A flipbook is a small book with a series of pictures that change slightly from page to page. When you hold the book in one hand and rapidly flip through the pages with your thumb, the pictures seem to move and come alive, creating a simple animation right in your hands.

Each page shows a drawing that's almost identical to the one before it, but with tiny changes: a stick figure might lift their leg a bit higher, a ball might move slightly to the right, or a flower might open its petals a little more. Your brain blends these quick flashes of images together, creating the illusion of smooth motion.

Flipbooks work on the same basic principle as cartoons and movies: showing many still images in rapid succession tricks your eye into seeing movement. Before computers and sophisticated animation software, animators used flipbooks to test ideas and see how movements would look. Today, making a flipbook is still a fun way to understand how animation works. You might draw a simple bouncing ball or a waving hand, creating 20 or 30 drawings that show each tiny stage of the motion. The corner of a notebook or a small pad of sticky notes works perfectly for making your own flipbook animation.