Review: Kineo vs. Flipbook
by Jeff Noble
September 2, 2008
Kineo v1.0.2 | Published by Ollie Wagner and Geoff Pado | Via App Store | $4.99 | Released: 8-21-08
Flipbook v1.0.2 | Published by Josh Anon | Via App Store | $9.99 | Released: 8-11-08
Overview
Flipbook and Kineo (the app formerly known as Flickbook... hmmm... let's party like it's 1999...) are two apps that we take head-to-head. Both take the fun of doodling on a pad's edge and flipping the paper edges for cartoon motion to the digital age. We'll look at Kineo first.
Functionality
The first thing you're presented when Kineo launches is... white. It's really blank. You've got icons at the top left to go to the files view, a play triangle on the top right, and a black square underneath the menu line which is your color palette. The fun thing about Kineo is that you just start drawing. With your finger. After your first drawing, there's a + button in the bottom right corner of the screen that you tap to advance to the next page. The next page will show you a ghost image of what you drew on the previous page so that you can trace over it and adjust your art so that when you create a series of drawings, it will appear to be in motion. You can save your project, and Kineo will show you how many pages of art your project entailed. Everyone in my family has played with Kineo and loves it. You can even shake your iPhone for a "do-over." Kineo has a nice, simple website with some tips and tricks. The only caveat is that there's no way to export your movie from the app.Comparison
Then there's Flipbook. Flipbook is Kineo on steroids. You will quickly become amazed at the options and features that Flipbook has. Ranging from creating layers, onion skinning, erasing, eyedropper, duplicating frames, brush sizes and the import of pictures to draw on, Flipbook is like Photoshop for your iPhone (more like Photoshop 5 than a CS).
I was quickly overwhelmed with Flipbook. There are drag and drop features, motion shortcuts (shake the iPhone and undo or erase), and the whole deal with layers was mind-boggling. For playback of your finished flipbook, you can even choose playback speed.
You will definitely need to review the tutorials at Josh's website to understand how to make the most of Flipbook.
With Flipbook, you can share your finished Monet-lookalike, but you have to upload them to flipbook.tv or add individual frames of your movie to your photo library. I think the latter option takes the whole point out of sharing your creation. Without the motion, it's just something you draw in Paint.
Review
The similarity between these two programs is that they both allow you to draw a series of images on your iPhone screen and then animate the results. They each allow a quick shake of the iPhone for an undo. They each allow you to change colors of your art. That's where Kineo ends and Flipbook starts. My eyes crossed, and I quickly got lost in all the features of Flipbook. After the initial "wow" factor wore off, I found Flipbook to be extremely cumbersome, hard to navigate and simply put, a time-waster. I can see Flipbook carving out a niche for itself among art students who have time on their hands and wouldn't be surprised to see a Flipbook rendition of the Mona Lisa selling for, say, $25 one day on eBay. Maybe a whole genre of Flipbook art and artistes will arise that will stun the art world. Or not. While Flipbook delivers an amazing feature-set, the KISS principle seems to reign here. Keep It Simple Stupid. Kineo is much more fun and easily accessible for 90% of us. Heck, my kids enjoyed playing with it. They got lost in Flipbook. I'm a graphic designer on the side, and I had to ask myself with Flipbook...why? Why would anyone do on Flipbook what they could be doing on the computer? Kineo needs the ability to share your creations. Flipbook has that, but you can only upload them to flipbook.tv. I would think that the ability to export to Youtube would be more widely received. Flipbook does allow you to duplicate a frame so that you don't have to re-trace your previous image, but the tapping it takes to do so takes the fun out of the whole process. Kineo could improve in that area. I grew tired of having to re-trace the art every single time I was creating a new image.Summary
If you're a budding finger artist and don't have a computer and want a full-featured app, then get Flipbook. That explains why Flipbook is double the price of Kineo, I suppose. But if you'd simply like to enjoy a modern version of the old animated artwork-on-a-pad, I would get Kineo. It's simple, intuitive and fun.Kineo
- Usability: 4 / 5
- Value: 4 / 5
- Utility: 3 / 5
- Aesthetics: 3 / 5
Overall Rating: 3.5 / 5
Flipbook
- Usability: 2 / 5
- Value: 3 / 5
- Utility: 2 / 5
- Aesthetics: 4 / 5
