Remember flip books? Get a stack of paper and draw something on the first page. On the next page, draw just about the same thing moved slightly, repeat until you run out of paper. Staple the pile together, flip through the pages and if you did it right, your drawings move like an animated cartoon. That, in a few words, is the basis of movement in all animation and motion pictures. When you go to the movies, the projector displays 24 frames per second giving the illusion of movement.

Flip books used to come in Cracker Jack boxes, be sold in stores, and steal hundreds of hours of kids lives who were taken with the idea and who made lots and lots of them. I was one of those kids.

Well, there's an app for that. Cartoon Creator [iTunes link] is a fun app that makes flip books on your iPhone or iPod touch running OS 3.0 or later. Choose a pen and a color and go to work. Draw something on page, click the empty face button and an overlay drops over your first page allowing you to see what you did but also letting you draw a slightly moved version. Wash, rinse and repeat until you have a full animation that will play back at any speed you determine.

The app has some very nice options, like three different pens, each with a thinner or thicker line, lots of colors to choose from, and a bunch of cartoonish sounds that you can attribute to any page. If you are creating an animation of a brick being thrown through a window, why not assign a glass breaking sound to the page where the brick hits the glass?

In addition, and this is something near and dear to my heart, it does anaglyph 3D, (red and cyan) with the appropriate glasses. This works remarkably well. The app gives you the ability to draw on three planes. Along with regular drawing that appears on the plane of the screen, you can draw behind the screen and in front of the screen as well. After digging out my anaglyph glasses, I found this to be some of the best anaglyph 3D I remember seeing. The image is sharp, clear and very dimensional.

This is a really nice app, and a great introduction to animation and 3D. It would be perfect for kids. My flip book period took most of my ninth year. It would also be great if you can actually draw. I have absolutely no talent in this area.

When you run the app, you are presented with a an uninviting lined screen titled 'Cartoons.' Big detriment there, but the web site provides full instructions on how to use the app. This is a problem I've seen with many apps. Load it and then what? At the very least having a link to the site would be a help.

Another problem with the app is that you can't delete anything but a particular page. If you are a screw-up like me and want to delete an entire animation, you can't. Any time you start an animation, an entry named Untitled appears and you can't get rid of it. That may not seem like much of an oversight to someone who can draw, but it's me reviewing this app and a delete option would get more use than anything else.

These two slights are minor and I'm sure can, and hopefully will, be fixed in a an update. As it stands now, it's a fun app, does great 3D, can waste countless hours and might even teach kids about animation.

At $.99US it's worth the money and at the same time you'll get to feel good about yourself when you think of all the trees you're saving.

The very talented Ben Gotow has just released a brand new iPhone app called Layers, his third now after Mathomatic and NetSketch (iTunes links). Layers, not to be confused with the innovative screen capture application on the Mac desktop, is a natural media painting app for the iPhone. Stating the obvious, it incorporates Photoshop-like layers, as well as a variety of brush and color selection options, panning, zooming and the ability to export your masterpieces as JPG or Photoshop PSD files (layers included).

I gave it a run-through and am extremely impressed with the implementation. I am no painter, a fact hinted at by my not posting any screenshots of my own work. However, I'm adept enough with digital art to recognize that this is a very intuitive interface. Manipulating layers is done in a side view with layer previews, allowing a tap-and-drag re-ordering and one-tap addition and subtraction of layers. I especially appreciate the 30 levels of undo history, making it simple to backtrack errant swipes. The application allows for sophisticated artistic expression beyond mere "finger painting," and, with a little practice, you can create some complex imagery. The layering functionality even allows for photo compositing, using multiple layers with photos and the eraser tool to remove portions of the top layers. This is more in line with my personal skill set, so I had some fun with this. Tight erasing can be a little tricky when you have big fingers which are hard to see around, but the undo functionality and some dedication make it perfectly feasible.

One of the first applications I used and enjoyed on my iPhone, Sketches, has updated to version 1.5. New in this version is the ability to change the alpha settings for colors (so you can change the opacity of the drawings you make on photos you take), and an edit mode for the corkboard view, to rearrange your drawings with. Additionally, they've moved uploaded photos off of a third-party server and onto their own page, so (for right now, anyway) no ads to get in the way. Not new in this app: a quality, fun, and surprisingly robust photo and image editor designed for the iPhone.

We've heard from the devs that there is a version 2 on the way as well, and both this version and that one are free to anyone who's purchased the app. But if you haven't picked it up yet, it is available for $4.99 over on the App Store, well worth it if you often take and share pictures with your iPhone.

I spend a lot of my time with a dry erase marker and whiteboard sketching diagrams for clients. I draw use case diagrams, flow charts, mind maps, you name it. On my Macs, I use the shape tools in Pages to draw my diagrams, but I often wish for a tool that would let me sketch charts on my iPhone.

