Southern California-based DigiCel Inc. has released FlipBook 4.0 offering greater speed, power, ease-of-use and more affordability. Virtually every aspect of the program has been enhanced.
Scenes open up to 10 times faster, and the new preview modes composite at least 300% faster. Mid-scene start and stop points let you concentrate both compositing and playback to any part of the scene. And the full screen playback and realtime WYSIWYG video output let you see exactly what your movie will look like on a PC or a TV.
The new "Boomerang" feature lets you edit your images in Photoshop (or any other paint program) for unlimited power and versatility without leaving FlipBook. FlipBook 4 can display the lines from all of the levels that a character may be spread over and the fill will stop when it hits a line from any level. And if FlipBook finds a small gap in the line while filling, it can close the gap and correct the fill. Once you've got the big areas painted, the new AutoFinish feature can paint the rest of the drawing for you by filling any unpainted areas with the color from the nearest painted area. And now you get 20 levels of undo and redo so you can experiment to the full extent of your creativity.
New tools make drawing easier and now you can cut or copy part of one image and paste into another with scaling and rotation to help in the animation. New import features make it easy to bring in a series of images from any 3D or live-action sequence to combine with your 2D animation, and you can print these images with registration marks to use for reference while drawing. When you scan or import color images into the foreground levels, FlipBook can key out the white areas, making them transparent, so the rest of the scene behind the overlay will show through. And there's another new scanning feature that can automatically position your scanned images into the same frames as your rough drawings so you don't have to set the timing again after scanning.
"FlipBook has come a long way in just a few short years," says DigiCel president and co-founder Kent Braun. "It has been embraced by students, teachers and professional animators at all of the top schools and studios. Professional animators at Disney, Warner Bros., DreamWorks, Klasky Csupo and Film Roman use Flipbook in the making of feature films, TV series and personal projects. FlipBook 3 was used in the making of THE WILD THORNBERRY'S MOVIE, RUGRATS GO WILD, LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION, TEACHER'S PET and a many of Disney's TV series and direct-to-video features. Universal Studios is using it right now on their new CURIOUS GEORGE feature. Now, with the release of Flipbook 4, anyone who wants to create their own animated cartoon can use the same tools the pros do."
The product line has also been restructured to make it easier and more affordable to get the features that you need without having to pay for more than you want. Camera moves, painting and special effects are all available as affordable add-ons to FlipBook (Pencil Test). And the prices remain cost-effective, with FlipBook and FlipBook Paint selling for $299; FlipBook Camera and Special Effects add-ons are $199 each. FlipBook Pro is $999 and FlipBook Lite remains $99. Competitive upgrades are also available to anyone who is still using a competing product.
For more details on DigiCel FlipBook 4, please visit the DigiCel Website at www.digicel.net.
Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.
