Zoetrope

All Things Fall, Massacre of the Innocent.

Based on the painting “Massacre of the Innocent” by Rubens, Sebastian Burdon has created a zoetrope of insane detail. The 300 plus figures, and architectural elements were modeled in 3D Studio Max and Z-Brush. They were then printed using a 3D printer to create the final result. When rotated and illuminated with a strobe light, the scene comes to life with total effect showing the gruesome carnage depicted in the original painting. It took Burdon 6 months to complete the modeling and animation, and frankly based on the level of detail I’m surprised it didn’t take longer. The original painting is below the video.

« Le Massacre des Innocents », huile sur bois (Hauteur. 142 cm ; largeur. 182 cm) d’après Pierre Paul Rubens vers 1610-1612, appartenant aux musées royaux des beaux-arts de Belgique de Bruxelles. – Inv. 3639, photographiée lors de l’exposition temporaire « Rubens et son Temps » au musée du Louvre-Lens.

COMODO Christmas Zoetrope Idents for TVE.

Tis the season, and Barcelona’s COMODO has produced a series of indents forSpanish broadcasting network TVE. The spots use a zoetrope to crete the animations. Each piece was built from scratch over a two month period of time with lots of trial and error to get things just right. The result is a series of fun holiday themed indents featuring Christmas, New Years Eve, and the Three Kings. Below are the final results and a making of video that is light on technical details but fun to watch just the same.

Old School plus New School. A Zoetrope for the Crafts Council.

OK, I love this. Here we have a wonderful short film for the Crafts Council that features old school animation techniques, pottery, and a Zoetrope. At the 22 second mark there is a brief shot of an After Effects screen where it looks like they were using CS 6 to figure out the animation sequence that would be hand applied to the pottery to create the final effect. What a great blend of old and new.

The film by Jim Le Fevre, Mike Paterson and Roops and Al Johnstone (RAMP ceramics) is based upon the principles of the Zoetrope with a twist. Instead of placing the pot in a drum with slits to create the shutter, and the animation, Le Fevre set up 19 frames spaced out at about 2 inches. The animation sequence is just about three quarters of a second in length per loop. To get the timing right, the potters wheel was slowly ramped up until it was perfect in-frame for the camera at about 78 rpm.

iPad Optical Illusion Magic.

I’m back after a five-day mini vacation to Baltimore to visit our good friends Jeff, and Sarah. I would have posted more, but all I had with me was the iPad, and unfortunately “WordPress for iPad” kind of sucks as an application. The review of that app is a full post unto itself, but I’m not going to get into it this morning. What I do want to talk about though are the amazing iPad animations created with five static Photoshop images and a piece of film that has black lines of equal spacing running across it.

As you see in the video, if you push or pull the film over the image, it animates. The illusion is really pretty simple, working much the same way that kintescope, lenticular, or zoetrope style animations work.

I have been saying for sometime, it’s not about the technology as much as it is about the idea and the content. I know this uses an iPad and Photoshop to produce this animation, which is pretty damn cool, but this whole thing could have been made with a sharpie, two pieces of film and a light box. If it had, it would still be just as entertaining and compelling.

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