Gallop

Having read a bit about this new “scanimation” technology, I was excited to see what it was and how it worked. I have to say: I’m a little disappointed. It’s sort of cool, but not REALLY cool, and not exactly revolutionary jump beyond the old line-art animation I remember from Spy versus Spy–you know, the one where you put your thumb on the corner of the page and let the pages flip quickly by to create animation. Actually, scanimation feels closer to what you get with 3D images, where you rock the page back and forth to make the picture “move.” Cool for a moment or two, but then… 

In Gallop, Rufus Butler Seder puts a separate “scanimation” image on each spread, with a sort of superfluous story running through the book to link the images together. There’s a running horse, a running dog, a running chicken, a flying bird, etc.–you get the idea.

My kids had pretty much the same reaction: Gallop was cool for a few minutes when I first brought it home, but they had forgotten about it by bedtime and they never mentioned it again. 

And I thought it would be such a hit! Seder has brought out a follow-up called Swing plus at least one spin-off product, some individual scanimation cards based on Gallop images. I’m going to pass.