Flip Book

Lesson Summary

Learn about the fundamental principles of animation, by making a flip book. A flip book creates the illusion of motion using sequences of drawings that are slightly different from one another. Cartoons, video games and computer animation all utilize the same underlying principles that are found in a flip book.

Lesson Objectives

• Make a flip book

• Learn about the fundamental principles of animation

Guiding Questions

• Have you’ve ever made a flip book before? If so, what was it about?

• Name some of your favorite animated cartoons series? Can you imagine how long it took to create them, frame by frame?

• What do you want to animate in your flip book? Who are the characters? What kind of story do you want to tell? *Make sure it is exciting, and includes a lot of action.

Some Student Flip Book Examples

What you Do

What You Need: Small notepad, permanent markers, & color markers

• Animate a ball. As an optional warm up, start by animating a ball moving around the page. This will give you a basic sense of how animation works.

• Sketch some characters in your sketchbook. Your subject should be simple and easy to draw like a simple cartoon or a stick figure.

• Draw your subject on the starting on the very bottom sheet of your pad of paper. Use a black marker so that the image can be easily visible and traced on an overlapping sheet of paper.

• Trace your subject in a slightly different position from the drawing underneath. Repeat this process on each page to create movement. *When I draw a flip book, I don’t plan the story much, I simply draw and allow the characters to act on their own.

• Make the animation exciting, and include a lot of action. Keep in mind that you need less frames when the subject is moving fast, and more frames when the subject is moving slow.

• Test your flip book. Flip through your pages to see where you can make any improvements.

• Add colours. Colour your characters one color at a time through out your entire flip book. Repeat the process with different colors. You may also add backgrounds after you have finished your characters.

Computer Applications. If you want to learn more about animation, move on to computer applications to make animated video clips. I recommend the app Flipaclip, which can be downloaded onto your phone.