Sunday, November 05, 2006

Leonardo da Vinci's Animated Illustrations

From: Yahoo! Picks

Leonardo da Vinci's Animated Illustrations

screenshotForget da Vinci's code, his notebooks are mind-boggling enough. And now that the Victoria and Albert Museum has translated nine of his drawings into mini-movies for a major exhibit of his books, the animated results are nearly divine. A human heart throbs, a church rises from the ground, and a beam of light moves slowly across a man's face. But if you only have a few moments, don't miss:

  • "Human figures in motion"—grown men hammer, dig, jump, kneel, and sprint off the page.
  • "Warfare"—Leonardo's thoughts on the "mechanization of war" were almost spookily ahead of their time. In this short, an armored tank rolls ominously across a modern-day battlefield.
  • "Anatomy of a bird's wing"—an avian limb morphs into a human arm, which sprouts a man-made "flying machine." When we think that the amazing Mr. da Vinci thought of this sometime between 1480 and 1519, our heads start to spin.
(in Visual Arts)

No comments: