'Flip' - animated short by Peter W. Allen

'Flip' has international distribution through interfilm, berlin.

Flip
runtime: 2 minutes 22 seconds
Aspect ratio 16:9
Writer|Director|Animator: Peter W. Allen

Flip Title

Screenings

Bangkok Indiefest, Bangkok, THAILAND, August 6-8, 2010
Atlanta Shortsfest, Atlanta, USA, August 6-8, 2010
Animation Block Party, NYC, USA, August 01, 2010
Dokufest, Prizren, KOSOVO, July-August, 2010
West End Film Festival, Brisbane, AUSTRALIA, March 28, 2010
San Diego Indiefest, San Diego, USA, March 26-27, 2010
Bohemia Outdoor Film Festival, Fremantle, AUSTRALIA, February 14, 2010
SIGGRAPH Asia, Yokohama JAPAN, December 2009
2009 MergingArts Short Short Story Film Festival, USA (traveling), Nov/Dec 2009
Flip Animation Festival, Wolverhampton UK, August/November 2009
anim'est International animation film festival, Bucharest ROMANIA, October 2009
IMAGO Film Fest 09, Fundão PORTUGAL, Sept-Oct 2009
Sydney Underground Film Festival, Sydney AUSTRALIA, September 2009
Sydney International Animation Festival, Sydney AUSTRALIA, September 2009
Circuito Off Venice International Short Film Festival, Venice ITALY, September 2009
London International Animation Festival, London UK, August/September 2009
Melbourne International Animation Festival, Melbourne AUSTRALIA, June 2009
Palm Springs International Shorts Fest, Palm Springs USA, June 2009
11/22 International Comedy Short Film Festival, Vienna, AUSTRIA, June 2009
Australian International Animation Festival, Wagga Wagga, AUSTRALIA, May 2009
Manlleu Short Film Festival, Manlleu, SPAIN, May 2009

Having fun at the Palm Springs International Shorts Fest, 2009.

I've set out to create a 2D hand drawn animation in the style of the flipbooks that I used to draw as a teenager. The page corners of all my textbooks in high school were used to depict scenes influenced by my favourite sci fi films. These scenes were always incredibly violent which for some reason amused me greatly at the time. The intention with this animation is to replicate the feel of the old flipbook style, but with a more refined look. At the same tme I will hopefully take the narrative beyond the point of simple mindless violence and begin to explore the possible consequences of such actions.

The Process

After spending some weeks planning a basic narrative I organised 6 accomplices to act out the scene on camera. We ran through the action, blocking and expanding as we shot. Finally I filmed several takes on mini DV and then cut the footage in Final Cut Pro. I shot the whole scene from a fixed camera with only two pans, then zoomed the footage in post to create close ups, mid shots etc. I then sped the footage up by 300% and exported an image sequence.
This meant that when rotoscoping (tracing the pictures) with a wacom tablet in Photoshop I would be essentially creating animation on three's, or in other words I only have to draw one third as many pictures.

The rotoscoping process worked ok for some actions, but in key sequences I went ahead with pose to pose animation without referring to the performance. Photoshop layers allowed me to onion skin betwen the poses and have a great deal of control over the final motion. What the video reference did pretty well was set up the edit and most of the timing. I then imported the animated sequence's into Final Cut and adjusted the timing again, speeding up certain actions so that at different times the finished film plays out on one's, two's and three's.

The final visual touch was to add the sense of flipping paper. I didn't want to overdo this, a suggestion was enough. After filming some white sheets of paper flipping close to camera, I overlayed the video on top of the animation, using a filter that removed all of the white and just left the shading, this was then made transparent and gives the finished film a hint of flipping paper. The effect is strongest at the beginning and end of the film, but for the bulk of the narrative it was pulled back to allow the characters to be presented free from other distractions.

Promotional Materials

hi-res images, right click to save.

hi-res 'Flip' postcard (344kb JPG)

Download the full presskit (2.2 MB PDF)

Watch the 15 second Trailer (2 MB Quicktime)