all right guys so today's video is a full beginner's guide to flip a clip where I show you everything this app can do and how to make it do that so let's get started so when you open the app you're going to want to press this plus button to create a new project you name it up here just going to name this one guide and there we go cuz we're happy about it and then these buttons here you can press this to change the color of the canvas the background that you start off with just like that you can use this button to change the background to a photo that you have if you want to do that which could be cool if you have a specific background that you want to use this button will allow you to take a photo just directly and then this one is to use scenes and textures that flip a clip has built in they have a pretty decent paper texture so I'll just use that oh I kind of like that you have your canvas size uh I usually keep it 1280 by 720 uh cuz that's the standard size for most things like YouTube videos and animated shows but you can change it if you wish and then here you have the frames per second I always just leave it at the default 12 and and change it later if I need to so you're going to press create project and we're immediately brought into our workspace here we have our canvas which we can move freely around with our fingers just by pinching with two fingers you can move that around this button up here will bring the canvas back to Center fill all the spaces so let's say I've done something like this I just want to quickly bring it back to Center that's what that button does which is super super cool now let's quickly go down the line and show you guys what this app can do so you have your brush tool here you press that and these three buttons here this one will change the type of brush you're using so right now we're using the default pen I could change it to an airbrush like that this is the undo and redo button here and then let's change it back to a pen this button here on the side of the tool can be used as well to adjust the stabilizer the thickness the opacity and the color which is great this here is also what you use to adjust the size of the brush just by pressing and dragging it's not as exact as I would like but you can always press the brush tool go into this little settings menu and adjust it a little bit more where you get a little bit more accuracy as far as the number you're going for and then this right here you press and drag and that will adjust your opacity as well going to undo all that then you come down here you have your eraser tool pretty straightforward same as the pen tool just put something in there so we have it to erase erase like normal you can change the type of eraser that you're using uh if you want to do that I just leave it as the standard that's usually enough this will adjust the size of your eraser and this will adjust the strength of your eraser so you can give it more of a faded Edge like that or make it just a hard eraser and here you can adjust the strength of your eraser as well like the opacity of your eraser which is cool then you have your lasso tool or selection tool which is also pretty straightforward it allows you to draw a selection around something and then you can then move what you've selected adjust the size um and these buttons here will change how your selected thing is affected so here I can switch it to perspective mode and I can kind of adjust the perspective of this which is super cool like if I wanted to make it get like a ground plane or something like that or stretch it out I can do that and I can undo that as well this button here will flip the selection and then this one will flip it the other way and you can also delete whatever you've selected just like that another tip which I said in my flip eclip tips video If you guys haven't seen that one is you can just double tap this selection tool to select everything that's in frame Now we move on down here you have your bucket tool also pretty straight forward if you've used digital art programs before you just tap and you fill in the space flip a clip doesn't have the best bucket tool so there's always some spaces that are not completely filled in but it's good enough from this distance which is where people will be watching it from anyway you can also use this slider to increase the threshold which is basically the strength of your bucket tool so how much it will fill and you can see it gets way closer to that black line with the threshold turned up or you can turn the threshold way down and you can see it leaves way more of these little spots so if you want your bucket to be worse I guess you could turn the threshold down I don't know if you turn the threshold to 100 it's just going to fill everything it doesn't care where the lines are it's just going to fill everything so that's pretty cool to have I keep my threshold pretty high cuz I like as little clean up work around these edges as possible and of course you change the color of your bucket tool right here straightforward as well another little Quirk about flip a clip is the color of your bucket tool and your pen tool is independent of each other so if my pen tool is red my it isn't going to turn red it's going to stay the color I selected sometimes this is cool if you want to uh ink and black and fill in a different color and sometimes it's annoying to have to eye drop to match the color or use this Swatch system that flip a clip has which I don't really like but I suppose that's just cuz I don't use it too much but while we're here let's go over the colors real quick this button up here is the ey dropper tool you can use it to select a color and get that exact same color so if you have a reference image or you just want to keep colors consistent among the drawing you're working on you can easily select that which is cool this button will add the color to a Swatch which is cool and then you can use this plus button to add more colors I think there's a limit to how many you can put uh I'm not going to test the upper limits of that right now then there's also you can change how your color selection window looks so you have classic which is this little square which is cool you can adjust it like that I don't mind that you have the harmony one which to be honest with you I don't use kind of cool though you have the value one another thing I don't use uh but someone will find that helpful and then you have your swatches where you can set up color palettes let's say you have a specific character that you're always be coloring you can set up his colors right here which makes it easier to reference I just leave mine on the wheel cuz I like that and finally on this side you have the text tool which you press it you can change the font that you're selecting you can change the size of that font and the color of that font so you just press here let's put something like that and boom there you go you can adjust the size here you can perspective uh change it like that edit the text with that button flip it flip it here and delete it so that's pretty cool all these tools similar to how they're used the selection area selections work the same for the text so it's just really cool thing to have now it's let's quickly go over these buttons up here this is your ruler button if you want to draw a straight line this has got you covered but you're not just limited to a straight line as there's a circular ruler which is really great you can even change it to oval which I think is cool there's so many options with that you have the square ruler which also very helpful and you have this which isn't a ruler but how it works is it's a mirror tool so whatever I draw on this side will be mirrored on this side and vice versa which is super cool let's say if I'm drawing a face or something I just want to keep both sides looking accurate then there you go just like that so that's pretty cool this lock button here will just lock your ruler in place so that it cannot be moved why is that not working hold on guys it's not it's not working so I don't know what that does then uh if it doesn't lock the thing in place then I don't know this button here is your copy button and then this button is your paste button so I can select something like this copy it and then paste it and have a duplicate which is cool and then also let's say I want to copy everything in this Frame I can just press the copy button straight out and if I delete all this stuff so you can see it when you paste it'll just paste everything that you copied obviously now these buttons up here are super cool you have the three docks which will open up way more settings you have your onion skin settings which is important for animation because it will show you what you did previously as you can see here you can see your first frame which can help you in animating knowing where something came from and where it's going to go you can adjust your onion skin if you want then you have this button here which is your frames viewer you press that and you can see kind of a bird's eye view of every single frame in your animation you can adjust them like moving them around or you can use it to jump to certain frames if you have a lot which is really cool you can press this button to select them all this button to jump to the beginning or to the end to add a frame not jump it adds a frame at the beginning or at the end which is cool you can press this button to deselect and then you can use this button to add in between frames which is great cuz sometimes when you're animating you need to smooth out your motions and this kind of automates the process of adding in between frames for you which is great by pressing and holding you can select individual frames and you can delete them you can copy them and paste them and just like that pal you can even save these frames as images which is great because sometimes you might want to edit them individually only thing is you can't save a lot of frames as images it's only one so you would literally have to select them one by one to do that which is a little annoying but not the end of the world you also have this grid button here also pretty straightforward it just adds a grid which can be pretty helpful if you're trying to draw in perspective or or you just want to keep track of where things are you can also edit the grid with the line opacity how the lines are spaced and so forth there's this magic cut button which I've never used and don't think I will ever use so I'm going to skip that uh sorry guys there's this add image button which is great you can just add an image right to your program if you want to use it for color reference or if you want want to use it as a sketch layer you have that option you can also add a video what that will do is take the video split it up into frames and add it in as its own layer which is really cool for rotoscoping or let's say you have a 3D background that you want to use uh to trace over or as reference which is great so you can see you can animate without a refecting that layer you can turn it off and it's just a cool thing to have access to as long as you don't use it irresponsibly okay for the sake of this video I don't need this here so we'll get into how layers work real quick you can press this button here to access your layers use this three line thing here to move the layers press this button here to hide them or press and drag to adjust the opacity which is great you can press this little button here to access more properties of the layer such as the opacity uh the blending mode and things like that to delete a layer all you have to do is press right here slide it over you can lock a layer if you don't want to affect it you can unlock it by pressing the lock again you can copy it right here or delete it which remove that layer from every single frame and in the same way adding a layer will add it to every single frame so you can't have two layers on one frame and seven layers on another one uh which could be good and bad I feel like sometimes you might want to have more layers on one frame and not affect them all if it's a specifically detailed frame but at the same time it could be annoying to be affecting every frame individually which is how Ibis paint works so it's a it's a sliding scale you could choose which one is better for you but that's how this app works regardless of course this is your timeline here to add frames to it you just press this little plus button but also by pressing and holding the frames on the bottom you can delete them you can add a frame in front of them or behind them you can press and hold again you can copy a frame and then paste it just by pressing right there and then finally we have this little music note button which by pressing it it opens an audio window which is great you can record audio directly by pressing this microphone let's do that real quick then you have your audio here you can scrub through it you can layer audio over each other with these different tracks you can lock an audio so you can't move it adjust the volume like turn it completely off if you don't want to hear it flip a clip has its own audio library if you want to use that or you can import audio from somewhere else on your device as well then when you come back to your regular workspace you can see the audio here and it's really great for lipsing or just anything you need to animate to line up with audio and as you can see it works pretty well uh this bone cracking it's just pretty simple but it gets the point across crack and that crack is pretty much every button and functionality and how to use it in flip a clip now I'm going to take you guys through a short animation and bring this whole thing together using the things we talked about and pushing itra to its limit crack crack crack so I'm gon to be animating my character Mason Cole from a comic I'm working on it's going to be super short I'm thinking he'll just uh armor up his arms and then strike the ground with authority so we start with blank frame and I'm just going to rough in the starting pose here and just a little side note the first frame of your animation is usually the roughest looking one uh it's kind of like before you have everything dialed in at least for me the second frame always looks a little bit cleaner cuz you've gotten the proportions together and everything like that so I'm just copying some frames and using the selection tool to adjust the size cuz I want to have the camera kind of zoom out from Mason and for the part where his arms are raised before he smashes down I want to add a little bit of extra exaggerated anticipation so I'll just copy that frame and use the uh selection tool and skew it upward kind of distort it make it look like he's really stretching upwards I switched to the pen to add a quick impact frame and then wrapped up the rough animation when I want to animate quickly I just go from Super rough animation to clean finished lme work so I'll add a layer to do the clean lime work and since I did my impact frame on the sketch layer I'll just copy those and paste them on the above layer then all I do is lower the opacity sit through an add to unlock my favorite ink brush and we're off I also like to on the bottom right corner you can see the number layer that you're on which is cool to just quickly be like am I on the right layer and to know that you're not doing a bunch bunch of work on the wrong layer which believe me happens more often than you may want to a quick tip as well is that instead of using the onion skin to do every frame I like to screenshot the frame and reference it to draw the next frame I just feel like that works better for me as I get a clearer illustration and I can just keep the lines looking consistent I'll save the onion skin for inet usually or when I'm doing the actual Straight Ahead animation I prefer to keep my reference off to the side and just focus on doing the art so for the rest of this inking process you'll see a large part of it will have a side window for my photos for me to reference each frame and I'll constantly be screenshotting frames to reference also don't be afraid to use Anatomy references or prop references or as much reference as you can because each frame of Animation is an individual drawing so it's your job to make it as good as you possibly can and usually references will lead you to a better result also you'll notice me doing the Torso and leaving the head empty that's usually because it takes me longer to replicate the proper facial expression head shape and hairstyle and I just like to get the body out of the way cuz that's usually easier for me so I'll go back in and fill in the head later on and once the line work is done it's time for color so because of the way the bucket tool works and flip a clip what I'll do is I will duplicate the line work that's why it's important to finish all your line work before