Scanimation Book ... Cool for Kids and Adults

There's never before been a book like Gallop! Employing a patented new technology called Scanimation, each page is a marvel that brings animals, along with one shining star, to life with art that literally moves. It's impossible not to flip the page, and flip it again, and again, and again.

A first book of motion for kids, it shows a horse in full gallop and a turtle swimming up the page. A dog runs, a cat springs, an eagle soars, and a butterfly flutters. Created by Rufus Butler Seder, an inventor, artist, and filmmaker fascinated by antique optical toys, Scanimation is a state-of-the-art six-phase animation process that combines the "persistence of vision" principle with a striped acetate overlay to give the illusion of movement. It harkens back to the old magical days of the kinetoscope, and the effect is astonishing, like a Muybridge photo series springing into action—or, in terms kids can relate to, like a video without a screen. Complementing the art is a delightful rhyming text full of simple questions and fun, nonsense replies: Can you gallop like a horse? giddyup-a-loo! Can you strut like a rooster? cock-a-doodle-doo!

Every child who opens the book will be amazed—and so will every parent.


Check this page out for an interactive perspective on SCANIMATION

HOW DO THEY WORK?
These elegant little movie machines rival the classic motion picture toys of more than a century ago. Contrary to popular belief, they're not holograms. Surprisingly, the technology, in one form or another, has been around for centuries!

Briefly explained, the technique combines parallax perception (your angle of view) with moiré-style multiple-line patterns to create the illusion of motion. When a scrambled image layer is viewed through a striped decoder layer, a series of sequential pictures is revealed to your eye, and your brain links this succession of images together, creating the illusion of motion.

If this still sounds a little complicated, that's because it is! Half the fun is seeing these optical wonders in action. The other half is trying to figure out what makes them go!