What Is Motion Print And How Does It Work?

Picture holding a printed card and watching it move as you tilt it without any screen or power source. It’s all just ink on a flat surface with static materials that create the illusion of movement, depth, or animation. Motion print is an established printing technology based on real science.

The method has been used in direct mail, product packaging, business cards, and in-store advertising for decades. Up till now, few people who’ve seen motion print can explain why or how it animates. But there’s no reason not to know: Once you understand how motion print works, the “magic” becomes obvious and so does what separates a great illusion from a dud.

Read on to learn more about motion print and how it works to bring static images to life.

What Is Motion Print?

Motion print is a type of lenticular effect where an animation or video clip is projected through the back of a lens. This gives the appearance that the images are moving as you change your viewing position.

It is one of several types of lenticular effects, including flip, 3D, zoom, and morphing, which all use the same basic lens technology but in different ways.

At Enduraline, the motion print process utilizes print technology and proprietary software to register artwork to the lenticules. The better the registration, the more noticeable and effective your motion prints will be. One image can be submitted per frame of a motion, or if you have an HD video, individual frames can be extracted from it as well.

How Motion Print Works

• The Lenticular Lens

The lenticular lens is everything. It’s a flat piece of plastic with tiny ridges or grooves, called lenticules that bend light so you can see an animated image on a single lenticular lens sheet.

Each lenticule in the print works as a tiny cylindrical lens. Light hitting lenticules at different angles is directed to view a particular region of the interlaced print. The viewing angle then changes, and light from other lenticules is directed to view the next region. Because each region smoothly follows the next, the brain interprets this transition as movement.

There are no electronic elements inside it. It all comes down to the physics of viewing a specific lens geometry that directs your sight into an interlacing sequence of artwork regions.

• How the Artwork Is Structured

The artwork used in motion print is not a single image. Multiple frames of an animation are split into thin vertical strips and interleaved into a single composite file. That composite is printed and bonded to the underside of the lenticular lens with precise alignment.

Besides, the motion illusion is based on as few as 3 to as many as 8 frames. Each frame represents a single step in the animation’s motion. When the lens is placed on top of it, each lenticule covers a specific set of strips from each frame. As the piece tilts, the viewer steps through the frames in order, creating the perception of continuous motion.

The quality of this motion depends almost exclusively on the alignment between the interlaced file and a lenticular lens. That alignment, also called registration, must be perfect and require very high precision, but even small defects will result in ghosting or visual distortions.

• Lens Frequency and Why It Matters

Lens frequency is the number of lenses per inch (LPI) in a lenticular material. Common lens gauges range from 10 LPI for viewing at large distances to greater than 100 LPI for close-up viewing applications.

For motion print, a 75 LPI lens is the standard. It is designed for a maximum print size of 24×36″ and lens thickness of 18 mil. This lens works well with any handheld pieces, such as postcards or business cards, where the viewer tilts the piece up and down to view.

The actual LPI used will determine how smooth the effect looks. For example, a lens with a frequency too low for a close-up piece will show visible banding. One with a frequency too high for a large-format display will not activate properly at that viewing distance.

• Ghosting and Frame Count

Ghosting is a major problem in motion print, where a faint image of one frame appears to overlap another. It happens when there is too much contrast between images or when you use too many frames. The fewer the number of frames, the more distinctly each frame will appear.

Managing ghosting begins with the art. The most vibrant colors and ink coverage will produce the cleanest movement. It is best to keep at least one background common across all frames. With a white or other very light background, you can get a ghosting effect that will let you see about 10% to 20% of both images on top of each other.

The second thing is to have stationary design elements. A lenticular image works by making it impossible for your brain or eye to focus on both of these moving images. So, if everything moves together in unison, then it is much harder on your eyes.

• Lens Orientation and Viewing Direction

Handheld pieces use a vertically oriented lens – it flips when the piece is tilted up or down. Fixed displays, such as posters, use a horizontal lens so the flip occurs as people walk past from side to side.

Getting orientation wrong at the production stage means the motion effect will not activate under normal viewing conditions, regardless of how well the artwork is built.

Conclusion

Motion print works on a principle in which the relationship between a lenticular lens and artwork sequentially interlaces with one another. At each angle, the lens refracts the light differently, and the interlaced frames, when tilted, enter the eye one after the other.

This sequence is what the brain reads as movement. Factors such as frame count, lens frequency, artwork color density, background consistency, and precise registration between the printed image and the lens will all affect the final result.

Understanding this process helps explain why a well-executed motion print stops people in their tracks, and why a poorly built one looks muddy and unclear.