you duplicate check through a couple times make sure you've done it all because it will be a pain once you've duplicated it to have to go back and make heavy adjustments so just check and make sure you finished the line work and we're going to use the duplicate layer underneath to bucket and fill in our colors so I'll import my color reference which I usually do and I'm actually going to make use of flip eclips Swatch tool and create a whole new swatch for coloring I've honestly never done this before believe it or not after using the app for so long I've never done this but actually it made the coloring process way simpler for me and I wish I would use it sooner but you know live and learn and then it's just pretty straightforward if there are any gaps between your lines you fill them with either black or the color you need like for his eyes I use the skin tone to just fill in that open part and then I just fill freely and often times you're going to need your pen tool to fill in gaps and other small elements like sometimes your bucket will be filling the whole area you won't know why what I'll do is I'll actually hide the Lim work layer above and just really look around find the Gap in the Lim work sometimes it's just one pixel so you have to be very aware and very patient look for The Gap fill it with the necessary color and then go back to filling like normal once Mason is done being colored I'll go add a layer and add the background color of the ground and the debris that's being thrown up and quickly fill that in I'll also use the ruler tool to get that uh ground plane line established nice and straight nice and clean and also earlier in the video I was wondering why the lock button on the side of the ruler was there it didn't seem to be doing anything but actually when your ruler is unlocked the ruler line will move as you move the canvas so if you move the canvas up the ruler will kind of move up with that but when you have it locked it stays in its orientation so no matter how you move the canvas the ruler line will stay consistent it doesn't actually keep the ruler from physically moving you'll see it move but the line itself will stay in its orientation so that's actually what that means and I'll probably show the visual aid to help with explaining that but yeah that's what the lock does and now I'll just go through and keep adding layers for every new element that I want to add always add a layer for your new elements you can always merge them down later but when it comes to compositing and other things and little edits you want to have every element of your animation separated as much as you possibly can and also label your layers um sometimes we don't label label oh my goodness sometimes we don't label our layers but it can come back to bite you especially in flip a clip because the layer is present for every frame and the little preview window sometimes it will be blank because the element that you drew doesn't come in until frame five but you have that layer in every frame so name it and then when you're going through your layers you'll be like you'll know what that means so the armor doesn't come in until a little bit later so I just have a blank layer and so that I don't mess with that layer it's important to have it named but you can skip this if you want I'm not going to tell you what to do but just a little friendly advice now I'll use a clipping mask for the armor some of the elements in it I'll add the shading and we will be done pretty much with the animation portion now I'll add my layer effects so by opening your layers pressing that little arrow on the right side you open layer effects and properties I'll add glow to the armor highlights a slight bluish white glow I can adjust the size and how that looks and then I'll also apply blending mode to the Shadows setting it to Overlay it's just a slight uh color difference in this case but I like it still this is a step you save to the end as even flip a clip will tell you adding layer effects blending modes and glows will affect how your app performs and usually this is something you can save until the end now we're done with the animation we're done with all the effects and everything if I was going to do compositing on this I would simply save each element individually so I can mess with it later if you have the paid version of flip a clip you can save without the watermark I do not have the paid version of flip a clip so uh you can't technically save without the watermark I know a way of doing it uh I'll let you guys figure it out for yourselves I don't want to give give it away uh but I always credit flip a clip when I animate like I say what I use so I feel like it's not too big of a deal uh just play around you can figure out how to save it if you can figure out how I've done it leave it in the comments I'll pin it to the top but I'm not going to just like put flip a clip on game as to what I'm doing although they probably know anyway and with that our video is done that is the the full guide I hope you guys learned something this is the final animation I added a little bit of a uh brightness saturation effect to it in inshot that's super simple uh I think I recorded it so I'll show it on the screen for you guys but yeah I was going to do more detailed compositing but uh the way I saved it the elements didn't line up and it didn't it wasn't really necessary for a shot like this so this is the final result if you guys have any questions anything you want more Clarity on definitely comment it let me know and subscribe for more content like this tutorials animations and just overall entertainment [Music]