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Flip Boom Draw! HD

02/02/12  |  Posted by Keri Svoboda  |  Posted in Digital Canvas - Apps & Accessories

Listen up freshmen!  It's time to get animating with FlipBoom DRAW! I have reviewed a lot of animation programs in the past, but this one is the easiest to use by far. Just for those who are having trouble with this app, we've dedicated this review to helping you around the app. My short animation as an example: PART 1: Help first! This is the place where you can get some extra help past the basics.  This takes you to the FlipBoom Draw website. PART 2: Learning How to use Frames This button either hides or shows all of your slides/frames.  The arrows on this button are arbitrary, and just show that the slides can be shown.  They don't have any other function. These highlighted buttons allow you to move the current slide forwards or backwards in the animation.  This is especially useful when you decide that a slow motion matrix move should be added in your epic journey. This button allows you to insert a duplicate slide in the next frame/slide. PART 3: Onion Skinning, the Tool of Animators This is called the onion skin tool.  This is the gold in the animation world because it allows you, the user, to see frames before and afterwards, like looking through transparencies or tracing paper.  USE THIS!  It won't show up in your final work.  It is meant to be a tool for smooth animations. To turn on onion skinning, you must push this area.  It will turn blue when it's on. These selections will increase or decrease the number of slides that you can onion skin, or see, before the current slide.  For example, 1 will show me only the previous frame/slide.  But increasing it to 5 will show the last 5 frames in increasing transparency the further away the older slides are from the current slide. Let's say that you know where you want to end, but didn't have a good start.  That's ok!  this part of onion skinning lets you show the frames/slides ahead of the current slide.  This can also be used to animate how a character gets from point A to point B. PART 4: Colors VS Brushes You can get to your Brushes panel by pushing the brush on the left side with the sloppy painting skills.  The highlighted button here is the option to choose a paintbrush or an eraser. This button changes the shape of the brush. The almond-shaped brush is important for stylistic approaches to calligraphy. Remember that the iPad2 recognizes speed to vary the size of the brush when considering this panel. This button lets you paint in front. This button allows you to paint behind other drawings that were already completed. This is useful because FlipBoom Draw does not have layers, like Photoshop or Flash. The famous brush size slider! Use this to change the size of the brush (obviously). These are your colors! That's it!  However, you can use your color mixing skills to optically mix colored lines to get a transitory effect. Note that this is NOT IN THE BRUSHES PANEL. It is NOT THE SAME AS BRUSHES. PART 5: Save and Share It's really this simple. Select the office folder on the top-left of the screen and from left to right, you get: Create new project, open existing project, save current Project, or Delete Current Project. Be warned, you must type in  a name or it won't save. There is not default name. From these buttons, you can save either a picture or a video to your iPhotos gallery. From within your iPhotos gallery, you can email it to a friend or even upload it directly to YouTube on your YouTube account! Part 6: Review As I mentioned before, FlipBoom Draw HD is the easiest application to use for animating. There is no text buttons or things to read, but the interface is so simple that some may not even need to read this help review to get the hang of it. I give FlipBoom Draw HD a 5 out of 5 for everything! I found nothing wrong with this application, and that, in itself is an accomplishment enough. FlipBoom Draw HD in iTunes - $4.99 NOTE: all CIA freshmen students were emailed a free redemption code the last week of January 2012. Search "app" in your student email if you missed it.

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