FLIPBOOKIT

FlipBooKit creates consumer-priced flip displays as well as offers an online tool for making custom flip-content from any video or animation. It was founded by Wendy Marvel and Mark Rosen in 2009, and it was created after they collaborated to build an art piece based on an old fashioned train station arrival/departure board. Using parts from salvaged ink-jet printers, Mark created the first hand cranked “flip book” mechanism. In 2012, the art duo were interviewed at the San Mateo Maker Faire and asked if they would create a DIY flip book kit. Accepting the challenge, they recruited help from friend and inventor guru Steven Goldstein, and FlipBooKit was born!

Hollywood’s history of “moving pictures” is an era that was the main influence for their art. Wendy was enchanted by the look of it all—metals, knobs and dials and buttons—and the design of a long-gone era. Mark, on the other hard, was excited about the guts. (He always wants to see how things work.) They had also started interacting with a local makerspace, CRASHspace in Culver city, and it soon became clear that tech art was a natural progression for them.