Week 6 - Flipbooks!

The research involved for this blogpost was both enjoyable and eye-opening, especially since the 'page' as we know it has undergone radical transformations in the digital world.

I found a particularly interesting website called Flipbook which allows guest users (you can create an account if you like) to create their own digital flip book. Flip books have been around since roughly the 1800s, encouraging imagination and creativity, it also helped that they required inexpensive materials and all classes of folk could enjoy making their own flip book stories.

The general idea of a flip book is to draw a sequence of images on consecutive pieces of paper in order to tell a story or show a particular action. When the pages were quickly turned it looked as though the images were moving like a live cartoon.

As a child I used to love making flip books with scraps of coloured paper, crayons and a particularly strong stapler. It was highly entertaining for a kid in the early 90s when there were no high tech apps to crush multi-coloured candy.

To have the option of making flip books online is strange and wonderful at the same time. With a variety of colours to choose from and an adjustable brush size together with the rapid turning of electronic pages it is an unnerving yet familiar digital experience that can be enjoyed by a new generation of  children and nostalgic adults.

~ Fareh