Amazingly Creative 3D Light Painting Technique Using an iPad

This video will blow your mind. We’ve all seen light-painting photos and stop-motion animations created with those photos, but marketing agency Dentsu London figured out how to take light painting a step further using an iPad.

By using all sorts of crazy computer modeling and animation techniques, they figured out how to create 3D light-paintings by playing a “CAT-scan” style animation on the iPad while sweeping the iPad through the air. By repeatedly doing this kind of sweeping with various 3D models, they were able to create 3D light painting stop-motion animations. Here’s how they explain it:

We use photographic and animation techniques that were developed to draw moving 3-dimensional typography and objects with an iPad. In dark environments, we play movies on the surface of the iPad that extrude 3-d light forms as they move through the exposure. Multiple exposures with slightly different movies make up the stop-frame animation.

Prepare to be amazed.