Persistence of Vision
- intro -
Seen almost everywhere in our daily life, animation carries such an amazing history! One of the more interesting facts are creations made long ago to produce small bits of animation. Before we get into these early inventions, it's best that you first understand the science behind it:
Persistence of Vision plays an important role in the effectiveness of an animation film or device. It's an optical illusion that allows your eyes and brain to be tricked into thinking that the subjects in an image is moving, when in reality, it's actually just one image after another being shown in a quick pace! What happens begins in the eye; you see the image and it gets flipped onto your retina. The image is then sent through the optic nerve, and into your brain where the image is retained for about 1/20 of a second while your eyes are still seeing new images.
an excerpt from the Persistence of Vision video that explains the
science between how your eyes sees and retains the image:
science between how your eyes sees and retains the image:
To prevent the animation from looking like a bunch of random streaks, shutters are added, although they're super hard to see. Essentially, they're just black screens displayed briefly between each frame to create a smooth animation.