A flip book is a simple form of animation, usually made of a sequence of drawings or photographs, that, when the pages are “flipped” through by the viewer, appear to create the illusion of motion. I make and sell 2 flip books (here and here), and finding a binding method that would last for many “flips” was probably the most important part of the design. I settled on using staples, hidden by a piece of book cloth. But the binding can also be sewn (see here for an example). Recently I’ve been working on another flip book, and I found a few new (to me!) online flip book resources.
This tutorial has suggestions for how to use Flash to develop your animation, how to facilitate printing using Photoshop, and how to use a butterfly clip for the binding. (That’s a photo from the tutorial, by Computer Arts, on the right.)
To give you some ideas for your own animations, check out Post-it Theater, movies hand-drawn on Post-it notepads. This site has suggestions on how to develop a hand-drawn animation, and this one has suggestions for using photographs.
I love flip books!