The Thaumatrope

A Thaumatrope is a disk with a picture on each side and attached to two pieces of string. When the strings are twirled quickly between the fingers the two pictures appear to blend into one due to the persistence of vision. Persistence of vision is when the retina retains an image for a brief split-second after the image was actually seen, and lends itself to animation by fostering the illusion of motion when we view images in closely-timed sequence to one another. We don't notice the fractional skips between images because that persistence fills in the momentary gap to make the motion seem seamless. Thaumatropes are recognised as important antecedents of cinematography and in particular of animation




Here is the Thaumatrope I have made myself I watched the tutorial below on YouTube to help me :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzFiuswzIa4

http://animation.about.com/od/glossaryofterms/g/pervision_def.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaumatrope

http://www.aranpa.com/thaumatrope.htm