Don't mention the Code

October 12, 2006 12:19 PM

Leonardo comes to life. A stunning collection of short animations based on Leonardo da Vinci's sketchbooks. Watch a man running, a human heart beating, a tank moving, a bird flying, or a geometrical model rotating. Then visit the Universal Leonardo website to find out more about the man himself.
posted by verstegan (14 comments total)

Wow, what a great find!
posted by caddis at 12:33 PM on October 12, 2006

It's painfully slow, but seems to be exceptionally well done. It would seem I will be doing some expectant waiting today.

Thanks verstegan.
posted by quin at 12:46 PM on October 12, 2006

Years ago, Corbis put out a CD-ROM of da Vinci's notebooks and it included a lot of "multimedia" elements, one of which was Don Barnett's animations based on Da Vinci (see links in the middle of the page.)
posted by gwint at 1:17 PM on October 12, 2006

Thanks for this, beautiful site and fabulous animations.
posted by maxwelton at 1:20 PM on October 12, 2006

Thanks, verstegan! Very cool! I don't find it "painfully slow;" although some were a little slow, most of the animations have been working smoothly for me. Back to watching...thanks again.
posted by taosbat at 1:30 PM on October 12, 2006

When I was a wee bairn in art school, our animation teacher told us, "Of course the ultimate Holy Grail is to produce a full-motion animation in the manner of Old Master drawings -- but of course that [in 1971] would be impossible -- ha ha ha."
posted by Faze at 1:51 PM on October 12, 2006

Great animations, but I can't resist linking this interesting criticism of the historical view of Leonardo as inventor: Leonardo the visionary inventor? More sci-fi doodler, says Waldemar Januszczak.
posted by MetaMonkey at 2:13 PM on October 12, 2006

Those are beautiful! Thank you!
posted by owhydididoit at 2:15 PM on October 12, 2006

Excellent! In the tank animation, its interesting to note that the first animated movement is sliding the rear drive pinion back to make the wheels turn in the same direction. Scholars have argued whether this error was intentionally drawn this way to thwart dim-witted builders or was an oversight in Leonardo's part.
posted by ernie at 2:53 PM on October 12, 2006

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci. One page a day via RSS.
posted by Mr Stickfigure at 6:22 PM on October 12, 2006

Metamonkey: thanks for the link. I always thought that Leonardo was a time traveller stranded on the earth and desperately trying to recreate his world from memory of how the machines looked :)
posted by dhruva at 7:41 PM on October 12, 2006

Great post, thanks.
posted by dejah420 at 7:45 PM on October 12, 2006

And all his machines animated and brought to life.

The interactive Codex Atlanticus - digital working models of Leonardo Da Vinci's inventions

[via]
posted by infini at 8:27 PM on October 12, 2006

Terrific—thanks!
posted by languagehat at 6:57 AM on October 13, 2006