This project was made in collaboration with @gipugsart (INSTAGRAM) for our History of Animation class. We chose to bring a modern twist to the phenakistoscope and decided to animate a flower dancing in the style of John Hubley with spider webs moving out from the center.

After splitting our circular “disk” into 8 pieces, we sketched out our 8 frame animation. Gianna worked on the flower animations whereas I worked on the web portion. We kept the slits as a nod to the original design of the phenakistoscope, and tried to keep the colors of the older, more traditional styles.

After placing the frames in the correct spot in Photoshop so they would overlap when the disk is spun, we colored the flower and brought it into Adobe Premiere to spin it at just the right frame rate so that the animation worked (24 fps on 2s). So instead of spinning our phenakistoscope in front of a mirror, we made the device digitally and spun it digitally as well to make it for the 21st century.