Fibonacci Zoetrope Sculptures

Stanford design instructor John Edmark has rethought the zoetrope with beautiful 3D-printed sculptures that animate when filmed in sync with a strobe light.

Explains Edmark:

These are 3-D printed sculptures designed to animate when spun under a strobe light. The placement of the appendages is determined by the same method nature uses in pinecones and sunflowers. The rotation speed is synchronized to the strobe so that one flash occurs every time the sculpture turns 137.5º—the golden angle. If you count the number of spirals on any of these sculptures you will find that they are always Fibonacci numbers.

For this video, rather than using a strobe, the camera was set to a very short shutter speed (1/4000 sec) in order to freeze the spinning sculpture.

In the early days of developing this technique, Edmark created some stop motion tests to illustrate how Fibonacci tiling works in conjunction with animation:

Check out Edmark’s Instructables post for a breakdown of his process.

Via BoingBoing, hat tip to Ave Carrillo