Keith Haring Flip Books

Here are some links to Keith Haring’s Flip Books that were converted to Flash for web viewing.

Four of Keith Haring’s Flip Books have been recreated as animations using Flash.

Click the Stop button to stop the animation. Click the left and right arrow to view the flip books frame by frame. Click the Play button to restart animation.

My take: I think the third animation flip book is my favorite.

I’ll look to add these to our Blog about Flip Books and see if they are on YouTube for others to share on their blogs and websites about flip books.

A flip book is a simple “moving picture”

A Flip Book is a simple “moving picture” toy made as a small bound book with pages or frames with individual photos or pictures to show a series of movement. When the pages are quickly flipped through the images will look as if the scene is moving.

This visual experience is called “persistence of vision” (each image that your eyes see will actually stay visually a fraction of a second longer than what is actually shown causing that fluid picture motion). Flip Books were made in a variety of topics and themes at the turn of the 20th Century.

Looking for another sample flip book? Look no furthur than this flip book sample.

Submit Your Favorite Flip Books

Calling all my readers! Take a moment to review your collection of flip books whether you’ve collected them or you’ve created the flip books.

Post a comment and send me an email and I will highlight the top ten flip books from those submitted. The deadline is next Friday, February 13, 2009.

I will begin posting the top ten flip books starting February 15, 2009 if I receive enough submissions. If not, I guess everyone will need to search Google for some flip book ideas.

Make Your Own Flip Book

Looking to make your own flip book? Need to get a head start with a little flip book tutorial?

I recommend visiting the Make Your Own Flip Book page.

1. Simply visit  this page, then print out these frames and glue onto individual index cards in the same position.
2. Staple the left edge together, or use a rubber band to keep the cards stacked in a little book.
3. Flip them cards with your thumb, and watch the kanga go cosmik!
4. And hop backwards onto earth again…
5. Use color or add images to customize your flip book.

This is a very simple exampe to making a fun kangaroo flip book!

Flipbook Handheld Animations

Before movies were invented there were a number of optical devices that produced animation effects. With weird and unpronounceable names such as thaumatrope, phenakistoscope, zoetrope, and praxinoscope, these devices let you view a spinning card with small images on it, each like a single frame in an animated movie. As the series of images spins by, it appears that the image moves because persistence of vision blends the individual images into a continuous stream as it does in the movies. It is possible to buy or make these early devices, and their odd but very unique names make it easy to search for information about them on the Internet. For example, search for “phenakistoscope” and every site the search engine finds will have something to do with the device.

Another device that has long been used to show animation is the flipbook, and early low-tech version of animated GIF files. You might be familiar with these books that you hold in one hand and flip through the pages with the other. A series of drawings turns into an animation when the pages are flipped smoothly at the right speed.

You can make your own flipbook using any printer and a series of digital images. There is no reason why you couldn’t print the series of images in the upper or lower right corners of a multipage report, so people could flip the pages to see the animation. It might be one way to get people’s attention. In most cases however, you’d want to do a stand-alone flipbook. Here’s how to begin:

1. Capture a series of images using your camera’s continuous mode. You can also shoot movies if you have the software to extract and save individual frames.

2. Design your flipbook so you can easily place and print a number of images so they are aligned and the same size. It may help in assembly if the pages are numbered. The flipbook can be any size, but smaller ones are easier to flip through. The size of a business card or slightly larger works well. In fact, you might want to purchase and design for widely available business card stock. Be sure to leave space for the binding on one edge of the layout. The side you leave it on depends on whether you are left or right handed.

3. Lay out the flipbook pages using a program designed for the purpose, or with a word processing, desktop publishing program, or photo-editing program. Many programs have templates for Avery and other products that do basic layout for you. Just be sure you can use a different picture for each card. Many business card programs assume you’ll want to use the same image on all cards. Up to a point the more pages you have, the smoother and longer the animation will be.

