an older zoetrope. Zoetropes are a great physical example of all the frames of an animation, as well as the variety in the types of animation. Pixar designed an amazing and complex 3D zoetrope. It has traveled the world to places like England, Scotland, South Korea, Finland, and many more at various exhibitions. I would love to see one of these in person. Check out this video to see it and hear how it works:

More about zoetropes: Click here

A little more about the Toy Story Zoetrope: Click here

Cake Zoetrope

This video is a great example of how you can do pretty much anything that you can imagine, no matter how pointless. This is a zoetrope of a spinning chocolate cake and a strobe light. The strobe light flickers at a speed exactly equal to the speed at which the cake spins one unit. This creates the illusion of an animated scene where chocolate penguins jump out of alligators mouths. When the lights turn on, the magic is gone because the flickering light is not in sync with the spinning cake and the illusion is over. What this video shows is that you don't need a computer to create animation, just a very creative mind, and also a friend who has a passion for chocolate art. I can only imagine what this animation looks like in person because I know that the poor quality of the camera, and the fact that its shutter speed is slightly off from the frequency of the strobe light, is taking away from the experience. Still, the video is very cool.

Bicycle Zoetrope

I just saw this on The Daily What and it reminded me a lot of the Monty Python spinning thing (yep, that's the technical term for it) that they used for the Flying Circus opening. These guys did something similar with their bike wheels, and it turned out pretty cool.

Apparently they wanted to see if they could film animation in real-time. After watching the video, I'm kinda wondering what exactly they made the gears out of. They look like paper, but I feel like regular paper would just rip when attached to a bike wheel. I also wonder how they came up with the gear idea in the first place and knew that it would look like that when attached to a bike wheel. I mean, either way, it looks pretty awesome.