Animating the Engines
Here's a look at how I made the engine animations on these pages. First I took 16 "stop motion" pictures with my digital camera. I set the engine's crank to 22.5 degrees and took the first picture. Then I moved the crank to 45 degrees and took the second picture. The third picture was snapped at 67.5 degrees and so on and so on until the 16th picture was snapped at 360 degrees. The crank angles aren't too critical. I just eyeballed them and they came out fine. What is critical is that the camera and engine base must not be moved between pictures. Set up on a solid surface and don't touch anything but the crank and the shutter button. I'd recommend taking the pictures outdoors on an overcast day so the 16 exposures are even and consistent.
After I had my 16 pictures I compiled them into a .gif animation using Jasc Animation Shop 3.1. This was the easiest part of the process. Using the Animation Wizard tool my .gif animations were created with just a couple of mouse clicks and a few seconds. There are other animation software products that do the same thing just as easily.
