Anyway, hope you get some ideas and tips from the video. Some parts are speeded up.

NOTE: This is the wheel you can use to make heart shapes for Valentines! See this post for details.

The post The Oval Wheel – Video appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

Technical details: I scanned the image and cropped it to be square and centered. I duplicated the first layer and rotated it one degree, duplicated the new layer, rotated, and repeated until I had 72 layers. There are 360 degrees in a circle, and since there are 5 vanes in the pinwheel, and 360 ÷ 5 = 72, I needed 72 layers to make it turn 1/5th of the way around.

In the Animation window, I made each layer start one frame later than the previous one. It looked like a staircase when I was done.

The animation goes 1/5 of the way around, then repeats infinitely, so it only appears to spin all the way around. Each layer is a frame and it runs at a standard 30 frames per second, which looks smooth to the eye.

Because it’s hand-drawn and not totally perfect, there’s a bit of a jump at the juncture, which seems to have a lot to do with how Photoshop rendered the rotated layers, as well as the fact that the image is hand-drawn and not perfect.

Staring at the pinwheel then looking away at the text makes the text seem to spin – for me, anyway.

The post Pinwheel GIF animation appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

You can use this technique with other wheel and ring combinations. It works best with patterns of 8 points or less. Try these variations:

• Instead of holes 1-2-3-4-5-6 etc., try 1-3-5-7-9-11 etc.
• Instead of moving the wheel right 2 teeth, move it over just 1 tooth. Or move it to the left instead of to the right.
• Play with different color combinations. Try a gradient effect if you have pens in different greens and blues. Or use the colors of the rainbow. Or your favorite colors in some other combination.

Add your ideas in the comments below.

The post New video: Pinwheel Design with Ring 150/105 and Wheel 84 appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.