Our Christmas [Card] Story; 2008

This year, our Holiday greeting cards were custom designed Early Cinema Phenakistoscopes, Motion Picture Illusion Toys {circa 1833}.

Before film, before cameras, inventors discovered that movement could be generated optically from a series of drawn static images. I've always been interested in early cinema and techniques of animation that can be made without electricity or even photography. I thought a Phenakistoscope would be an ideal holiday card, given our vintage toy theme from year to year.

*Viewing instructions that accompanied the wheel and spindle: Gently thread the paper image wheel, art facing outward, onto the wooden spindle included. View the little Elf Puppet dancing & juggling for you by spinning the wheel with one hand while looking through the blur of holes in the wheel from behind hold the spindle,(about a foot from your face) making sure the face of the wheel is well illuminated, up to any mirror.

The final animation was made in Adobe Photoshop from a scan of a paper elf puppet (our 2006 handmade cards). The art was printed on cardstock by a digital printing service overnight.

The amazing laser cutting was done by friend and reader Mark Fullerton of Precision Graphic Systems, Inc.. Mark took a great deal of care on this for me and turned the job around overnight, thus saving our Christmas. Thanks, Mark and Angela!


I started by downloading vintage Phenakistoscope wheels from the internet to understand how they worked. It was a thrill when I discovered the art actually did animate when the drawings were viewed from behind the wheel by a reflection into a mirror! I also found some tips for this sort of limited animation from a book I bought in New York years ago called, "Making 'Movies' Without a Camera"; by Lafe Locke. It was clear the animation needed to be made to be a perfect unending loop, for example.

An early great challenge of the project was creating my own dieline for the wheel and its precise circular series of holes without any ability to do math. (see lower left) I may be the only person right now who could create this in a page layout program that doesn't space and align items in a circle automatically.

Early attempts (on crazy tight timeline with the holiday approaching fast) were epic fails. The animations I initially made were way too subtle for a Phenakistoscope and I quickly learned that the action needed to be more simple and reduced in size in order to fit more "frames" on the wheel.


(Photos will click through to larger versions on Flickr.)
I used store-bought miniature toy wheels and banister spindles. One stem on an end of each spindle needed to be sawn off and sanded smooth. Each part was them polished with only natural Eco-House pure Linseed primer oil and liquid Beeswax.

The colors of part sets needed to be matched up and then attached together with brass washers and decorative upholstery tacks, that were dotted with red oil-based paint pen dots on each center. Festive festive.


(Photos will click through to larger versions on Flickr.)
I made 100 wooden spindles for recipients to spin their Phenakistoscopes on, running out of parts a couple times.

The project was so squeezed by time I literally spent a crucial day in my car waiting for the laser cut disks to arrive via FedEx so I could tie on a spindle and numbered instructional tag with a ribbon, tuck them into expandable cd mailers and dash them to the nearest late night
Post Office.

The first batch went out last Thursday to the people furthest away from Los Angeles. Two more large batches were shipped out on Friday and Saturday.

I've heard from people as far away as Hawaii but you may not have received yours yet, especially if in the super slow UK. Whenever it arrives to you I hope it finds you in good health and cheer.

It was a lot of fun to put the pretty sets into their envelopes. Paul and I were thrilled with this years' results and wish you all a merry holiday.


Here's how they look in action! (Photos will click through to larger versions on Flickr.)

(PS: If you are not on our Christmas card list, the printer over printed about 10 wheels, that are a hair off center in their laser cutting but still work. Let me know if you'd like a wheel and a tag mailed to you to check out in person.)

Merry Christmas to All!