How to make a zoetrope

A zoetrope is a fun, educational, and easy to make animation experiment. Spin it and you see a animation appear before your eyes. See lower down on this page for pdf files you can download for making your own zoetrope and near the bottom for making your own animations.

Zoetrope with horse animation.

Zoetrope animation of a horse.

It's basically a dark colored cylinder sitting at the top of a rod. The cylinder has an animation lining the inside near the bottom. Above that are slits which you look through to see the animation.

Spin the animation by hand while looking through the slits and you see what's shown above. If you look at the animation directly instead then all you see is a blur. The slits are what prevent the different images from blurring together.

Spinning the zoetrope by hand.

Appears blurry when looking in the wrong place.

How to make a zoetrope

To make it easy, the following are some downloadable files containing templates. The video below explains which ones to use and how to use them.

zoetrope-horse.pdf - 640KB, PDF file - a PDF file containing a zoetrope template with a horse animation (1 page)

zoetrope-blank.pdf - 2.3KB, PDF file - a PDF file containing a zoetrope template with blank space for drawing an animation (1 page)

zoetrope-disk.pdf - 1.2KB, PDF file - a PDF file containing a template of a disk the same size as a CD or DVD, in case you don't have one (1 page)

They are intended to be printed on Letter paper, which is 8.5" x 11". If you print them a different size or with extra margins then they may not fit on a CD or DVD as described below. It's also better if your zoetrope isn't too small otherwise it'll be hard to see the animation through the slits.

The following video goes through all the steps for making the zoetrope using the above files. It also demonstates how to use it and how to make your own animations using one of the above downloadable files called zoetrope-blank.pdf. In the section below, we talk about an easier way to do animations which kids of all ages can have a lot of fun with.

Making animations for your zoetrope

Zoetropes are a fun project for kids which teaches them something about animation and optics. Included here are templates for making them, one with a built-in animation and one where they can draw their own animation. Also included are strips of additional fun animations which they can color, tape into a cylinder shape and then drop into their zoetrope. And best of all, there's a page of guides which allow them to draw more strips of their own drop-in animations. The only limit is their imagination.

The need for this arose when I was asked to help teach 50 kids (8-15 years old) about zoetropes. I found a template with a built-in animation online but then came up with my own along with the idea of the drop-in animations and the ability for them to create their own. Needless to say, the kids had a lot of fun.

zoetrope-animations.pdf - 52KB, PDF file - a PDF file containing two pages of strips of animations for use in your zoetrope (2 pages)

zoetrope-guides.pdf - 27KB, PDF file - a PDF file containing guides which is a page of blank strips for drawing in your own animations (1 page)

IMPORTANT: The templates are designed for Letter sized paper (8.5" x 11").