Handmade Flipbooks

I can’t quite remember how I got the idea, but I thought it would be fun to create some flipbooks based off of video I had shot. The challenge was to be able to effeciently process the frames from a 3-5 second clip, have them printed by a photography shop, and assemble them as easily as possible.

After some testing, I created a template within After Effects that takes a video as input, and through some expressions I wrote, outputs a sequence of JPGs - each with four video frames and crop markings per 4×6 print, as shown here:

Unfortunately, the cutting done at Ritz Photo (where I had mine printed) is never perfect, so this method isn’t for anything that needs an exact alignment of frames. In any case, the next step is to cut out the four frames from each print, a bit of a time-consuming process.

Once you have your stack, the final step is to bind the book. Clamping the pages together, I drove two holes with a hand drill - which turns out not to be as easy as I thought - it takes a lot of finesse (and a file) to make a clean cut. I found some discarded leather at a second-hand shop that worked well as a wrap around the spine, and ordered some 1″ length brass Chicago screws (also called screw posts) online. Steel, or another hard metal will also work - I would just stay away from the aluminum kind, as they strip easily when tightening.

Here’s a few final products I made for friends and family:

http://thecurio.us/blog/?p=14

And here’s the AfterEffects project file (CS3) if you want to try creating your own (UPDATED August 18, 2008. It was missing the PSD containing the cropmarks. Thanks for letting me know.): flipbook_template.zip