Why an App?

Because an Interactive 3D Zoetrope does so much more than start and stop

The Always Amazing Strobe Toggle The App provides separate speed and strobe control. For this video we started the animation without the strobes, and told Ana to switch the strobes on. Ana has a good poker-face, she is hard to impress, but her jaw dropped when she turned the strobes on the first time. That moment, when a spinning blur just bursts into life, always creates emotion. With the strobes on/off toggle in the app these moments are on tap.

STEM: Your Eyes are Deceiving you, Explore How* Remember playing with Flip-Books as a kid, did you try to flip the pages slowly so you could wrap your head around the effect? With the App, precise speed control is child’s play. Slow the animation to see and feel the moment when the Persistence of Vision effect breaks down. Then speed it up for the reverse transition of blinking freeze-frames coming to life.

Sync with a Camera at 24, 25, 30 fps and Share Video* The animation speed control also lets you synchronise the animation with a camera at precisely 24/25 or 30 frames per second so you can share high quality video on social media or your website.

Rainbow Zoetropes The strobes are RGB and the app lets you play with 6 different colours. On neutral toned animations like the Bone Urchin it adds an extra dimension. There’s also a disco mode that smoothly, randomly, and continuously cycles through the colour space.

Animators/Artists: Configure Strobe Timing for your own Animations Using the App you can adjust the strobe timing to match animations with different loop sizes. You can make loops as long as you like, and as short as 16 frames (Frogs and Fish are 20). Smaller loop sizes decrease your maximum animation speed since the motors have to spin faster for a given frame rate, e.g. a 12 frame loop would have a maximum animation speed of 22 frames per second.

* available on Walnut and Birch machines with integrated variable speed motors, not turntable kit machines

Get the App

Search “4-Mation” in the Apple App store and Google Play Store – or use the direct links below.

Apple App Store link : 4-Mation for iOS

Google Play Store link: 4-Mation for Android

iOS App Video: setup and covers basic functionality iOS App

Android App Video: setup and discusses more advanced functionality, including public display setup Android App