Remember when you thought about how to draw a jumping cat? Once you have the frames drawn, the next question is—how do you turn them into a cartoon? Before cameras and televisions, one way to do this was by using a praxinoscope, a device that spun a series of images to create an animation.
You’ll get to assemble one too! But before you start, there’s one more important thing you need to learn: Revolutions Per Minute (RPM).
Imagine the hand of a clock—it moves 60 steps in one minute to make a full rotation around its axis. This means its RPM value is 1 RPM.
How fast should the mechanism spin for smooth animation?
If you want the cat’s motion to look smooth and display images 12 times per second (12 FPS), you need to calculate how quickly the mechanism must rotate:
(12 FPS * 60 seconds) / 12 frames = 60 RPM.
This means the mechanism needs to spin 60 times per minute for your cat to jump beautifully and smoothly!