Make a Zoetrope at Home

Materials you'll need

• 1 cardboard box (medium-sized, for cutting)
• White copy paper (1 strip for the animation)
• Scissors
• Pencil
• Markers or colored pencils
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks
• Toothpicks
• 1 wooden skewer or thin dowel
• 1 metal washer
• Tape
• A bright overhead light source

 

Step-by-step tutorial

Step 1: Grab a cardboard box. Then cut a long rectangular strip from the side of the box. This will become the spinning drum of your zoetrope.

Step 2: Use a pencil to mark 13 evenly spaced lines along the length of the strip, then cut a slit at each mark from the top edge down about halfway. These 13 slits are the viewing windows your eyes will look through.

Step 3: Bend the strip into a circle and connect the two ends together with toothpicks. The slits should line up evenly around the top. Secure the join with hot glue or tape.

Step 4: Cut a circle of cardboard to fit the bottom of your drum, with a small hole punched in the center. Glue it inside the drum as the base. Then cut a small square and circle of cardboard. Then get your wooden skewer and a metal washer.

Step 5: Glue the square cardboard piece over the center hole on top of the base. Poke a skewer through the circle cardboard piece and hot glue a washer to one side. 

Step 6: Poke the skewer up through the bottom of the drum, through the reinforcing square, so it sticks out the top. 

Step 7: Cut a long strip of white paper the same height and length as the inside of your drum. Use pencil to lightly mark 13 evenly spaced sections — one for each slit. In each section, draw one frame of your animation. Each drawing should be just slightly different from the one before it (a bouncing ball, a changing shape, a growing object).

Step 8: Curl the paper strip into a loop and tape the ends together. Drop it inside the drum so your drawings face inward and each frame lines up with a slit.

Step 9: Take your zoetrope into a darker room and hold it under a bright overhead light. Spin the drum using the skewer as an axle, then look through the slits at the drawings on the inside — and watch your still pictures come to life!

Learn more

What you built is called a zoetrope — an early animation machine first invented in the 1800s. When it spins, the slits in the drum act like a strobe light, giving your eyes a quick flash of each drawing one at a time. Your brain holds onto each image for a tiny fraction of a second. That's called persistence of vision. Before that memory fades, the next slightly-different drawing flashes in, and your brain fills in the motion between them. The result? Still pictures that look alive. It's the same basic magic that makes movies work today.