FlipBook User’s Guide

Introduction

FlipBook is made for people who love to draw and want to do traditional 2D animation. The major studios and top animation schools use FlipBook because it works the way animators want to work and it’s easy to use so it doesn’t get in the way of your creativity. This User’s Guide is really short because FlipBook is so easy to use.

Main Window

The main window is where you will draw, paint and play your animation. It’s just like a media player with a few extra options for editing. You can pan, zoom and rotate the image to make easier to work on. The tools bars at the top and bottom of the window give you everything you need to produce broadest quality animation.

Xsheet

The Xsheet is the animator’s timeline. It’s vertical because that’s the way professional animators are used to working. So every row is a frame, every column is a level and each level has two layers, ink (the pencil lines) and paint. Images in one frame will automatically hold through the following frames until they are replaced by another image or you Stop the Hold. To Stop the Hold touch and hold any empty cel and select Stop Hold from the popup menu.

To Insert, Add or Delete frames click on the >, +, – icons at the bottom of the Xsheet or you can touch and hold any frame number to pop up a menu with the relevant options.

To add levels touch and hold the level header to bring up the level dialog. The stepper control lets you add levels and although you cannot delete levels, you can limit the number of levels that appear in the Xsheet. In addition to adding levels you can also rename each level, step through the levels or lock and hide levels as well. To unhide your levels just click on the Show all levels command.

Click on a frame number to display that frame as if you has paused the video playback on it.

Drag and Drop works on any cel that has an image in it.

Touch and hold on any cel to get a popup menu to let you Cut, Copy and Paste or Stop a Hold.

Light Box

FlipBook’s Light Box is uniquely powerful yet very simple. It works automatically to let you see exactly the images you want ghosted behind the one you’re working on. When you open an image it goes on top of the stack, just like on a traditional animation disc. You can control how many you want on the stack and the bottom ones are automatically removed when there are too many. You also have the option to keep the background image on at all times.

To animate straight just click on the next cel and draw in it. The previous drawings will appear ghosted behind the one you’re working on.

To animation pose to pose and do in-betweens, just click on the poses you want to see and then click on the in-between cel to start drawing.

Colors

Touch and hold the color icon to open the palette.

Transparency

FlipBook’s color palette lets you add all the colors you want to make your scenes look exactly the way you want them to. The main difference between our palette and others is that we let you set an opacity level for each color in the palette. This way you don’t have to keep adjusting the opacity of your tool every time you want to paint something that is not completely opaque.

Palettes

FlipBook lets you have multiple palettes within a scene so you can have a separate palette for each character or object it you want. This makes it easier to see just the colors you want to see no matter what you’re drawing or painting.

Drawing

In FlipBook you can draw with a stylus or with your fingers if you’re on an iPad or an iPhone.

Stylus (Pencil)

Drawing with a stylus is much more natural and makes it easier to get better results. Pressing down makes the lines darker and thicker. But you can set the minimum and maximum line width in the Pencil dialog. You can also choose between a few different style lines.

Fingers

If you don’t have a stylus you can still draw with your fingers. Drawing faster will make the line thinner and drawing slower will make it fatter. The thickness and the thinness are control by the settings in the Pencil dialog.

Mac – Wacom or other drawing tablets work well whether they are display tablets or not.

iPad – Drawing with an Apple Pencil is the best but you can use your fingers too.

iPhone – Fingers only

Painting

Bucket

The bucket is your painting tool. It fills paint inside the ink lines that you draw with the pencil tool. To erase paint select the bucket and the eraser.

The cool thing about the bucket is that it doesn’t stop filling at the edge of the pencil line. It actually fill beneath the line too. This makes the lines blend better with the paint and with the background.

Brush – Coming Soon

Playing

Playing is pretty obvious but there are a few extra features you should know about.

When the scene is paused, you can step forward or backward through the scene with the +1 and -1 icons.

A touch and hold on the fast forward or rewind icons will take you directly yo the end or the beginning of the scene.

The Flip icon works like when animators flip the drawings between their fingers. Right now it only flips between the current image and the previous image but one of these days it will let you flip through several images.

Staging

Coming Soon – Pan, Zoom, Rotate, Blur and Dissolve (fade)

Sharing

The Sharing icon opens a dialog to choose what part of your scene you want to share or export and then it opens Apple’s dialog to let you save the output to a file on your computer or share it directly with your favorite social media or messaging apps.

Xsheet

Tap the xsheet icon to show or hide the xsheet.

