Poetry in motion

Me actually made a praxinoscope yesterday. It was on my "to do" list. Though what I made is far from perfect, its a start.

Things you need:

1. A stable light source - a good yellow lamp works the best. But remove the shade, dont let it cast shadows.
2. A disc - actually the lid of any round box will do. Dont get too big a disc, a radius of  7-8 cms is good. This disc should be fixed at a height so that the lamp shines directly on it from the side  perpendicular to where you will view it. Fix it at a height of atleast 15 cms. The above disc should be freely rotating - I used a candle stand for fixing the disc since it has a sharp pointed edge and a decent base to support it.

3. A shiny (preferably made of mirror) cylinder, that should be fixed at the centre of the disc. This is the most important component. While choosing this, try placing it on any picture and see if you like the reflection of the picture on the cylinder. This is how your "film" will look eventually :). Of course a partitioned cylinder like the one in the attached pic works the best, but I couldn't find one. Also, the cylinder in this pic is short, mine was longer and therefore the image was kinda distorted. The radius of the cylinder should be 3-4 cms. The wider the better actually. But it should not be less than 1/3rd your disc radius. The cylinder should NOT rotate, only the disc should. Glue it if you must, but it shouldn't rotate, ok? The rotating disc in the pic is not flat, but I would advise a flat one.

4. Good white paper that is cut in a circle, the shape of the disc minus cylinder. Doing this is tough but make many of these. You'll need them :). Make a slit to fix it easily on the disc, around the cylinder.

5. A screen to view your "motion film" :) This can be done in many innovative ways, the easiest being  a card board with the desired sized rectangle cut out of it. You have to view your "film" through this rectangle, you get it? Alternatively, you can have a paper screen, but then you have to ensure that the light falls on the screen, and ONLY the image is projected on it. You could use the cardboard cutout for this. I wanted a mirror screen but it clashed horribly with the cylinder. If you get this right, tell me how you did it ok?

6. Divide the paper disc into equal parts with a thin, very light pencil. I would suggest 12 parts, 3 in each quadrant.

7. Now you can start drawing what you want to see on the paper disc. I was not very ambitious since my sketching skills are questionable so I drew a ball going up and down. You could download animation strips too. But you should envisage the various transitions between the beginning and the end of your film, and then choose the number of partitions in each quadrant. But please make sure its equally spaced and even. Something like this pic on the right. Also, the height of your pic matters a LOT. Dont draw along the full length available. See how it looks on the cylinder before deciding this, ok? I used colors, but black and white looks really pretty :)

So you now place the paper disc with your drawing on the rotating disc and switch on the light.  Swirl the disc and look at the animated reflection on the cylinder through your cardboard cut-out and hopefully, you'll be as thrilled as I was :)