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Photo credit: Sara Krulwich for The New York Times

I guess this could be part 2 to the previous Pixar exhibit post I made.

At the Pixar: 20 Years of Animation exhibit, there was this spectacular installation called the zoetrope. This particular zoetrope installation featured characters from Toy Story I & II and it was by far my favorite thing at the exhibit.

In fact, I liked it so much that I went and saw it three times (which isn’t that crazy when you know that the installation runs for only about 3 minutes or so.

Anyway, maybe Pixar can describe it better in their own words:

The Media Gallery also houses a kinetic installation known as the zoetrope, an early cinema device that created the optical illusion of static images in motion. The three-dimensional Toy Story Zoetrope was created by Pixar artists especially for this exhibition. The 7′ (high) x 12′ (diameter) zoetrope, which is cycled to synchronize with the artscape installation, features characters from both Toy Story films and uses a series of strobe lights to make the Toy Story characters Buzz, Woody, Wheezy, and others revolve around a central spindle, out of which hordes of toy soldiers parachute down.

Basically, what the zoetrope does is make 3D objects seem like they are animated in real life. Imagine yourself IN the world of Toy Story with all of the toys coming “alive” around you — that’s what the Pixar Toy Story Zoetrope is like. It is simply amazing to watch.

From my limited knowledge, this is how I think the zoetrope works: It “animates” the characters by spinning them at a specific speed on a large round table. Once the table is spinning at optimal speed, strobe lights begin to flicker at another specific rate. Together, the strobe lights and the spinning table present the illusion that the toys are alive because our eyes only see the instance of what is illuminated [extremely] temporarily by the flashing strobes.

It’s harder for me to explain, but if you want to see it in action, you can do so by downloading this 3-second looping QT video of the Toy Story Zoetrope provided by the VNOG Blog (the YouTube version is here but it sucks because it’s bad quality and it doesn’t automatically loop like the QT one does — just download the 4MB QT that’s linked).
Some more info can be found at the Luxo blog.