I was challenged to make a short animation using the old-school sticky note technique. This technique, also known as flipbook animation, is made by creating numerous successive images and viewing them in a quick motion to form a sequence.

Like with stop-motion, making a flipbook animation involves creating countless images to create just a few seconds of video. Unfortunately, this time-consuming animation can take days, months, and even years to complete. For example, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas took over three years to complete. There is a good reason you don’t see too many stop-motion films. Instead, I used 75 sticky notes to create a four-second GIF/video. Let’s give some respect to my man Tim Burton.

I had to keep my concept pretty simple, so I only told the story with three objects: a cliff, a stick figure, and a pair of wings. After making the cards, I set up an amateur camera stand to take photos of each card while keeping the camera in the same position. Then, I combined the images into a video on my iPhone and uploaded them into a video editor on my computer to speed it up. Finally, I used Giphy to make it into a GIF and uploaded the video onto YouTube. I am thrilled with my final product. I am not satisfied with the fact that the pink Post-it Notes left pink residue on my hands, mouse, and table. Not cool, Post-it. NOT COOL.

I also posted the video on my YouTube channel.