In a world where I thought I had seen everything, along comes Andrew Salomone. He has created a unique way of making the ever popular animated GIF, those looping images we see EVERYWHERE on the internet right now.
Andrew decided to go old school, and has replicated the process of using a zoetrope. A zoetrope is a device that produces the illusion of motion from a rapid succession of static pictures.
The zoetrope consists of a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. On the inner surface of the cylinder is a band with images from a set of sequenced pictures. As the cylinder spins, the user looks through the slits at the pictures across. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from simply blurring together, and the user sees a rapid succession of images, producing the illusion of motion.
The PIZZOETROPE, however, is a completely different beast. Using pizza, a record player, and a strobe light, he uses the intermittent light of the strobe and the rotation of the record pizza to create the illusion of animals moving.
Andre says:
The Pizzoetrope is a project that developed from my interest in the popularity of pizza on the internet and the way that popular culture is celebrated, especially on social networking sites like tumblr, by converting moving images into animated GIFs (including moving images of pizza).The Pizzoetrope presents the opportunity to experience your favorite GIF animations from the internets on a pizza in real life and in your stomach.
Well, that was simply rad, in that crazy sort of “I have too much time on my hands” way. If you would like to try doing this at home, get the full set of instructions here.