Animated discs are weird things. Even if you’ve come from an animation or design background, they don’t always behave intuitively.

This page is a reference to help you get started with designing your own animated discs, sometimes referred to as phenakistoscopes, zoetropes, stroboscopic discs etc.

Treat it as a living document of experiments and hints rather than a definitive set of rules. I’ll add to and modify it over time.

Angular Motion

Alternate names: left/right movement, horizontal translation

To make an object move around the circumference of the disc, you need to have more or fewer frames than the base number of frames of the disc.

You can use this principle to have objects appear to travel in different directions around the circumference of the disc.

Parallax

Alternate names: The illusion of depth

Combine objects of various speeds or directions to create parallax and depth.

Discontinuous vs Looping Motion

Animated discs are inherently looping. There’s no real sense of a beginning or end like in a video clip. This means that if you have a sequence or motion that doesn’t resolve within the number of frames of the disc, you will notice a jump or a cut.