Instaviz (click opens iTunes), from Pixelglow Software, is exactly what the doctor ordered. You can sketch out a rough shape (circle, rectangle, square, diamond, or triangle) with your finger, and Instaviz "cleans up" your sketch by turning it into a clean, symmetrical shape. Links between shapes are done by just dragging a finger between the shapes, and Instaviz automatically enters a straight or curved line to connect the shapes.

You can choose colors for the different shapes and lines through a color picker, zoom in or out using the familiar iPhone two-finger pinch/reverse-pinch gestures, add or edit labels, and scroll around your diagram. To erase objects, you tap on them and then shake the iPhone "Etch-A-Sketch" style.

The US$9.99 app can export graphs to a MobileMe iDisk or any WebDAV server in DOT/GV or PDF format. Here's a video showing the app in action:

Still haven't caught on to typing on that little non-tactile keyboard on the iPhone's screen? This little tech, from the creator of the T9 system (dreaded by some, loved by others) being shown off at TC50, could be just the ticket. Swype is kind of like a gesture-based system, except that it uses the keyboard knowledge you already have -- just run a stylus (or your finger) around a qwerty-board, hitting all the letters in your word on the way, and the program will guess the word you were drawing. If you're looking for something similar that's already appeared on the iPhone, you might check out ShapeWriter's WritingPad, which we hope will be returning to the App Store soon (warning: loud video on page).

It's pretty wild -- his drawing "Mississippi" set off my "awesometer." Unfortunately, while the iPhone is given just a slight mention (can you name another touchscreen device that's used as widely?), it'd probably need a little tweaking. He's using a stylus (which on the iPhone is a no), and it'd be tough to draw with accuracy on a keyboard as small as the iPhone, even on the bigger horizontal version. Still, I like it, and Apple could always consider something like this for the iTablet, whenever they decide to release that. It'd be an easy way to overlay another typing method onto an already-working nontactile keyboard.

Josh Anon's $9.99 FlipBook [App Store link] offers a well-designed animation building tool. Like other flip book drawing products, it lets you create movement frame by frame. What makes FlipBook stand out from the crowd of iPhone drawing tools is its fine attention to interface details and the addition of the flipbook.tv sharing site for the animations you create.

Read on for TUAW's take on this new AppStore offering, and see the gallery below for some screenshots of the delightful interface.

Of late there have been several Core Image based image editors released for the Mac. Scribbles does not attempt to be one of them. It is first and foremost for, well, scribbling or doodling. What makes it interesting is the very simple interface, plus the stroke rendering engine that automatically smoothes out strokes. This is particularly apparent when using the mouse to write out letters. Instead of jagged edges you get fluid lines. The interface is designed to be extremely easy to use, and accordingly the tool set is very limited. Nonetheless, there is basic 3D layers support which makes it relatively easy to get some nice effects. My sense is this would be a great drawing application for kids.

Scribbles is $19.95 and a demo is available from atebits. There's also a screencast on that same page worth checking out.

[Via MacNN]

Of course, with the Universal release of Google Earth, Google has also kicked out a Mac OS X version of their recently-purchased SketchUp, a 3D modeling app for the masses. If you need a quick explanation, here's one as good as any from their site: "Adding a deck? Remodeling your kitchen? From simple to detailed, conceptual to realistic, Google SketchUp (free) lets you populate the world with true 3D objects."

This latest release also now supports textures, so "creating textured models is as easy as taking a photo and applying it to a 3D model". Sounds like a good time. Perhaps even better than SketchUp coming to Mac OS X is the fact that a powerful version is offered for free, while the pro version costs $495.

[thanks to everyone who sent this in]

EazyDraw dubs itself as a "balanced vector drawing application," and from browsing its feature list, that sounds just about right. It looks like it has a nice array of illustration tools and abilities including some CAD-related features like wall and window tools, as well as drawing on a grid. EazyDraw can even import and edit old school files from Claris Draw, Mac Draw II and Mac Draw Pro.

EazyDraw is a Universal Binary, and a demo is available. Licensing the app, however, is a little strange: a full download license can be had for $95 (CD in the mail is $115), but you can also purchase a nine month license for a mere $20. Take that as you will, but if you've been looking for a solid and feature-rich illustration app, EazyDraw probably has you covered.

Dave Caolo showed you an open source image editing tool, so I thought I'd pick up another end of the spectrum with an illustration tool by the name of WouldjaDraw. While it isn't open source, WouldjaDraw does have a healthy array of illustrating features and tools. Inspector palettes, gradient tools, a nice selection of export formats and a strong toolset should make WouldjaDraw a satisfying alternative to the illustration mega-suites.

A demo is available, and a license will run you a mere $29.95.

[via Daring Fireball]