A little while back we launched a pretty cool website for local shaper Jay Jackman at Sadhana Surfboards. No doubt some of you have already seen the design of the website but what we wanted to really highlight was the process behind the surfboard gallery.

Around the web these day you may have come across a 360 degree viewer, say a pair of shoes, even snowboards, but we were about to do it with Sadhana’s range of 14 different surfboard models. Over 2 shoots and a dedicated assistant (thanks Ruben!) we took over 350 frames right in the Sadhana showroom. Each board shot was given the same treatment: a single full rotation in 25 frames. It brought out the counting/maths brains in both of us for sure. The camera was set up on a tripod, and to help aid the post-production process, the stringer of each board had to line up with the viewfinder grid in the camera.

Once all the images were shot, it was back to the office for organised numbering and foldering, clear cutting, and exporting for web (actions in Photoshop were gold here). Once the photos were ready, we used Flash to create the slideshow. This was to give the user full control over the rotation playback and allow pausing on any angle needed.

See the full animation before clearcutting on the left.

To see the final result and to see more sweet shapes, visit Sadhana’s board gallery here.

If you’ve seen some pretty cool animated stuff, feel free to share below.