How to Create a New Project in Flip Boom

Flip Boom is a highly simplified animation software package from Toon Boom, designed for children and novice animators. While it lacks the sophistication of more professional animation projects, it makes a great starting point for beginners to learn the basics and create quick, easy animation projects without spending in the triple digits for animation software.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A working installation of Toon Boom's Flip Boom.

1. Navigate to the program folder that contains your installation of Flip Boom, and click on the program icon to start the program.

2. Flip Boom will start with a blank document by default. While you can't customize the document background or size, you can customize the program options for a work experience more closely tailored to your preferences.

3. In the top menu, click on Edit -> Preferences. You should see a window with three tabs: General, Shortcuts, and Display.

4. On the General tab, you can change the program's background texture. You can also change the number of frames displayed both before and after the current frame (0-3) when onion skinning is turned on, and change the colors that will be used to display the previous and next frames.

5. On the Shortcuts tab, you can browse through the list of available commands to define which keyboard shortcuts will activate them. To change a keyboard shortcut, click on a command, then click on the button displaying the current shortcut before pressing the new shortcut key or key combination (such as ctrl + key). You can also remove shortcuts or reset all to the program defaults.

6. Under the Display tab, you can change how the program renders visuals based on 3D rendering drivers. Only use this tab if you're familiar with Direct3D and OpenGL, or you could affect your system performance while using the program.

7. When you're done, click OK to accept your changes or Cancel to reject them. You should be ready to start animating.