Did you ever doodle in the corners of your notebooks, slyly leaning toward your friend and flipping the pages to show them a grotesque stick figure version of your teacher being squashed by a bouncing ball, or being eaten by a shark?
Zoetrope’s work much the same way. And while they are usually reserved for ancient exhibits about motion and illustraion in children’s museums, the Goldieblox and the Movie Machine construction set repurposes the simple pre-animation machine to spark the creativity of future filmmakers.
The GoldieBlox constructible line is designed to shake up traditional gender roles by getting young girls interested in STEM concepts and traditionally male-oriented career paths, such as engineering and construction. The kits are practical and functional, and designed to continue to spark creativity and innovation after they are assembled rather than just played with. The pieces are also compatible with other GoldieBlox sets, letting kids invent their own machines and gizmos to preform any number of tasks.
In the included book—which, as in other GoldieBlox kits, doubles as a construction manual—Goldie and her friends try to prevent the Bloxtown Film Festival from being cancelled. They brainstorm a handful of ideas, such as streaming the films online or acting out the movies themselves, before realizing that creating a zoetrope would save the day! That is, if the festival featured one-second films. The story features two of Goldie’s new friends, Li Gravity and Valentina Voltz, the series’ first male and Latina characters, and reinforces problem-solving skills, teamwork, and creative expression in all kids.
The kit also includes three movie packs, as well as a blank set for kids to customize once they get the hang of the zoetrope’s movie magic. Each pack features one of Goldie’s friends on easy-to-tear cards—Valentina jams on the drums, Li preforms an ollie with his skateboard, and Ruby teaches her robot to wave hello—which slide easily into the zoetrope’s movie hoop. The storybook includes a tutorial that guides kids through the stages of creating their own quick and simple zoetrope designs, such as a bouncing ball, a pendulum, or a wave until they’re ready to break out on their own with original ideas.
Tech-savvy kids can also test out the Goldieblox and the Movie Machine app, available for free on iOS devices. The app lets users create their own movies using drawing, sticker, and paint tools. Each slide shows a faded overlay of the slide previous, helping kids to see where they left off in the movie’s progress and to avoid gaps or large changes between slides. Kids can even create animations with their own images, taken with their device’s camera. When they’ve finished, kids can test their mini movies and print them directly from the app to use in the zoetrope, or save them as GIF files, which can be emailed or uploaded across the Internet.
Watch out, filmmakers. The future of movies—and construction, and engineering, and whatever else girls want to do—is right around the corner.
