Shelf Drop

six prints standing on a picture ledge. press one and it is knocked off, tumbling as it goes. some fall in front of the ledge and some behind it, and which one you get is the experiment.

key insight: front and back are the same fall with a different sign on one number. the scene is preserve-3d, which paints by depth and ignores stacking order, so a card travels to a depth in front of the ledge and grows, or to one behind it and shrinks and comes out under the fascia. no z-index is involved in either.

gravity accelerates and a tumble does not, so the vertical travel eases in and the rotation, the drift and the depth all run linear. on one curve the spin appears to wind up as the card falls and the throw reads as a fling rather than a drop.