Animate with Embroidery:
Beating Heart With Photo Flash
Bringing Embroidery to Life
Imagine embroidery that doesn’t just sit still but appears to move! With Wilcom’s innovative tools and techniques, you can create mesmerizing embroidery effects. We are starting with a pulsing, beating heart!
This technique combines Photo Flash embroidery with the magic of barrier-grid animation, allowing stitched designs to come alive with motion. Let’s dive in!
How Does It Work?
The Magic of Barrier-Grid Animation
Barrier-grid animation, also known as picket-fence animation, is a fascinating visual effect that creates movement through a striped transparent overlay placed over an interlaced image. As the overlay moves, different parts of the design are revealed, producing the illusion of animation.
This technique has been explored in various forms over the years. Notably, artist and inventor Rufus Butler Seder developed Scanimation, a patented application of barrier-grid animation used in his interactive books and artwork. While our approach is inspired by the same fundamental principles of optical illusion, it is a unique adaptation for embroidery, made possible through Wilcom’s Photo Flash feature.
Watch as the heart appears to beat before your eyes!
What is Photo Flash?
Photo Flash is a powerful tool in Wilcom EmbroideryStudio that automatically converts varying color densities in an image into different stitch thicknesses. Darker tones produce denser embroidery, while lighter shades create thinner stitched lines.
✔ Darker tones → Denser embroidery
✔ Lighter tones → Thinner stitched lines
Photo Flash is commonly used for photo-realistic embroidery, but in this case, we’re using it to create a beating heart animation!
Photo Flash
Settings for this Effect
Resolution: Course
Background: Light
Row Angle: 90°
Tip: Before designing, test your color density by creating a grayscale—this helps you see how Photo Flash will interpret the stitch density.
Step-by-Step: Creating the Beating Heart
Design Your Heart – Use at least four shades of color within a single design to create distinct sections that will make up the movement.
Apply Photo Flash – Import your graphic and apply Photo Flash to automatically convert your design to stitches. Use the settings listed above to achieve the stitch density distribution for the best visual effect.
Embroider the Heart – Stitch out the design. We’ve selected red thread for our heart.
Prepare the Overlay – Print stripes onto a transparent film. Ensure the stripe width matches the spacing in your design.
Bring It to Life! – Place the stripes on top of your embroidery and gently move it side to side or keep it still and shift your perspective to see the animation effect.
Photo Flash is included in EmbroideryStudio Designing.
It is also available in the Decorating level subscription plan as an exclusive feature.
What Can You Create With This Technique?
Unique embroidered artwork, animated embroidered greeting cards, interactive apparel & accessories, soft furnishings, sensory designs and more.
Bring embroidery to life in a way that’s both unexpected and mesmerizing. Explore new creative possibilities and try this unique effect for yourself!
If you plan to use this technique for commercial purposes, please be aware that Scanimation is a patented method, and a license may be required. We strongly recommend researching the relevant intellectual property rights before proceeding. Wilcom is not selling or using this technique for commercial purposes; our focus is on showcasing the creative potential of embroidery.
Get Your Free 'Beating Heart' Embroidery
As a special gift from us, download the beating heart embroidery design, graphics and grid and start experimenting with animated embroidery today!
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