The Flipbook Archive: Human FoiblesThese are clips from several out of print flipbooks. Archive copies of some are available from my Etsy shop. You can view the complete flipbooks on my Vimeo site. |
 How to soothe the savage beast? |
Flipbooks explore the free zone between animated and still images. They provided a sort of working cocoon for me between 1979 and 1990. During that time, I designed and published nineteen of them, selling them in stores, book fairs and by mail order. | |
Flipbooks, and other pre-cinema devices such as thaumatropes, zoetropes and praxinoscopes, are "philosophical toys"–toys that make you question the illusions they reveal.
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 Two amphibians warm up to each other | |
 An all-consuming relationship |
They are accessible and intimate. You hold them in your hand, and can enjoy the freedom of flipping forward or backward through sequences or pausing to “read” an image more closely. | |
Many of these flipbooks began as 12 frame zoetrope strips. Viewing the repeated actions in the strips frequently suggested how they should play out in the linear form of the flipbook.
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The 40th President demonstrates his "hands-off" management style |
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 A general's demons get the better of him |
At first I printed and bound the flipbooks by myself, but in 1982 I began working with Maura Shapley and Jack LeNoir of Day Moon Press in all stages of book production from negatives to binding, developing a flipbook format that maximized the capacity of their offset press, minimized the work of hand collating, and exploring the possibilities of two and three color design. |
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| In 1988 I licensed most of the books to Cathy Hillenbrand at The Real Comet Press, continuing to work with Day Moon to produce camera-ready negatives that were shipped overseas for printing. In the mid-nineties I took back the publishing end of things in order to keep two titles, Birthrite and TV Dinner in print. |  A tele-evangelist reveals the bare bones of his faith |
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