Make a Paper-based Animation

 Have you seen the cards where there appears to be a moving picture just by using a piece of plastic with lines on it and an image underneath?

This instructable shows you how to make your own with just a computer, printer, paper and transparencies.

I'm assuming that you have the Gimp image editor installed. Hopefully you can translate this as needed for other programs. 

Video

paper animation @ Yahoo! Video

Step 1: Create the base image and gridlines

Create a new file that is 1000 pixels by 1000 pixels

Create a new layer called 'Grid 1'

Select that layer from the layer dialog

Create the grid by selecting the 'Filter' menu then 'Render' -> 'Pattern' -> 'Grid'
unlock the horizontal and vertical settings for width, spacing and offsets.

Use the following settings (image below shows the settings for the 'Grid 1' layer
 - Width 0,18,0

 - Spacing 21,1000, 2

 - offset 0,0,6

 

repeat for layers 'Grid 2' to 'Grid 7' using horizontal offsets of 3,6,9,12,15 and18 respectively.

Comments

[GenteDeMassinha]

thank you, will try :)

[not-bob]

Yay! Good Luck!

[Dumchicken]

[dany2489]

gracias por este gran aporte, son de gran utilidad estos tutoriales,......

im from mexico,........

and i dont speak english,......

thank you......

[dany2489]

i dont know how to dowload the tutorial

[not-bob]

Me alegro de que encontrar estos utiles. Para descargar el tutorial, es necesario registrarse.

(from http://translate.google.com)
(en Ingles)
I'm glad you find these useful. To download the tutorial, you need to register.

[santotiago]

Me alegro de que lo encuentres útil. Para descargar el tutorial, necesitas registrarte.

[santotiago]

could you send me the grid layer please?

ive been trying to make it following your instructable but it doesnt work, please tell me how or send me the file with the grids
thanks

[not-bob]

 The files I have available are on 'Step 5'. If these aren't enough, then I'll need more specific information on where things go wrong. To start with, can you let me know which steps you know were successful? Then let me know what step doesn't make sense to you and we can go from there.

[santotiago]

i think that with the files it will be ok

[mweston]

Cool concept, they used the same technique in an 80's HBO movie intro. I thinks its around the 5:30 mark.

HBO Intro: Behind the Scenes

[Kryptonite]

That is so cool!

[mweston]

 It really is pretty cool, almost puts today's computer based animations to shame. Lot of creative ideas that came out of that too.

[Kryptonite]

I like it, it's just so simple.

Other things in that video were quite impressive as well, my Aunty is really into miniatures, I should show her.

[not-bob]

 I just saw a 'making of' video of that, which got me to thinking about this other illusion.

In that illusion, the designer used two 'starburst' pictures on transparency and produced this effect.

Thanks for the feedback. Hope you enjoy it!

Robert

[rhangatoby]

(removed by author or community request)

[not-bob]

 I don't currently have Photoshop, so I'm not really able to give you exact instructions. However, here are some specific things you'll want to find out.

Making the grid
 - You'll first want to find a similar way to make a set of vertical lines that have the correct spacing. I used the 'grid' function in Gimp. A quick search in Google showed that making a custom pattern may provide the same result ( www.4webhelp.net/tutorials/graphics/scan_lines_ps.php  ) This pages does horizontal lines instead of vertical lines. 
 - However, the key to making this work is the 'offset' which shifts the grid appropriately. You may need to make the pattern 21x21 and create a pattern that is all black except the first 3 columns, then another that is all black except colums 4-6 (then 7-9, 10-12, 13-15, 16-18, 19-21) and apply those to the grid layers.
 - This is really a best guess and since I don't have Photoshop, I can't really troubleshoot further. Hopefully someone with Photoshop can confirm or correct this.

Using Layers
 - If you know how to use layers in Photoshop, the translation should be pretty straightforward.
 - If you haven't used layers much, I'm sure there are lots of excellent tutorials online.

[rhangatoby]

thank you for the reply! ill look into trying this now :)

[Spydamonky]

 o wait sorry, its gimp

[not-bob]

 Yes, Hopefully there is an equivalent way in photoshop to easily create these lines.

Gimp is available on several plat forms from http://www.gimp.org . I should have put that link in earlier.

[Spydamonky]

 Witch photoshop is this??

[frodobot]

 when you say using different offsets, which column do you change in the offset row??

[not-bob]

 Doh! Sorry, it's the horizontal offset. I change the instructions with the corrected information.

Thanks!

[frodobot]

 Lol, ok thanks.

[lalalandrus]

could you make the two files downloadable? if you already did then my browser must be mucking things up .

thanks

[not-bob]

I've added a file called 'archive.zip' and attached it to step 5. The text for this step was updated as well.

Thanks for pointing out this. Others may have the same issue.

Enjoy!