Yes, speaking of the visual power of flipbooks, Ivan points out that Kraak and Smaak have just made a big splash with an ingenious new music video making surrealist plays with space. It uses copious, cleverly-placed flipbooks throughout. Now you have two challenges: one, to go out and make and film flipbooks, and two, to make it somehow not this but cool in some other way. (Hmmm… perhaps live flipbook VJing?)

It’s all real and real-time and, minus some subtle animation overlaid obviously at one point, it’s all flipbooks. The work is the creation of superelectricvideo, a director, motion graphic designer, video artist, illustrator, and general maker of cool things to look at based in the Netherlands. It’s worth reading his whole, oddly poetic bio, which matches some of the dry whimsy of his films:

Lots of motion in the non-digital world can inspire digital visuals. (Hey, that pretty much sums up all digital photography and videography, eh?) Keeping with this theme, I’m really taken by the flipbook work featured by my friend Bre Pettis at Etsy.com’s online magazine:

The Flipbooks of Etsy: Motion Picture Objects [The Storque]

Bre has interviews with the various makers, some of the talent on online marketplace Etsy.com, and even a dose of the philosophy and technique of creating them.

Properly shot, the flipbook effect looks really lovely on video. (I’ve also done a piece that involved scanning index card notebooks, but shooting them directly is much nicer.) If you’re interested in making some of your own, Bre also includes this tutorial: