We present a framework for generating animated shadow art using occluders under ballistic motion. We apply a stochastic optimization to find the parameters of a multi-body physics simulation that produce a desired shadow at a specific instant in time. We perform simulations across many different initial conditions, applying a set of carefully crafted energy functions to evaluate the motion trajectory and multi-body shadows. We select the optimal parameters, resulting in a ballistics simulation that produces ephemeral shadow art. Users can design physically-plausible dynamic artwork that would be extremely challengingif even possible to achieve manually. We present and analyze a number of compelling examples.

BibTeX

		@proceedings {ballisticshadows17,
		author = {Chen, Xiaozhong and Andrews, Sheldon and Nowrouzezahrai, Derek and Kry, Paul G.},
		title = {{Ballistic Shadow Art}},
		booktitle = {Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2017},
                series = {GI'17},
		year = {2017},
		publisher = {Canadian Human Computer Interaction Society}
		}