Drawing COOLSchool

Lesson 15 - Animation

Flip books are quite easy compared to everything else you've learned in this course. When animated films are made, it takes 27 pictures to make one second of film. Just one minute takes approximately 1620 pictures. No wonder feature animations take so long to make! The following animation was created by me with MS Paint. Dixon the Dancing Bear was created when technology for animation on PCs was just coming out...so it's quite archaic by today's standards. It has 67 frames in it and it will give you an idea of what can be done, even by a beginner. You can see underneath Dixon the Dancing Bear is frame-by-frame how he was created. The four frames below show him moving slowly; if I wanted to speed him up, I would remove the 2nd and 4th and repeat.


animated teddy bear
dancing dixon frame 1 dancing dixon frame 2 dancing dixon frame 3 dancing dixon frame 4

Materials needed:

pencil or pen

 

20 (or more) pieces of 2" x 4" paper

 

stapler

See Student Examples here.

See other flip books in action:
Haring Kids
Fliptomania

 

 flip-book illustration

Assignment: Flip Book

1. Choose something you want to see move. For example, birds, balls, athletes, butterflies, and stick figures lend themselves to this type of drawing. Plan how you want the drawing to move.
2. Staple together your paper, and start with the very last sheet as your first picture.
3. Draw the first picture and the last picture first.
4. It also helps if the paper you're working with is really thin, so that you can see the drawing on the previous page.
5. Faster motions need less drawing (more space between movements), while slow motions more drawing (very little space between movements).
6. I would recommend doing a practice one first with five pieces of paper and a stick figure. You could have him walk across the page, get out of bed, etc.

EXAMPLE:
Last page—Draw a frog with his tongue partly out
On the next-to-last page—Draw the same frog in about the same position with the tongue out a little further.
On the next page—The frog extends tongue a little further and a fly appears in the corner of the page.
Next page—Frog's eyes shift to look at the fly and the fly moves a little closer to the frog.
Close-up view—Out zaps a tongue to a wide-eyed fly.
 
HINT: Old phone books, Post-It pads, notebooks, and catalogs are GREAT for these.

You will be graded on a 1-6 scale on the following:

  • Degree of difficulty
  • Creativity
  • Object moving slowly
  • Object moving fast
  • At least 20 drawings

TURNING WORK IN? You may scan your work, use a digital camera, or use snail mail (send to the address on the contact page). Use the assignment link below to upload your files; if you're sending your work by snail mail, use the assignment link below to tell me WHEN you sent it. (If you're not sure how to upload or send files by snail mail, review the Procedures page.)

Submit your work here.

Excellent examples will be posted with permission of the artist.


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Lessons
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  - Lesson 14
  - Lesson 15
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