Here is the animation:



I was able to figure out that one can take aligned slanted lines:



and apply Map Object using the Cylinder object to get a coil spring:



The trick with the slanted lines is to have them aligned so the vertical position of the right side end point of a line matches the vertical position of the left side end point of the line below it. So if your line has a vertical left end point (the y-value) of 25 and a vertical right end point of 50, then the line below it will start with a vertical left end point of 50 and have a vertical right end point of 75, as an example. Also, notice the lines are all angled the same. You can vary the angle of the lines to make irregular looking springs though.

Next, after some experimenting I set my lines for a compressed spring:



Applying Map Object using the Cylinder object yielded this:



Then came the challenge of how to use GAP to get from the expanded spring to the compressed spring. That was the most difficult part of the process.



The above animation took some time and thought to arrive at. As simple as it looks, it is rather complex to achieve this using GAP.

Applying Map Object to each "frame" of the animation using the Cylinder Object yielded the final result shown at the beginning of this post.

Thank you for checking this out.

One different application of the animated spring concept is the notion of twirling streamers:



One of the streamers even changes color during the animation. One could make multicolored streamers, streamers with messages on them, and more.

For fun, all of the frames of the twirling streamers were combined into one layer producing this:



Thank you for checking this out also.

Wow ccbarr that is amazing!
I can see a lot of uses for this technique too.
Wish i would have known this when i did the lady head unwrap.I bet the results would have looked much better.

Thanks for sharing it.

Way, way cool. Thank you for sharing, ccbarr!

Those twirling streamers are just too cool!

Thanks for the post ccbar. It has kept me busy all morning.

I have a question. How do you achieve the effect of the twirling streamers?

Thanks for that - an amazing animation - and thanks Brazos42 for bringing this thread to the front. I wouldn't have seen it otherwise.

Brazos42:

The streamers are themselves created by using a Map Object cylinder with a smaller radius, say 0.05 compared to the standard default value of 0.25 that is set for Map Object. Also, one might use less diagonal lines that were used for the spring. I then created a plain spinning cylinder animation using GAP's Frames Modify and Apply Filter to Layer(s) using Map Object. Here is a tutorial where I show how to make a spinning cylinder.

After that, I then used GAP's Move Path using Stepmode Loop to move the spinning streamers animation from top to bottom. I made some of them appear to spin slightly faster or slower using the SpeedFactor setting on Move Path (which is just located to the right of Step Mode).

I apologize for the delayed reply on this, but I am not here regularly at times. Thank you for your interest in the animation. Hope the information helps some.