Nintendo DSi Review: Flipnote Studio

One of the brighter spots of Nintendo's E3 press conference, at least for me, was the promise of Flipnote Studio. I say "promise" because at the time, not much was known, and very little was shown at the keynote. As is standard now, Monday comes with it new WiiWare and DSiWare - but this time with a freebie for the DSi. I don't recall any chatter about Flipnote Studio being free, but you just can't beat that. I would have paid for it; and after using it for a while tonight, would have been happy with that purchase.

In short, you can doodle and create flipbook animations, then share, save, and even upload them to the Web. It even has an onionskin feature to allow you to see previous and next frames in your animation. This really takes me back to my childhood, as I used to make flipbook animations - and yes, I used to make Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck animations. But Flipnote Studio is not just a basic flipbook editor, you can really dig into the features and turn out some solid animations. It is rare that software of this quality is given away for free.

The tools consist of basics such as a pen, paintbrush, and eraser, but turning on Advanced tools gives you access to selection, copy/paste, resize and flip commands. You have eight "nozzles" for the pen and for the paintbrush, giving you plenty of options for textures. For color, you have black, red, and blue, which can be used on a foreground and background layer. Like I said, this app is no slouch. The "undo" command comes in handy too - don't you wish a real pencil had that feature.

Since this is the Nintendo DSi, you can take advantage of the Camera and Sound applications. Import photos and mess with their halftone screen, or set it to trace the outlines, very similar to basic Photoshop filters. Record sound inside Flipnote Studio or import sound effects saved from the DSi Sound application, even layer a sound track with up to three sound effect tracks. Flipnote Studio uses the L trigger as a toggle; many options are hidden, as to not overwhelm you. For example, you import sounds from DSi Sound by holding down L and clicking on one of the sound effect tracks, or in the Frame Edit screen the L trigger gives you fine grain control over each of the two layers per frame.

Article Author: Ken Edwards

Ken Edwards is the Gaming Editor at Blogcritics, and calls Breaking Windows home. Ken works part time for Student Publications at BGSU as the Webmaster and System Administrator. He is also a freelance web developer.

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