Sand Animation
砂アニメーション / 1960s– / Technique / Animation Techniques
Sand animation moves grains across a light table frame by frame. Thickness controls transmitted light from amber to black, and every contour continually breaks apart as its particles become the next image.
Transmitted tone ranging from amber to black by sand thickness / Finger-drawn grooves and pushed granular edges / The next image emerging from traces swept out of the last / Uneven particles scattering around contours
Dictionary entry
- Best used for
- Telling fable, dream or natural cycle through images that form and vanish in one field · Adding hand-paced granular abstraction to music or spoken narration
- Type
- Draw only short words as broad grooves or density changes, placing longer reading in separate subtitles.
- Composition
- Keep the light table broadly open and gather dark sand at the focus. Choose one part of each image to carry into the next.
- Material
- Spread even-grained sand thinly over transmitted light, build darkness by depth, and record each move made by finger, brush or card.
- Caution
- Sand-colored noise or footage of a finished sand picture is not the technique. Grain thickness, transmitted light and physical redistribution must form every frame.
- Further study
- Caroline Leaf / Backlit sand under the camera / The Owl Who Married a Goose
Related entries
- Paint-on-Glass Animation (ペイント・オン・グラス・アニメーション)Same Animation Techniques lineage.Compare Sand Animation and Paint-on-Glass Animation
- Pinscreen Animation (ピンスクリーン・アニメーション)Same Animation Techniques lineage.Compare Sand Animation and Pinscreen Animation
More from Animation Techniques
Continue through styles in the same Animation Techniques family, prioritised by shared effects.
- Cel Animation (セル・アニメーション)Shared effects: Intimacy / Nostalgia.
- Stop Motion (ストップモーション)Shared effects: Intimacy / Nostalgia.
- Rotoscope (ロトスコープ)Shared effects: Intimacy / Nostalgia.
Browse all Animation Techniques entries
Cite this entry
The dictionary is meant to be linked to. Take whichever form fits where you are writing.
- Link
- https://indexstyle.org/styles/sand-animation
- Markdown
- [Sand Animation — IndexStyle](https://indexstyle.org/styles/sand-animation)
- HTML
- <a href="https://indexstyle.org/styles/sand-animation">Sand Animation — IndexStyle</a>