This process has been a pet pitch of mine for a while but nobody’s biting yet — 3D printing makes a ton of sense for zoetropes, not just smaller ones like in this example but for large, character-driven, intricate scenes.
What’s great about this approach is you can pre-vis everything (incl rotation and frame rate, etc.), tweak and tweak, and when it’s ready, print each component, draw out your positioning on your turntable, stick them down, and then tune your motor / strobe / camera system without having to re-hand-sculpt in the event of a mixup.
Anyway, Edmark is doing Python > Rhino > STL for forms following the 137.5-degree-distribution [aka the Golden Angle] and Fibonacci sequences common in plants, which is exactly the sort of arguably completely new thing 3D printing is bringing into the world.
I strongly recommend checking out Vi Hart's videos linked above, BTW — here's an embed in case you missed it:
... also as part of Edmark's awesome Instructables breakdown of the process is this beautiful and didactic Fibonacci puzzle stop-motion:
Also worth mentioning is this really lovely zoetrope record project by UK-based AV outfit Sculpture:
--- UPDATE ---
More on this via EK at HUSH ...
Nervous System have been making their own 3D-printed zoetropes in a series titled 'GROWING OBJECTS'. They're created with generative growth systems (Nervous' wheelhouse) and prototyped as GIF ... this one stands out from their pre-vis collection...
... and here's some documentation of the finished pieces:
Update 05/17/15:
More from Creators Project - this one from Mat Colishaw - a depiction of Reubens' Massacre of the Innocents, way more in the wheelhouse of what I've had in mind:
... love how the physical setting of this one reinforces the theme. Really amazing work, and some interesting comments on the Vimeo page from one of the 3D artists involved regarding the challenges of documenting a piece like this - because the camera shutter wasn't synced with the stroboscope, he had to go through and manually select well-lit frames for inclusion in this video. There's gotta be a better way to do that, but maybe not without a good bit of additional work jamming the camera with the strobe, or without using a variable frame rate body like a Phantom...