Flipbook

What is a Flipbook?

Our Flipbook feature allows you to enter Draw & Paint and create frame-by-frame animations on multiple modifiable drawing tracks within that one container.

Add and hold frames, and use blend modes, masks and opacity to change the way your frames interact across tracks.

To create a Flipbook, tap the Plus button on the far right of the interface to open the Create menu, then tap Flipbook. This will expand the canvas to fill the interface, and summon your painting tools - you're now in Draw & Paint mode.

You can edit an existing Flipbook by tapping on it in the Timeline, then tapping 'Edit Flipbook'.

The Flipbook interface

When working in a Flipbook, you're in Draw & Paint mode. This mode, explained here , is only accessible when working in a Flipbook or Drawing. It provides access to the paint tools, Filters, Selections and Transform, etc.

Draw & Paint has a few extra options when working in a Flipbook, as opposed to a Drawing:

Your Flipbook is comprised of one or more tracks and a series of frames on them.

1. When you create a Flipbook, it will start with a number of frames that matches your Project's 'Frames per second', which is set when you create your movie (tap the ellipsis in the top right of a creation preset), or in Movie settings → Project → Frames per second.

2. Your current frame will be highlighted in pink. Swipe left on your frames to advance time, and swipe right to go back in time. You can swipe more quickly to move faster.

3. Tap and hold any frame to bring up Frame options, explained in the section below.

Your Flipbook will display three tracks at any given time, and your active track is the one who's visibility checkbox on the left is highlighted with a pale circle.

Scroll up and down your tracks by dragging up and down in the Flipbook interface. Rearrange tracks up and down by tapping and holding on a track, dragging up and down, then releasing.

Tap the visibility checkbox on the left to show/hide your track, and tap hold it to access Track options. Cut, copy, paste and duplicate, and Delete track function as you would expect. Pasted and duplicated tracks appear immediately above your central track.

The other options, described below, are non-destructive, meaning you can alter them multiple times without permanently affecting your content. These options are:

1. Opacity - set the opacity for all content on the track using a slider.

2. Blend mode - set all content on the track to adhere to a particular blend mode. Check out the Procreate Handbook for information on how we calculate blend modes.

3. Mask - different masking options for your track. Clipping mask - pixels on this track will only appear where there are pixels on the track immediately beneath it. Alpha mask - after setting this, add grayscale values to this track will be to show (white) or hide (black) the content on the track beneath. Gray values between pure black and pure white will hide or show more of the content below. Luminance mask - uses the luma values of this track to show/hide content on the track beneath.

The Add frame button creates a frame immediately to the right of your current frame (pushing others to the right), but it will behave differently in some cases:

1. If your current frame has no content (is grey in the interface), it will add a blank white frame ready for you to paint on.

2. If your current frame is part of a 'held frame' (a frame that has a duration longer than 1) and you tap Add frame, it will terminate the held frame at the current point and provide you with a new one.

3. If your current frame is part of a held frame and you tap and hold the Add frame button, this will jump to the end of the held frame and add a new frame immediately after it.

4. If you are on the final frame of your Flipbook and you tap Add frame, a new frame will be added for every track in your Flipbook.

This button adds a new track in your Flipbook, directly above your current track. This new track will default to being 100% opaque and set to the Normal blend mode.

The Muti-select button enters Multi-select mode, which allows you to draw around frames across your tracks with the Apple Pencil, and perform actions to them at the same time. You can use a finger to select multiple items by tapping on them if you don't have an Apple Pencil.

Draw around frames to highlight them and draw around highlighted frames to remove them from your selection.

Tap and drag your frames to another track, or hold between Flipbook tracks and drop them to bring them to a new track. They will be placed on this track respecting left to right, bottom to top on the overall Flipbook timeline.

Tap and hold an individual frame from your selection to summon frame options that will apply to that whole selection.

Tap on a selected frame twice to summon frame handles. Dragging these left and right will shorten or lengthen all frames in the selection.

Cut, copy, paste and duplicate those frames, or use 'Flip frames' to reverse their relative positions. Pasted frames will appear further along their origin tracks if there is space for them to do so.

Tap here to play and pause your Flipbook. This will as always adhere to the frames per second set in Movie settings → Project.

Tap Paint, smudge, or erase to select a brush to use from that category. Use the sliders on the sidebar on the far left to adjust the size (upper) and opacity (lower) of your brush.

Tap Layers to access Drawing layers, add layers with the + button.

Tap Colors to bring up the Colors interface and select your color using a variety of methods.

The main options atop the interface on the left are as follows:

Settings - access settings related to this current Flipbook and how you draw and paint. Read more in the Draw & Paint Settings section

Filters - access drawing filters to apply interesting changes to your current frame. Read about Filters here.

Select - use the Selections tool to isolate parts of your current frame. The basics of the Selections tool are explained in this section of the Handbook.

Transform - modify position, scale, and form of your frame's content using this tool. Read more here.

Tap here to bring up a menu that allows you exit to the Timeline (Finish Drawing) or bring up the Help menu, where you can access a link to the Help Center (where you currently are) or submit an error report if you've had trouble upgrading brushes.

Frame options

Tap and hold the center frame to show the frame options context menu.

Cut, copy, paste, and duplicate the current frame to speed up your workflow:

1. Cut removes the current frame and places it in your clipboard

2. Copy doesn't modify the frame, and sends it to your clipboard

3. Paste sends the frame you have in your clipboard into the next available frame space on the active track

4. Duplicate sends a copy of the current frame to the immediate right of it on the active track

Adds a new frame immediately to the right of the current frame on the active track, pushing all future frames to the right to make space.

When you tap and hold on a frame that has a duration longer than one, you will see this option.

Tapping this will split that held frame into two sections - one terminates on the frame immediately prior, and the latter section will start on your active frame.

Sets the duration for the current frame. Tapping this will open a popout window where you can input the number directly.

You can also tap directly on a frame, then tap again to summon frame handles on the left and right. Drag these to shorten and lengthen the current frame.

If you have highlighted multiple frames with Multi-select, tapping twice on any of the selected frames will summon the handles. Dragging these handles will affect all selected frames.

Opens up the Track options menu for this current Flipbook track. These are explained in the section above, under point number five.

Removes all content on the frame, but does not remove the frame itself.

Deletes all content on the frame and the frame itself, pulling all future frames left until they hit a frame with content.