Moving Pictures

This weekend I took my first vacation in about a year. Where did I go? Lubbock, Texas. You may snicker, but you really don't know what you're missing. Flat can be fabulous!

Anyway, I brought a gift for a friend's baby, a book called Gallop! This book is ingenious! It's been out for a while, but none of my friends in Lubbock had seen it before. I realized that a normal person wouldn't really pick this book up. Unless you have kids. What can I say, I like picture books.

Why is Gallop! so special that I made my friend stop the car to look at it? The pictures move! I know, moving pictures, what a concept. How does this work, you say? It's called scanimation, and it's really hard to wrap your head around. You see, as you open each page, the image is pulled behind a series of black bars. The bars block parts of the image, so you only see certain lines at a time. This is what a naked image looks like.


But what you actually see as you open and close the page is a cat running. Your eye connects the image shown between the bars and recognizes a cat, and as different lines show through the bars, the cat moves. Here to better explain his creation is Rufus Butler Seder, himself.



When you understand it, this technology (is that the word?) is actually so simple! I just want to use it on something! Alas, there is a patent. I'm telling you, children's books is where it's at. The next time you see Gallop! or Swing!, pick them up! They do things!