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 challenging if even possible to achieve manually. We present and analyze number of compelling examples.

Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2017, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, 16-19 May 2017, 190 - 198