Binding Flip Books

Flip book tutorialA 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.

Write Like They Used To

Today is National Handwriting Day in the US. For years I’ve typed almost all my correspondence and my handwriting has gotten quite illegible. Plus I’ve never really liked my own scrawl very much. So I love to find digital handwriting fonts, especially old-fashioned ones like Old Fonts — “authentic 18th and 19th century penmanship” fonts from Three Islands Press in Maine. The example below is Emily Austin. And be sure to check out the lovely ampersand in the text font Broadsheet.

www.oldfonts.com example

Turning the Pages II

Holly OrmondI’m always on the lookout for novel ways of displaying books on the web, and last fall I wrote a post about 2 videos I found. Last week I ran across British artist Holly Ormrod’s website. She’s a recent graduate of the Book Arts program at Camberwell College, and her portfolio has both artist’s books and book-based installations. She shows off her bookworks with quite effective slide shows. The picture on the left is from an altered book (The Old Man and Sea by Ernest Hemingway). There’s also one entitled Bookworm of a little plastic man tunnelling through a book. There’s lots more, so do take a look.

Rebuilding a Library

Iraqi National Library & Archive restorationI’ve been using the public libraries since I could first read. It was a big event for my sisters and me when we finally got a library in the town where I grew up. Today I count on my local library for out-of-print resources as well as recent best sellers. So you could say I’m a big supporter of libraries.
I’m also the editor of the book arts quarterly Ampersand, and for the issue I’m just sending off to the printer, I wanted to include photos of some of the broadsides from an exhibition last fall at the San Francisco Center for the Book protesting the March 5th 2007 car bombing on al-Mutanabi Street in Baghdad. This street is the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, a winding street filled with bookstores and outdoor book stalls. But, as my friend Cathy pointed out to me, the March bombing wasn’t an isolated event—since Saddam Hussein’s regime was toppled in 2003 there have been many bombings and much destruction around al-Mutanabi Street, starting with the Iraq National Library and Archive in Baghdad which was set alight and looted.
In 2003, Dr Saad Eskander, the Director of the Iraq National Library and Archive (INLA), began a blog, hosted by the British Library. His entries are a vivid and powerful account of the challenges facing the INLA to protect Iraq’s cultural heritage. It’s a fascinating read. Below are a few more resources Cathy gave me:

The Artist’s Survival Kit

baddayguy.jpg
Keri’s drawing of when you might need her Artist’s Survival Kit

Most Januarys I’m off and running, full of ideas and energy for the new year. But this month I’m dragging and feel more like reading a book than working in my studio. Okay, I did make up new batches of my most popular books for my Etsy shop, but I can’t seem to get started on any newer projects.
Keri Smith to the rescue. This weekend I stumbled across her Artist’s Survival Kit, a set of free downloadable PDFs meant to help you when you don’t want to do art but would rather lie in bed and eat chips. The kit includes a set of “What to do when you’re stuck” cards, lots of tips, and in general will make you laugh — and hopeful, in my case, get me into my studio!

Turkish Mapfold

Summer unfoldingRecently someone who bought my blizzard binding bookmaking kit asked if I knew any other origami-like book folding methods. I immediately thought of the Turkish map fold. You might have seen it used in higher-end folded travel maps. I used it in one of my books — Summer — that’s it on the left, showing the fold opening up.
If you’d like to try making one, my friend David Rosen, who loves folded structures of all kinds, has a PDF with good clear instructions available on his website along with a bit of history and commentary about the technique. You can also see pictorial directions for making the turkish mapfold here.

UPDATE: David’s instructions are no longer available. Click here for directions. Click here to see a summary of instructions on how to make the fold plus several variations and ways to use the fold in a book.