Friday, October 7, 2016

Cool Book Alert! - Scanimation

Eye-Catching
We were walking through the foyer of my daughter's preschool when I skidded to a stop. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a picture book atop a shelf. I had to pick it up and look. What I found inside the cover of "Gallup!" was a must-share.

Optical Illusions
The book was titled "Gallup!" but it was the subtitle that made me feel curious: "A Scanimation Picture Book."

After I picked it up and paged through it I called my kids over. "Look at this!" They both loved it. The publisher put together a short video so you can kind of see what flipping the pages is like. However, it pales in comparison to the actual experience of holding it in your hands.

"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."



An Up-close Look at Scanimation
Rufus Butler Seder is an artist in the field of optical illusion. He has made installations for museums as well as single tiles for personal collections. Given his expertise in the field, these books are a drop in the bucket to enjoy his work. (8" tiles run $500, the picture books are less than $15.)

When I looked deeper into the Scanimation technology, I found this YouTube video. It is a better representation of the way the optical illusions are created for the books.



Start Your Scanimation Collection 
You can snag Gallup! on Amazon or at Fat Brain Toys. But don't feel limited to just that one. If you start at Seder's Amazon page, you will see that there are other books with popular themes like Star Wars, Santa, and The Wizard of Oz.





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