Month: March 2012

Wedding Cake-shaped Zoetrope

Wedding Cake-shaped Zoetrope

Youtube user atomikqbert posted this video of Aaron Copland’s, “Going Up For Seconds,” a wedding cake-shaped zoetrope animation (although, I think this may technically be a zoopraxiscope?). For this zoetrope, animation is captured using a camera with progressive scan. I wanted to play up the tiered cake shape of the zoetrope, so I made it […]

How-To: Low-Cost Gyroscopic Camera Stabilizer

How-To: Low-Cost Gyroscopic Camera Stabilizer

DIY physics guru David Prutchi coveted one of the expensive professional-grade gyroscopic camera stabilizers made by Kenyon Laboratories. “These devices,” he observes, “don’t seem to have changed much since Kenyon’s founder filed the following two patents in the 50′s: US2811042, US2570130.” Referencing those patents, David reverse-engineered the basic geometry of the Kenyon stabilizer using a pair of inexpensive precision gyroscopes from Glenn Turner of gyroscopes.com.