even though flipnote studio has been and gone, i’ve been sort of avoiding spending much time with it since it usually just reminds me how little i have in the way of artistic skillz. i’d made little 5-frame doodles with it before, but this time i made a conscious effort to sit down with it and explore it in order to get a better feel for the app and its set of tools by actually creating a couple of slightly longer animations.
well, it’s just as well that the sharing service was discontinued a year ago, because my creations were pretty dismal. still, it’s easy to see why many people called it the DSi’s “killer app” when it released, esp. since it was free. technically there’s not much about the app that couldn’t have been achieved on the regular DS, though (with the exception of the minimal camera features and the fact that it’s a downloadable title). also, there’s a fair amount of awkwardness shuffling between screens and menus due to the fact that the DSi only has one screen that’s touch enabled, which makes the whole experience a bit more cumbersome than it would otherwise have been. still, eventually i got more used to its setup and, as evidenced by the huge number of quality flipnotes online, it feels like your creations are pretty much only limited by your talent, time, and imagination. when the service was still up the app had a nice feature where you could easily browse random flipnotes and mark ones you liked as favorites, which was fun to use.
its sequel, flipnote studio 3D, has been delayed outside of japan for almost a year now, supposedly due to the huge amount of server load it has caused. no word yet on when it will be making its long-awaited appearance, but its unique pricing scheme (which rewards people who create, or curate!, worthwhile content) is intriguing, although its friends features have been affectively neutered. anyway, even though i expect it to be pretty much the same as this edition, i’m looking forward to checking out other people’s amazing creations while trying not to dwell too much on the resulting blows to my artistic self-esteem. 😉
impressive flipnote studio links:
– although the website for the original version has been discontinued (although supposedly we’ll be able to view people’s transferred flipnotes in the new website), there are many great flipnotes that have been still preserved online. nintendo ran a mario and a zelda flipnote contest, and even released a “mario drawing song”. awesome.
– the app has some advanced features that are revealed after you spend some time with the game. flipnoteartist.wikia.com includes even more-advanced techniques that help take serious artists’ flipnotes to the next level.
– random site that has put together a handy flipnote help card that you can print out and keep in your DSi
– glowing review from nintendolife.com
– entry at wikipedia
– aardman animations made a series of flipnotes. this one is basically an extended (and totally awesome) commercial for the DSi itself.
– this guy made two music videos of his original songs entirely out of flipnote. here’s the first one.
video games rock 