The animation disk for the Animation Machine consists of a series of ten consecutive images arranged around the circumference of a disk. In the example below, the images consist of a horse galloping around the edge of the disk.

Edward Muybridge, the photographer who designed the first animated movie projection machine, captured thousands of images of animals in motion. These images are freely available on the Internet, and can be downloaded for use with animation disks.

After downloading the image sequence of interest, open the Silhouette Studio Animation Disk Template.

This template consists of a disk divided into ten segments indicated by the dashed grey lines.

Use the Merge function to import a sequence of images. If the images are imported as a single block, the Knife tool can be used to separate them. The next step in the process of creating an animation disk involves adjusting the size of the images to that they will fit on the disk. The scale of all of the images must be adjusted as a group, so that their relative sizes remain the same. 

Then position each image around the circumference of the disk. As you position each image, use the Rotate Handle to rotate the image so that its orientation is correct. The final result will look like the image below.

The red lines indicate the lines that the Silhouette die cutter will cut out.  The dashed gray lines in the template are used as a guide to position the images, but do not print because the line width has been set to zero. Links to the Silhouette Studio Animation Disk Template and a sample set of galloping horse images are provided below. These can be used to create a practice disk.

Many hundreds of Muybridge image sequences can be downloaded from the Internet. Animation sequences can also be drawn by hand on the disk.  Computers can also be used to create animations. Peter Reynolds is an artist who invented an animation program, Animation-ish, that can be used to create image sequences for animation disks.

A sample animation sequence created with Animation-ish is provided in the link below.