Screensaver (genuary day 6)

Another Windows 98 classic screensaver for this prompt. While I wanted to stick to pen plotter drawings this year, this one called for an animation, so it was a nice excuse to get the automated lightpainting rig out again.

I first generated fifty frames of the animation digitally, from a 3D scene of a camera moving through the star field of points. Then I mounted a red LED in place of the pen on my plotter, and connected the shutter release input on my camera to it as well so I can open and close the shutter (in bulb timer mode) with a gcode command at the beginning and end of every frame. Then it's just waiting for maybe half an hour while the robot rapidly moves the LED back and forth, and switching it on and off, creating traces in the long exposure photograph. Finally, those 50 photos are put together to create the two-second timelapse video.

Two-second animation, 50 frames, each exposed for ~45 seconds

#penplotter #penplotterart #screensaver #genuary #genuary6 #genuary2024 #lightpainting #longexposure #timelapse

5 months ago