Animation Is An Optical Illusion
Transcript:
When we go to the movies, the images up on the screen appear to be moving on their own. The word “movies” is short for motion picture, but the picture you are seeing isn’t actually in motion.
Movies are made from thousands of pictures shown in order. Each picture usually appears for one 24th of a second. Your brain actually is what makes the pictures move.
When we show our brain these pictures one at a time very slowly, they look just like individual snapshots. But the faster we move from picture to picture, the harder it is for our brains to separate the pictures and they begin to appear to move right before our eyes.
You can even try this with as few as two pictures. If you’ve ever read any of the Captain Underpants books, you will recognize this phenomenon when you use the Flip-O-Rama section of the books.
The artist has drawn two pictures that create the illusion of motion when you flip the pages back and forth.
To make your own Flip-O-Rama, take a long strip of paper and fold it in half. The idea is to make two pictures that make sense going back and forth. These two pictures don’t make sense, because the sun doesn’t go up and down like that.
This picture of the sun works, because the two pictures make it look like the sun’s rays are moving in the sky.
Movies are made from thousands of pictures shown in order. Each picture usually appears for one 24th of a second. Your brain actually is what makes the pictures move.
When we show our brain these pictures one at a time very slowly, they look just like individual snapshots. But the faster we move from picture to picture, the harder it is for our brains to separate the pictures and they begin to appear to move right before our eyes.
You can even try this with as few as two pictures. If you’ve ever read any of the Captain Underpants books, you will recognize this phenomenon when you use the Flip-O-Rama section of the books.
The artist has drawn two pictures that create the illusion of motion when you flip the pages back and forth.
To make your own Flip-O-Rama, take a long strip of paper and fold it in half. The idea is to make two pictures that make sense going back and forth. These two pictures don’t make sense, because the sun doesn’t go up and down like that.
This picture of the sun works, because the two pictures make it look like the sun’s rays are moving in the sky.
Written and produced by Grant Thomas
CC BY 2.0
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Frank W. Baker on
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I include "persistence of vision" in all of my professional development workshops. Recently I conducted a workshop on incorporating STEM into the arts classroom and this issue was part of that content. We discussed 24 fps (film), 30 fps (video) and the new 48/60 fps being promoted by directors James Cameron and Peter Jackson. I hope you are aware of my Language of Film website, with an extensive section on animation.
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Permalink Reply by Grant Thomas on
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Thanks Frank! I was not aware of your website, but I'll be adding a link to your site over at my site (Making Visual Narratives).
Would you ever be interested in doing a guest blog post in my site?
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