Vector tracing in 2021

[evansd2]

@CarterTG

laser cut an animation

Couple of zoetropes from 2017…

Zoetrope

A friend has an bimonthly “art salon” and this month’s theme was “Illusion”, so I thought a zoetrope would make a fun project. When I tried it for the first time, I thought it didn’t work, everything was super blurred. Then I brought it into the living room to show my “failure” to my wife and son and it worked beautifully! The difference? LED vs natural light. LED lights are actually strobing at high speed, too fast to notice, but enough to interrupt the stroboscopic effect of the zoetrope. T…

Building a modular zoetrope

And, there it is! [Laser cut zoetrope experiment] My animation choice (an outlined treatment of a Conway’s Life glider looping across the frame) turned out to be not great in terms of visibility, even after I took a colored pencil to it to create some more fill contrast, and the lighting in my living room this evening is dim enough to make for poor videography in general, but the concept is definitely there! I’ll look into playing with some additional animation ideas in the next f…