4. Print the flipbook on the heaviest white paper your printer will accept (60 lb is recommended) and then cut out the individual frames. If your printer won’t handle thick enough paper, you can print the images and then glue them onto stiff paper.

5. Arrange the pictures in order and bind the flipbook using staples, rubber bands, or glue. Some people prefer to flip with the first image on the bottom of the stack, and the last on top. You might want to experiment.

6. Holding the end of the stack that has the binding margin, fan through the pages and watch the image move.

Source: ShortCourses Flipbooks

Action Speak Louder Than Words

Another interesting spin on flip books is TruAction Flix “Patented Flick Book” (flip book) design that allows a variety of sports, animation and advertisers to impact people of all ages. The actions produced come to life through the  senses, “sight, sound, touch” and best of all “imagination.” When it comes to “movement, motion and action” TruAction Flix is in a league of their own. Flip through to see bone crushing hits, game winning catches as well as history changing moments and so much more produced in hi-resolution footage.

Check out the TruAction Flix demo flip book of NASCAR’s Carl Edwards.

These flip books can show up to 4 scenes to use as a promotion, favor, and help make “action” speak louder than any words!

These flip books are super fun!

Flip Book Product – Fliptomania

Featured Flip Book Product – Fliptomania

Flip Books are the Best!

Flip books are those little books that show a short movie clip right in your hands when you flip rapidly through the pages. Flip books have been around for well over a century, and evolved from devices with weird names like thaumatropes and zoetropes. These brilliant innovations created the illusion of movement on a viewing surface.

Flip books are indeed the original “motion pictures.”

Fliptomania artists create some of the most unusual, sophisticated flip books ever made. They use an array of elements and styles – hand-drawn animation, 3-D animation, film, photography and cultural icons. They create original film footage and use classic footage, too. Most importantly, they combine it all with our unique artistic sensibility.

Flip Book Kit

In business over 10 years, Fliptomania’s flip books and flip book kits ( see above) can be found in shops around the world. They’ve also created unique custom flip books for a variety of corporations and advertising/marketing firms.

I recommend Fliptomania and their flip book products to my readers.

Flipbooks: Interactive Party Favors

Have you heard of the latest trend for wedding favors, party favors, and corporate event favors? Well, if you haven’t heard about or seen flipbooks at a wedding, party or corporate event you have been to, then you’re missing out.

A Little Scene Flip Books, based in San Diego, is helping make events more memorable and entertaining with interactive party favors! A Little Scene is a mobile flip book studio that can produce professional and personalized flip books of your event guests. Basically, they shoot a 6 second video and capture the frames and print them. From there, they take the printed sheets of paper and cut them to produce your personal flipbook. They even wrap the flipbook in a custom cover to add to the keepsake. It’s definitely a party favor that will never be thrown away.

It’s fun to create your scenes and give the books a little flip!

Not only is it great to see the finished flipbook product, it’s a great time to gather around the flipbook studio and laugh as other guests make their little scenes.

Flipbook Studio at a Wedding, Creating Wedding Party Favors

The Official Flip Book Lens

As you know by now and with the title of this blog, flipbooks are the focus. Well, as I always am, I was searching online for new ways to promote flipbook ideas and samples.

During my search I came across “The Official Flip Book Lens“, located on Squidoo.

Basically, this flip book lens is setup to be a documentary about one person’s flip book business success. It’s in the early stages of a dialogue, but it looks very promising.

There is a new way to make flip books and this lens talks about how flip books were rejuvinated in the process!

The History of Flip Books

Today I found a very resourceful flip book website – flipbook.info. Flip Book Info provides a comprehensive database of Pascal Fouché’s flip book collection of more than 4,900 flip books.

Also, on Fouché’s flip book website, flip book fans and users can find a historical overview of flip books. This information includes:

• The origin of flip books
• The different names for flip books, flick books, and Abblätterbuch
• Flip book formats, dimensions, etc.
• Among other historical flip book information

Flip Book Info is a concise website that is a great resource.

The flip book sample videos are a real treat:

• Bovril
• Golf
• Raising a Family