A visual illusion in 5 mins from stationery (and a film container)

Step 3 Print out the frames

Now you need an 8 frame animation.

The example can be downloaded here which prints to the right scale on European A4 - some re-scaling may be required for US Letter paper to fit inside the 30mm diameter of the typical film canister, although it will probably just work, given the tolerances involved.

Get your desktop to 'scale to fit' the image to the A4 or Letter sized paper for best results.

Cut out your chosen 8 frames from the printout, and make a continuous cylindrical film-strip by bending it round and sticking a bit of sellotape on the outside.

This film-strip will fit inside your Zoetrope to generate the animation illusion as you rotate the film canister, viewing it through the slits.

Film Canister Stats:

Interior diameter: 30mm
Interior circumference: 30mm * PI = 94.25mm
3 * 94.25 = 282.75mm
A4 longest side: 297mm

So you can fit a triplet of 8 frames into the longest side of A4 (minus the unprintable border). For workshops, when you have your thousands of film canisters, you can easily provide thousands of different animations for people by pre-printing sheets like the one shown.

Of course you can hand-draw your own animations, but I enjoyed recovering the 19th Century Muybridge ones with some bash scripting hacks.