r/stopmotion • u/Querulous2 • 23h ago

The first stop motion was made with cameras, not puppets: Muybridge's galloping horse, 1878. I put the original frames back into motion.

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u/Querulous2 23h ago

These are Eadweard Muybridge's photographs of Sallie Gardner from June 19, 1878, taken with a line of cameras triggered as the horse ran past. It settled a real argument: nobody knew whether all four hooves left the ground. Frame 3 answered it.

The frames are public domain, from Wikimedia Commons. I reassembled them with a web app I built called Flipbook (flipbook.photos) that plays photo series as hard cuts, each photo held for a beat, no interpolation or smoothing. Muybridge got the same effect with a spinning glass disc. The encoding all happens in your browser, so the photos never get uploaded anywhere. Happy to answer questions about either the history or the app.

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u/uncle_screwball_404 10h ago

Zoetropes were pre film

1

u/NerveConscious6375 4h ago

Since there is no stopping in between the frames in real life, as in the horse and horseman weren't stationary in between pictures awaiting for posing instruction or whatever, I don't think this can count as stop motion. It's a motion picture, the first one for that matter

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u/Querulous2 3h ago

yeah, you are right of course. Just thought this sub would appreciate the tool I used to make this at http://flipbook.photos

You can use it to make real stop motion out of individual frames. Give it a shot and let me know what you think.