The Old New World is a photo-based animation project by photographer and animator Alexey Zakharov of Moscow, Russia was made using 1900s photos of US cities New York, Boston, Detroit, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. Zakharov got the images from Shorpy, a site with over 6,000 fine art prints available for framing. The main part of the video was apparently made “with camera projection based on photos,” according to Zakharov, offering a “travel back in time with a little steampunk time machine.” According to the Daily Mail:
‘I came up with the idea for a full retro-photoanimation project after visiting the Shorpy site,’ Zakharov told DailyMail.com.
‘This is astonishing place with tons of reconstructed hi-resolution photos. I spent many hours there.
‘First I made only one animation shot used a single photo. Then, a year later, I decided to make something more complete.’Zakharov says there are two main stages to creating animation from photos.
The first involves something known as ‘camera projection’, which allows him to separate the static and moving parts of each image.
‘A picture, cut into layers is projected on the geometry created by 3D software,’ he explains. ‘I use this geometry to set city backgrounds, buildings and other static elements
‘The second stage is creating full computer graphics of characters people, animals, vehicles etc.