Hey Flipnote fans! We're proud to introduce the second round of Featured Artist interviews! We're taking it slower this time; there will be an interview every other week going forward.

Our first interviewee is Dee, a brilliant animator from England who brings his signature humor and satire into his smartly animated Flipnotes.

Please tell us about yourself.

Hi my name is Dee and I'm from England, living about 30 miles from London.

What are your interests or hobbies, and how do you spend your free time?

One of my mates has been stripping car engines with his dad since he was 7 years old and I'm often involved in some car or motorbike project. But I'm really not that skilled a mechanic yet and am low on the pecking order of those present. It's really educational though and one day when I'm up to speed and working on my own vehicle that will be very satisfying.

I also have some basic electronic skills and repair electric goods for people, like TV's and fridges, with components, belts and boards from eBay (people will strip a lot of models for spare parts and it's real easy to search on your model no. and find them). One time though I revamped the coil wind on our faulty washing machine motor and it got up to speed but then there was a blinding flash and a really loud bang and afterwards some of the metal on the washing machine just wasn't there anymore, like it had been vaporised. Don't try this at home.

Please introduce some of your best Flipnotes, and tell us why you like them.

Ghost Train

This seems to be my most popular flip but I think that's largely to do with the excellent music from Ghost in the Shell, thanks a bunch to the Fair Use Act on that one. This was the first negative image flip for me with all pages set to black. It allowed for a strong background effect with minimal memory use as the blacker things got the less was actually on screen.

Old Virginian

The message here is don't mess with tobacco. This is the true story of an idiot I watched do exactly what happens in the flip.

The Witch

While wondering what to show in the witches mirror type thing my laptop swirly screen saver came on so in it went as a photo import. I proper had to click it on an angle though to get the right 3D effect.

Road Frog

As usual I couldn't draw something, this time a bottle being poured, so these are photos of a genuine bottle of Erbaugh Alcohol Free Lager that was in the fridge. Thank you officer, no DUI in this flip.

What techniques or skills are you especially good at in your Flipnotes? What are some techniques or skills that you wish to improve?

My strength in Flipnote has got to be perseverance. I still don't draw reliably well and it takes patience to get around that. Early on I once spent about a week trying to draw a decent standard small hand. When I finally nailed it, each time a flipnote needed one, out the hand would come. The drawing for Dee's haircut has gotta have appeared in about 20 flips, and on this years Halloween flip it was the 3rd outing for the plate and the 5th for the arm holding it.

So the perseverance came with enduring loads of erasing and Select moves and zooms and undo's until a whole inventory of bits and pieces accumulated, all decent standard artwork. I'm probably guilty of recycling as much artwork as anyone in flipnote history, so if the Flipnote Book of Records ever gets published I'll claim a mention please.

To the creators that really do develop very good drawing skills, that have the power to draw each frame as a new drawing, I salute you. But if like me that don't seem to be happening, patient creative use of all the app's features (and blatant recycling) can raise the bar a lot, making this a real nice hobby.

Please introduce some of your favorite artists on Sudomemo.

It was impossible to choose as I know so many good artists on here so in the end a whole bunch of worthy names went into a bag and 4 were randomly pulled out:

geezer - Short snappy flips each one with a funny joke. Good drawings, good voice-overs, a must see if you feel like a good laugh.

→←GunN→← is one of the best still frame artists I've ever seen and the creator of an outstanding series. But also I'm really jealous of his animating skills (Excuse me Frog o_o), he makes it look so easy.

Intricate artwork, cool backgrounds, great sound effects, bizarre even disturbing themes, humour and great voice-overs, zed.32 is one of a kind.

Liss needs no introduction, her exceptional animating skill, great art and eye for detail say it all. Liss is so good even her hand writing is good. I've probably watched her One Punch Man flip (One Punch Man) 100 times "ONE PUNCH ONLY?!"

Finally, although his name wasn't pulled outta the bag I gotta take the opportunity to give a shout to the amazing mrjohn. His imagination and technical excellence have surely pushed the Flipnote app past all original expectations. (also BrainSlice thanks for the nod on here mate, and a quick shout to the superb Vex, who's recently had to start a new account).

Is there something you would like to say to the Sudomemo community?

Yeah, memory management. Be aware that Flipnote records the difference between frames, not the frames themselves. To test this try repeating a complex photo image over a load of consecutive frames, then see what happens to the memory bar if a blank frame is inserted between each one. Memory gets tied up with all these edits, so to free up memory during work on a flip, select a non invasive tool like partial-erase and advance though the frames with the cross button and the stylus held down. Don't do it backwards.

Also hatch patterns 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 repeat every two pixels, so if you move them an odd amount of pixels the memory cost will be the entire hatch pattern. To save memory move them an even number of pixels or re-colour each frame, then only the edges will cost memory.

Social media links

Sorry, no on-line presence at present. Bye for now.

Up Next

Thanks, Dee!

We've gotten a lot of positive feedback about our Featured Artist Interviews, and look forward to doing more of them. Our next interview will be published on January 29th, 2020. Until then...happy Flipnoting!