It really is amazing and it's wonderfulness can't be captured on video. The Zoetrope consists of a number of Toy Story figures in time-sequence poses situated around a circle that acts as a carousel. It begins revolving and gets up to a high speed where the figures all blur together as they whiz past. Then - boom -- at the same time the Toy Story music and a strobe light begin and the figures are moving, jumping, parachuting, hopping and bouncing through the ground and Jesse the Cowgirl swings her lariat. (Click on the images for much larger pictures).
There are many YouTube clips of this but none of them do it justice, or even come close. Some are incomprehensible even. The strobe light makes it very hard for a camera to pick up the action and motion.
The best two are at these links:
A longer one
A two second clip which is the most clear.
Those will give you the idea of what the experience is like.
This is at the Animation Building at California Adventure, where the Snow White exhibit, The Fairest One of All, is. If you've got a chance, go see it.
There is another strobe-light Zoetrope like this in Japan at the the Studio Ghibli Museum. It's said that that Zoetrope of Totoro characters was so impressive to John Lassater that he had the Toy Story Zoetrope made.
The Ghibli zoetrope is at the Ghibli Museum in Japan and this link will take you to a page about the museum, with a photo of their zoetrope.
To see this sort of strobe light zoetrope is quite an experience. If you get a chance, I recommend taking a look at the Pixar Zoetrope at California Adventure.
2 comments:
not to take away from pixars feat, it should be noted that burning man artist peter hudson has been making large scale, life-sized interactive 3d stroboscopic zoetropes since 2002. four years prior to pixars entry into this field.
www.hudzo.com
This exhibit fascinated my 11 year old son like nothing beyond a video game. I'm a big Miyazaki fan, and was worried that Disney would corrupt, but they seem to be genuine fans as well...
Post a Comment