SKILLS: Fabrication | Illustrator | Experience Design | Laser Cutting | Paper Prototyping

SUMMARY: PressPlay is novel way of displaying analog animation in the form of a business card. A striped acetate overlay is superimposed on an altered set of images and then moved from side to side to create the illusion of movement.

Project Background: I came across a book called Gallop! at the MOMA store, which showcased a set of scanimations. This caught my eye for its simplicity and form. I figured out how to create the animations and promptly created a set of business cards to show off the technique

Team and your role: This was a solo project

The Work: The first thing to do is know how many frames you need in your animation. In my trials, anything over 6 frames becomes less visible and the illusion is lost. I created my image frames, first in illustrator and then subsequently I wrote a sketch in processing to automate the process, The video to the right shows my first printout. I made a few tweaks after that to finalize the form. I lasercut the card holder and decided to add a second animation (PacMan) on the back of the card. The number of frames corresponds with the width of the black bars and the slits. For example if you only wanted four frames, the width of the black bar would be three times the width of the slit.

What You Would Have Done Differently: I would have made the whole business card self contained. Although i'd lose the ability to swap in more animations and utilize the back of the business card for a second animation, having less parts limits the risk of losing any portion of the card.