Zoomquilt and the Infinite O.Z.

Zoomquilt is a collaborative art project that was created by Nikolaus Baumgarten, an art and communications design student at the Braunschweig University of Art, Germany. Baumgarten brought together 14 artists and students who contributed painted illustrations, while Pau Hinze, a Computer Science graduate of Marquette University in Milwaukee, created the flash animation.The flash animation consists of 46 separate illustrations that were combined seamlessly with each other into one continuous image. I like Zoomquilt’s artsy flair and its objective to combine the paintings of different artists into one continuous surreal fantasy world. The flash file allows the viewer to zoom in and out of the image at his/her own choice of speed. Zoomquilt’s introductory web page also provides links to contributing artists and the specific illustrations they submitted to the project: www.zoomquilt.org

Zoomquilt II came into existence in 2007 as a collaboration between Nikolaus Baumgarten, Markus Neidel, and 31 other artists. The flash file was designed by Christian Zachau (unfortunately, Zachau does not have an informative website) and includes a “slider button” that makes it more comfortable for the viewer to zoom in and out of the animation: http://zoomquilt2.madmindworx.com/zoomquilt2.swf

Inspired by the Zoomquilt project, the Infinite O.Z. features a more professional flash animation that was put together by nine international artists. The project was created for the SCI FI Channel’s miniseries Tin Man and illustrates the fantasy world described in the children’s book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. The Infinite O.Z. animation offers more navigation tools as well as information on individual scenes. However, there are also harder transitions between individual scenes and the images have a more computer-generated look than zoomquilt’s fabulous paintings. All together, the project’s implementation looks very professional, so check it out: http://www.scifi.com/tinman/oz