Animation Disc

Sebastijan Skoko
11-23-14
Animation Disc Finale
Mr. Lieb
MSI

Animation Disc Finale

For my animation disc, I took inspiration from the leaping frog example, made by the professionals over at Bose. The first step I took in creating my disc on SketchUp was creating the disc itself. Next, I had to divide the disc into eight sectors, each sector containing a perfect circle that would serve as a landing pad. The last step of the set up was to draw a square in the center of the circle so that it would be able to sit on the spinning apparatus. Up until this point everything was quite easy. 

The next step, illustrating the figures in a way that would portray them in a way that gives the illusion the figure was jumping from one landing pad to the next, however, was not as simple. The first figure that I made was standing still. The second figure was loading to jump, I illustrated this by bending his knees. The third figure is beginning his jump by leaning toward the next landing pad. The fourth figure is stretching his body, his legs in particular, in order to touch down on the next pad. The fifth figure is finally touching down on the next pad, his legs still spread. The sixth figure has his whole body touching the next pad. The seventh, and last, figure is bracing himself after landing his jump, before standing up loading and jumping again in an on-going cycle. If you noticed, I mentioned that there were eight sectors, yet I only mentioned seven figures. This is because in order to capture the illusion of the figure traveling point a to point b, there has to be one less figure than pad. 

While fun, the process of making a working animation disc had its challenges as well. The first challenge came in making the figures. It was hard to figure out the placement of the figures that would result in one less than the amount of pads. The second minor difficulty was actually laser cutting the disc. When my design was complete, the next step was to actually use the laser cutter. There were two main challenges with this. The first challenge that came with this was that I had to find a time to cut. While nobody is at fault here, between 51 other students, only one laser cutter and two teachers, finding a time to cut was very difficult. The next challenge with cutting was using the software that determines what type of cut would go with which line. Some cuts would only engrave a line while others cut through the cardboard. The last challenge came with the materials. The cardboard was very porous and thus wind blew the disc and it didn't work. This challenge was messing with many people's discs until somebody came up with a solution, taping the outside of the disc. The tape placed on the outer ring of the disc made it so that the air was not able to enter through the holes on the side of the disc. In the end, the process of making a working animation disc was difficult yet fun and educational. 

Below I have attached a link to the video clip of my disc. 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7KNJz4mwL8edmF3YXpUYWtTTmc&authuser=1