So now we're onto a much loved childhood classic, the Flip Book! This is gonna probably be a short post, I'll try to fill it out as best I can! So the name comes from the English Word "Book" which is a collection of written, blank or printed sheets of paper, and the Word "Flip" as in, to turn over or around, hence the name "Flip Book".....okay I'm sorry, I did warn you about padding this out! So its original name was actually "Kineograph" which means moving picture, but Flip Book is just such a better name!
The Making of a Flip Book!!!
So im sure everyone at some point tried this at school! I know i did, and failed horribly at! So for this little Project you will need
Stack of paper (small note pad or stick note pad would be best)
Pencil or Pen
Patience!!!
Ups and Downs!
The upside for this one is, easy easy easy! everyone's got paper laying around, and pencil's I'm sure! you don't even need much skill to draw! You can draw a squiggly circle getting bigger and bigger and that's you! Downside though is if you are waning anything have decent, you will need to be a much better artist than myself, and a damn good deal of patience if your going for Bigger story telling!
Coming of The Flip!
So the Flip Book itself has went through a few wee changes, tweaks here and there shall we say. It all began with a man, a man named John Linnett. He patented the idea of a flip book back in 1868. Though not long later another gentleman byt the name of Max Skladanowsky showed off his Flip Book in 1894 and him and his brother went on to develop there on film projector the following year! A mechanical version of the Flip Book, called the Mutoscope, was invented by a man called Herman Casler. The Mutoscope mounted the images on a rotating cylinder, they were widely seen I'm penny arcades and amusement parks for a long time!
Examples now!
I hear you there, through your screen demanding examples of this wondrous animation example! (no sarcasm just my tone!) well, you ever seen a Disney movie lately? good old steam boat Mickey? how it opens up? ayep, Flip Book baby! I wanted to end this little palaver with Mickey whistling away but.....I couldn't find the video i wanted, i apologise! so i give you a few other examples instead! one of my personal favourites actually is from the hit movie Hot Fuzz!
So ive been thinking, with me studying these differen types of animation, i kinda want to try my hand at making some of them. As part of my assessment in college for animation skills, i need to do a stop motion animation and a 2d flash animation, the stop motion is going to be a group effort, but i was thinking that at the same time i might make my own for the practice, and this lead to the idea of making one of each! Might get back to using my old youtube account with recorded pictres of me making and/or playing the animation! if i do i think this will be the first place to show off my mad ginger skillz! Just wanted to share that!
Now I'll admit, I never knew What this animation was called! but as soon as I was told my eyes lit up! I've seen this animation in several forms of media! All sorts of movies! (Horror in particular) and its such a damn good animation! Now for the beginnings! It's a pre-film animation, coming from the Greek words "Zoe" which means life and "Tropps", which as I said before means turning, so a rough translation could be seen as "Wheel of life" kind spooky eh? This is a bit more complicated than the Thaumatrope, as in it uses several images and a cylinder to make the illusion for the animation. The cylinder itself would have small slits going round the side of the cylinder, with the images going around the inside of it. Say for example its a group of images of a man waving, going from left to right, each picture building up to him waving, once the pictures are inside, get yourself looking through these slits and spin the Zoetrope! the images start coming together to create the illusion of motion! How awesome is that!
How to make a Zoetrope!!!
Okay this time before having the video above my little gab, I'm gonna go into the details of what you need first of all, then a little guide video! so first off you'll need,
Empty Tin Can (baked beans etc)
Electrical Tape
Ruler
Tack Pin
Marker
Utility Knife
Zoetrope Template ( which I found a good'un for you!)
Now, id recommend having a friend near by those cans and knives are sharp you know!
Ups and Downs
Now onto the good and the bad, the great points, yeah I said great, are that its an awesome wee animation! and you can change the size of it, so you can have a couple ready to go! don't need to have a big massive cylinder! The bad points though, are that its a lot more complex to make than the Thaumatrope, and you are using a tin can and a utility knife to make it, so you can injure yourself if your not careful!
The Coming Of!!
Now for the history of the zoetrope, I'm gonna go on for a bit cause....wow this little thing has a lot of history! I really wanna cover as much as I can, since its helping me to spread the word! The good word of animation history! There is some stuff I'm gonna leave out since there is accounts of different versions of the Zoetrope through out history but no clear cut examples of what it was can be found unfortunately. So to begin, the first.....idea of what could be a Zoetrope shall we say was 5000 years ago! In the style of an earthen bowl from Iran, the reason this is a contender is that on the inside of the bowl there are several images that as the go along the inside of the bowl the images ever so slightly change, to show movement. Though how they would spin it to create the illusion, God knows! They Could have spinned it on there hands quickly, or even a potters table! 5000 years old though, wow! Though a man called Simon Stampfer made a published idea about the zoetrope to be used for either a cylinder or a looped bit of paper in 1833, there has been a few variants over the years but the basic model always holds strong! The last history tid bit I want to touch on is something I personally find amazing! In the 1970's Sega (yes that Sega!) used a mechanism similar to an ancient Zoetrope in order to make electro mechanical arcade games! This would lead onto The first kind of First person shooter games! How crazy is that? If Sega didn't use the Zoetrope games today might not be what they are!
Gimme some Examples!!!
I didn't need to search for my first example, cause its one that's always haunted me since i seen it, its the reason that to this day I always associate the Zoetrope with horror is, House on Haunted hill (1999) one of the house guests gets trapped in a life size Zoetrope and the images are haunting! (excuse the pun) I couldn't find a video that should him entering it, but its shows the images that he see's and pulls out to show the size of it! I'd recommend skipping to about 1:13, when the lights start flashing that's the sign that the images are going by!
Extra!!!
I was debating with myself wither to add this in or not, but its just too good not too! So, I've went into details about where the Zoetrope came from the idea of it, how to make one yourself and even a spooky example of it, but did you know that there is also a 3D Zoetrope? Ayep my dear readers there is! Its the same principal, though replace the 2d image with a 3d model, and boom, Bob's your uncle! the best examples of this can be found in the greatest place on earth, that's right you guessed it! The Ghibli museum in Japan! The 3D Zoetrope has models of characters from my neighbour Totoro. Disney not wanting to be out done by Studio Ghibli done the same thing in Disney land California adventure park! using Toy Story characters! just gives me more of an excuse to travel!
