Putting together a flipbook seems, at first, asimple task. Get together the images, sequence them, print them, bind and then. . . flick!!! However I soon found that conceptual and technical developmentof the flipbook needs to be appreciated. Essentially a flipbook is an animationsequence – one in which minute differences in each image page enable a simplestory to be created. Most flipbooks seem have 30~40 pages which tends to be thephysical limit for the design to function.  As each flip story is conveyed in a few seconds, manyflipbooks employ simple line, stick figures or shapes.
Iresearched flipbooks and encountered Noreen Grahame and Jan Davis’The happy gallerist. This book is a series of pagesdepicting the shape of the red dot, the type commonly used as a marker indicatinga sale of a work within an exhibition. As the book is flipped the dots grow andmultiply indicating the successfulness of the gallerist’s show.
The photographic image is employed as animatedsequences – movies and videos are in effect automated flips. Photos can workwell in flipbooks, as part of an image can operate as a reference and certainelements be moved to tell a story. Ron McBurnie’s toungey is an exemplar of this technique. In this work the base image is atightly cropped portrait of a be-spectacled male – the mouth is open and atongue extends from it. As the book is flipped the tongue rotates windmill-likearound the mouth until . . . . well, you need to flip it yourself for the final twist. The humorousconclusion in McBurnie’s toungey isrepresentative of what I believe to be at the core of a successful flip.

In the work Hitting theskids thedevice of the unexpected ending in utilised to reward the viewer for theirconnection with the work. The book is a response to an ever-increasingprofusion of rubber tyre skid marks on an outback highway.

At an artist in residence at Arthur Boyd's Bundanon I became interested inBoyd’s Narcissus series of etchings published with poetry by Peter Porter. TheNarcissus story from mythology is one of unrequented love, self-absorption anddeathly consequences.
     Inthe Wikipedia reference for the Roman version of the Narcissus myth a storyunfolds in which Narcissus spurns the love of the nymph Echo who, brokenhearted, fades away to only her voice. Narcissus is punished by Nemesis and issent off into the forest where falls in love with his own reflection seen in adark pool. When discovering that the person in the pool is indeed a reflectionof himself, and that his love will never be reciprocated, his rage andself-beating brings about his own death.
   Aftermuch thought and consideration I developed an idea that centered aroundNarcissus meeting himself on the road to Bundanon and the consequences of themeeting would be his annihilation. I storyboarded the concept, devised thetechnique for creating the principal image sequence and worked on the captureand manipulation of other image that could be integrated into the animatedsequence. I selected an overcastted soft morning light for the shoot and askedmy assistant to fire the shutter as I firstly, walked up the road, turned andjumped backwards at a predetermined point and then secondly, walked in from thecamera position, turning at the point and then jumping backwards also. Whilstclothing remained the same the hats for the two figures were different – one a wearinga beret and the other a felt hat. Just as the two takes had been captured a schoolbus of visitors came down the road requiring the removal of the camera from theselected position. And as the vehicle was to park in the shot I left the shootat that. On checking the files I found that the desired effect had beenachieved in the one take.
   TheNarcissus ‘death throes’ were created from splash images captured on theShoalhaven River during the residency. The splashes were extracted,progressively morphed and integrated with the images to create the desiredvisual effect