Flip book

A flip book, flipbook, flicker book, or kineograph is a booklet with a series of images that very gradually change from one page to the next, so that when the pages are viewed in quick succession, the images appear to animate by simulating motion or some other change. Often, flip books are illustrated books for children, but may also be geared toward adults and employ a series of photographs rather than drawings. Flip books are not always separate books, but may appear as an added feature in ordinary books or magazines, frequently using the page corners. Software packages and websites are also available that convert digital video files into custom-made flip books.

Functionality

Rather than "reading" left to right, a viewer simply stares at the same location of the images in the flip book as the pages turn. The booklet must be flipped through with enough speed for the illusion to work, so the standard way to "read" a flip book is to hold the booklet with one hand and flip through its pages with the thumb of the other hand. The German word for flip book—Daumenkino, which translates to "thumb cinema"—reflects this process, the photographic progression integral to film.

History

There are some medieval illuminated books with sequential images, such as Sigenot (circa 1470). The illustrations in Sigenot are consistently framed and have short intervals between different phases of action, but the images cannot produce the illusion of a fluent motion. The necessary notion of instances smaller than a second would not really develop before the nineteenth century.