Blackwing Vol. 7 pencil is a tribute to animation and how it revolutionized the way we tell and view stories.

From the earliest recorded cave paintings in France dating back over 30,000 years to becoming a sacred Saturday morning ritual across TV screens, drawing has been a key way for us to communicate with one another and with the world around us. Animation has been used for education and entertainment in many forms from the Magic Lantern used in the 16th century to mastering computer-generated imagery in the 21st.

Animation itself operates as an optical illusion that uses a series of images shown in quick succession that tricks our brains into seeing a continuous motion picture. The human eye can only process up to 12 individual frames per second. The earliest analog animation devices explored different ways to create this illusion.

The Blackwing Vol. 7 is inspired by this analog evolution in storytelling and utilizes an animation trick called Picket-Fence or Barrier-Grid popularized in the 19th and 20th century. This animation-type is created by taking illustrated frames and turning them into an interlaced pattern that looks like a series of lines when seen with the naked eye, but turns into an animated design when viewed with a striped overlay.

12 Pencils