Derby Makers Vol 2. – ZOETROPES!
A couple of week back we enjoyed a soldering workshop with the guys from Nottingham Hackspace, who are (among others) trying to help form a self-managed ‘makers’ group in Derby for all kinds of everything (Derby Makers Google group here).
Since we’d very much enjoyed the soldering we went back to learn about Zoetropes.
If you never picked up a ‘films and movies’ book when you were a tiny, a Zoetrope is a circular wheel with slits in the sides allowing you to catch glimpses of a series of pictures one by one, essentially creating an animation in the same manner as a flipbook. This wonderful piece of illusion is the basis for all moving-image technology, even today when we have all sorts of fancy digital stuff and computers and that.
Zoetrope literally means ‘Life-Turner’; with a bit of creative translation, a Wheel of Life.
The creation of one was fairly simple, although they proved rather difficult to turn- the use of a record player seemed a great solution, although for my animation (a flower growing from a seed) it was a bit awkward, as the record spun clockwise- I’d drawn my animation left to right (as we Westerners do) and the combination made the flower shrink back into the seed in an oddly meaningful way. Not meaning anything particular, but I bet I could blag something.
Britta did two very nice animations of a dancing person and the quintessential Zoetrope aniamtion, the horse and rider:
These were fun little projects to make, and I look forward to participating in more Derby Makers shennanigans soon- who knows, maybe one of us will even pluck up the courage to run a workshop!
Make way for film!
– Spekti
SpektiJim 