Part of the Entertainment Lasers Metanode
Laserists can create many different types of art and animation. The simplest form of laser art is known as an abstract. Basically these are creations of pure math. The lasers trace out spirals, waves, and squares with no real recognizable image. The beauty of abstracts comes in the complexity of their changes of shape and color, as well as their movement. Defined shapes and animations are drawn frame-by-frame, just like traditional cel animation. These images are then traced into the computer, which converts the images into points that are traced by the scanners. A new type of laser image, called a raster image, is not created by having the scanners follow the lines that make up an image. Instead, the images are drawn in a series of horizontal lines just like a television or computer monitor. Unlike the line art of normal laser images, raster images can appear photo realistic with all of the shadings and color variations of a television picture.