Animation brainstorming, again.

So I've been thinking some more about what I could do with my animation for a capstone project. Okay, actually I've been thinking a lot about it. My brain is thoroughly stormed. Anyways, I have been thinking about doing my animation normally, without any thrills, chills, and spills of new media thrown into the fray, but instead considering how it could be presented, new media-style.

My current idea involves using a zoetrope to view and/or manipulate the finished 3-d animation. For those of you who don't know what a zoetrope is (and are too lazy to click on the link I gave), it's essentially a wheel that contains about a dozen or so slits cut out of it, and inside this wheel is a series of images (usually on a strip of paper), and spinning the wheel while looking through the slits creates an animation out of the series of images. Yeah, you're probably familiar with those things, but just never realized they had a name. Invented in the early 1800s, they were the predecessors of modern film. They have many drawbacks, however, one of the largest being that the animation seen is limited to about 1 seconds long, and can only loop the images. So it might be more appropriate to think of it as the predecessor of annoying animated .gifs instead.

Anyways, back to my project. I actually have two different manifestations of generally the same idea in my head right now--one being the "easy" way, and one being the "harder, but of course better" way. I'll explain the better way in this post. I'm thinking about setting up the zoetrope so that a projection of my animation can only be viewed while looking through the zoetrope. The viewer would need to spin the zoetrope in order for the animation to play (the faster you spin the wheel, the faster the animation--and sound accompanying it--is played), and since it's being projected into the zoetrope, and is not on a strip of paper, the animation can be played through in its entirety, regardless of length. It'll be hard because, well, I don't know how I would do it. Would it even be possible, or practical, to have the animation projected into the zoetrope?

I may as well mention the "easy" way too. It's essentially identical to the above approach, except instead of it being viewed inside the zoetrope, it would probably just be viewed on a regular monitor. The viewer would still have the ability to spin the wheel, manipulating the speed of playback. The downfall with this idea, for me, is that it lacks the punch that would be achieved if the viewer had to look at it through the zoetrope. It is essentially one of the earliest forms of animation meeting one of the newest forms, all in one piece. Old collides with new. Wham! Did you feel that punch? I sure did.

I would love to hear feedback about this idea. In the meantime, I'll continue storming my brain, or braining my storm, or whatever.