The Animation Station
by Hannah Postlethwaite
A series of fun and educational activities exploring different forms of optical illusion and animation.
The illusion of motion in animation is created by exploiting the rate at which the brain processes pictures.
Imagine you walk from point A to point B and someone takes a photo of your progress every few seconds. Now we project these pictures one at a time on a screen. At first we have a small gap of a second in between each and you appear as a separate image each time as if frozen. But if we gradually close the gap between each picture, eventually they merge into one fluid image, and you appear to be ‘moving’.
The Victorian Era made much headway in the development of moving pictures from simple optical illusions like the thaumatrope to the more sequential flip book which inspired modern animation. ‘The Animation Station’ is a series of tutorials exploring these different methods and the fundamental parts involved in creating magical moving pictures!
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Make your own Thaumatropes, one of the earliest forms of animation that play on simple optical illusion.
The Flipbook is thought to have paved the way for modern animation! Have a go at making your very own!
Quick and simple tutorial to make your own mini drawn animation.
Fun and simple exercise that plays on some of the principles of animation and story development.