Like any kid who ever opened up the right box of Cracker Jack, I have always loved those nifty lenticular doodads that change the image depending on the angle at which you are looking at it. Dave Spencer of instructables.com apparently opened the same boxes, and he’s written up a report of how he assembled his own lenticular image, using stills from Fight Club.

His process for finding and constructing his chosen images was pretty interesting; he chose to make two panoramic images from seperate panning shots from the film, as well as separate images of the characters from other scenes. They’ve been beautifully stitched together in Fireworks, which reminded me of the work done by NYC artist Damian Loeb, who follows a similar process in his studies for his hyper-realistic paintings.

I wish Spencer had gone into greater detail on the software that interlaced his images. Like, which one he used, what the interlacing measurements were, and how they correspond to the lenticular sheets that he received from the (nameless) California distributor. I think that would have been useful, as would a URL for said distributor. And which grade of lenticular sheet did he use? (They seem to come in 30, 40, and 60 lines per inch.)

One page I’ve since come across that very neatly explains how this low grade yet super cool tech works was here: www.lenstar.org/how/plastic.htm

He does delve a little too much into how he took what seems like a lot of trouble to frame the final product, which seems a bit self-indulgent, but he apparently went to some trouble in the building, so good for him. I want more about how to properly align the lenticular sheet to the image, and I’ll find my own way to mount the final product.

Still, it’s food for thought. I like to make all my holiday presents. For the past few years I’ve been making decoupaged serving trays and boxes and such. This year I think I’ll make lenticular images and decoupage the frames in which they’ll be mounted. Sounds like a lot of work, I guess I’d better get started soon, starting with where to find the best deal on lenticular sheets and interlacing software. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

Lenticular (changes when you tilt) movie art [instructables.com]