Commands

Swipe in the xsheet to scroll through it

Tap in a cel to select and open it

Touch and hold briefly in a cel to drag and drop it

Touch and hold a little longer to bring up the cel menu

Touch and hold any frame number to bring up the frame menu

Touch and hold any level header to bring up the level menu

*If multiple cels are selected, touch and hold briefly within the selection to drag n drop the selected cels

*Touch and hold a non-selected cel to drag and drop that cel and all the ones below it up or down to adjust the timing of the cel above.

In traditional animation the timeline is called an exposure sheet or xsheet for short and it’s vertical because that’s that way professional animators are used to working. That’s why all the major studios and animation schools work that way. So if you have a background, or you want a future in animation, look for an app that has a real xsheet, like FlipBook.

In the xsheet, every row is a frame, every column is a level and the squares are called cels. The background level is on the right and the foreground levels stack up to the left. So anything to the left will be in front of anything to the right.

Images are represented in the xsheet by thumbnails. The thumbnails make it much easier to see what you’re working with and how much work has been done. Images automatically hold through the following frames until they are replaced by another image or an X to stop the hold. The light gray line down the middle of the cels means that the previous drawing is being held through those frames. Adding or deleting frames makes the scene longer or shorter.

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Tap on any frame number to see that frame. This switches from Edit Mode to Play Mode and Pauses you on the frame to selected.

Or Touch and hold the frame number to bring up a menu of options. You can also insert, add and delete frames using the icons at the bottom of the xsheet.

Touch and hold any thumbnail briefly to drag and drop it or hold a moment longer for the cel menu.

To stop a hold, Touch and Hold an empty cel to bring up the cel menu and select Stop Hold.

To add Levels, Touch and Hold any frame number to bring up the menu and select Levels, then adjust the stepper control.

Commands

Tap the lightbox icon to turn it on and off

Touch and hold the lightbox icon to adjust the settings.

FlipBook’s Onion Skin feature is way ahead of the others.

It doesn’t just show you a previous and next image, like other apps. It let’s you see any image you want before, after and even beside the image you’re editing. So with FlipBook, you can always see everything you need to help you see exactly where to draw.

And it’s easy. Our Lightbox works just like a traditional animation disc. When you open a drawing it automatically goes on top of the stack and when there are too many drawings on the stack, the oldest ones automatically fall off the bottom. So you can add any image you want to the lightbox by just tapping on it.

Animate Straight Ahead

When you want to animate “straight ahead”, drawing the images in the order, you just start drawing in any cel and when you go to the next frame the previous image stays there but it gets a little lighter. When you go to the third drawing both of the first two images stay there. Each one gets a little lighter because it’s further down the stack – just like they would with real pencil, paper and a lightbulb. But with FlipBook you can see through a lot more drawings than you can with real paper.

Animate Pose To Pose – (Inbetweens)

Professional animators usually draw the key frames and then the inbetween frames so they can make sure the character is will get where he’s going on the right frame. That means they might draw frame 1 first, frame 9 second and then draw frame 5 between them.

FlipBook makes that as easy as can be. In fact, it happens automatically. Just draw frame 1 and when you go to frame 9 you will see frame 1. Then tap on frame 5 and you’ll still see frames 1 and 9.

To do “inbetween” frames, tap the cel before and the cel after the one you want to edit before you open the one you want to edit. That way you can see both keys while editing the “inbetween”. (Example: Tap 1, then 5, then 3, to see 1 and 5 while you’re editing 3.)

Reference Images

But in FlipPad you’re not limited to drawings in the same level like you are with other apps. You can tap on any drawing from any level to put it on the stack and see it on the lightbox.

So as you can see, FlipPad’s inion skin features are clearly more versatile and very easy to use, if not completely automatic.

Our pencil smoothes out the wrinkles of unsteady hands and faithfully follows the steady ones.

Tap the Lightbox icon to turn the Lightbox (onion skin) on.

Tap and hold the icon to change the settings.

FlipPad also makes drawing easier because the Lightbox lets you see drawings before, after and even beside the one you’re working on.

Tap the Lightbox icon to turn the Lightbox (onion skin) on.

Tap and hold the icon to change the settings.

Whether you’re animating straight ahead, one frame after another or pose to pose with key frames and inbeteens, FlipPad makes animation easier.

So as you can see, FlipPad’s inion skin features are clearly more versatile and very easy to use, if not completely automatic.