It strikes me that coin animation on the Web is an underutilized tool, something that could be very useful. One use would be to show a coin at different angles in the light, just as it looks in person as you rotate it in your hand. I've seen this on the Web, just not very often. Another use would be to show a coin morphing into another coin, an application that could be interesting with a U.S. series with significant variations, such as large cents from matron head though young head. This is more relevant for ancient coins, which are often characterized by much larger variations. Athenian Owls are one such example, metamorphosed over a period of five hundred years during the half millennium before the birth of Christ. John Hooker and Carin Perron put together an animation of the transition of these Athenian Owls, here: http://www.writer2001.com/athena.htm Inspired by this, I just experimented with creating three animations, using three different techniques, of a Thasos/Thracian tetradrachm, which metamorphosed over a shorter period of time, from about 168 BC to about 31 BC, but changed into a wildly abstract rendition of the original. Using two coins, an original Thasos tetradrachm and a wildly abstract Thracian tetradrachm, I first morphed the JPEG images from one to another, creating six intermediate-stage JPEG images, using a program called Magic Morph. Then I outputted the results into three different formats -- JavaScript animation, Flash animation, and AVI clip. I was able to do the latter two using Magic Morph. To do the JavaScript animation, I followed instructions from a magazine article I read on the Web. The most appropriate technique seems to be a JavaScript animation. It took up one-third the server space, and bandwidth, of the Flash animation and one-ninth the AVI clip without losing any utility. Here's the page that resulted from this: http://rg.ancients.info/thracetets/morph.html My main page for these coins is here: http://rg.ancients.info/thracetets Another use that coin animation is sometimes put to on the Web, and in some eBay auctions, is letting viewers flip a coin by running your mouse pointer over it. But this strikes me as being more gimmicky than anything else in that you can easily see both sides of a coin right next to each other without any fancy bells and whistles.
Other than the historical aspect of seeing how a coin changes over the years - I think there is a better purpose that could be served. I have long considered why someone has not yet come up with a simple method or program for simply viewing a coin. Imagine if you will a program that would allow you to view a gem coin as it is slowly rotated in the light. The luster would jump out at you. And flaw or detail would be noticeable. Toning in all its variations and color would be visible. Now THAT - would be something !
That's exactly what this method can do. All you need to do is take a picture of a coin from several different angles, maybe four or five. You could do this by slightly raising the surface on which the coin sits, moving this raised spot around. This would simulate moving the coin in your hand when you view it in person. Then you'd need to create a little JavaScript, such as the one I did. Anyone is welcome to reuse the code I put together, substituting the names of your files for the names of mine (tet00.jpg, etc.)
I have to disargee with the scrollover pictures,I use them on my own website in fact,but it's not something I would consider animation.Rather it's just a better way to post a single coin. Here's a exaple of one of my pages... http://lazarusone.tripod.com/misericordia.html Like I said,it's not animated in the classic sence,just two jpegs in one frame. ~ Jim
