Nostalgia Nuggets: Flipnote Studio
"Flipnote Frogs" by rattlethatsail on DeviantArt
Back in 2009, Nintendo released the DSi, the mid-generation upgrade to the DS. Its main marketing pitch was its (pretty crappy) camera. Ads featured people vandalizing and editing photos in all sorts of ways.
And this debut came just in the nick of time: Smart phones were still pretty special items that hadn't yet found their way into the hands of every child and toddler. "Dumb" phones were more common but not ubiquitous.
All this is to say that the average kid in 2009 did not have consistent access to their own personal camera and photo reels the way that today's kids do. So now Nintendo had a device that you could use to play video games AND take photos? Kid me was frothing at the mouth, as were many other children.
In retrospect, however, its far more important advancement was the introduction of the DSi shop. This was the first Nintendo handheld to have an online game store. And to lure in potential future customers, Nintendo released some free titles. One of these was a little game called Flipnote Studio.
I'm sure almost everyone has tried making a flip book animation. It is basically a mandatory childhood experience. It probably featured something with a ball, or if you were feeling ambitious, a stick person. I bet it was done at school during a really boring class. If you got caught, not only would you be yelled at for not paying attention, but you might have even gotten scolded for "wasting a perfectly good pad of sticky notes".
Flipnote Studio basically digitized this process. Each flipnote could hold up to 999 pages, 2 layers, 2 colors (options included black, red, and blue), 1 music track, and 3 sound bytes. It had a lightbox mode to allow you to faintly see the previous page in your animation. FPS options ranged from 1 to 8 pages per second, and you could even import photos from the DSi camera. Out of any Nintendo DS era software, it took the greatest advantage of the handheld's touch screen and stylus.
And it seems that this experience of making flipbook animation transcends cultural boundaries! Flipnote Studio became a smash hit around the world and the main reason to upgrade from a DS to a DSi.
Honestly, I would even argue that it became the DSi's saving grace: since the DSi was a mid-generation upgrade rather than a whole new handheld, it didn't receive any physical exclusives to push players to buy it. And although everything on the DSi Shop was exclusive to the DSi, most of the offerings were mediocre or were watered down versions of physical, non-exclusive releases. While the camera alone would still have been a good draw for kids, older teens and adults may have not been convinced.
Besides that though, Flipnote Studio was commendable for making digital animation very accessible compared to other offerings at the time. Sony's Play Station Portable did not have a touch screen nor any kind of animation software. Smartphones had no such software at the time either. Even if they did though, the iPhone 3's launch price of $199.99 was a bit more expensive than the DSi's $169.99. And the Samsung Galaxy i7500's cost of $509 was absurd in comparison. Also, the 1st generation iPad had yet to be released.
Your only real digital animation options at this time would have been PC-based. The kid-focused animation software Scratch had been around for years at this point. Krita was also around AND was professional-grade. Both of these were free.
Meanwhile, industry standard software like Adobe Flash had an extremely high cost to entry ($699 for Flash specifically). And of course, this is all assuming that someone had access to a computer. I had a number of classmates at the time who did not have a computer at home, so I think it's fair to say that having a family computer in the mid to late 00s was not a guarantee.
But the program and computer weren't the only issues. If artists wanted to get the most out of their animation software, they also needed a drawing tablet. I know some will say that you can draw with just a mouse, and yes, you technically can. Hell, you can even do line art with a mouse by setting anchor points and connecting them with a curves tool. But it is so thoroughly inefficient and cumbersome that I am not going to entertain the idea. Unless you are a drawing masochist, a tablet is mandatory for digital art.
Wacom has historically been the go-to brand for graphic tablets. 2009's second generation Wacom Bamboo tablets would have cost anywhere from $69 to $199. Price variations depended on tablet size and stylus vs touch compatibility. That was admittedly not a terrible price range. If someone had access to a family computer at home, free animation software like Scratch or Krita, and the cheapest Bamboo tablet, that would run them less than half the cost of a DSi. But, consider that the Bamboo tablets were cheap for a reason. They were screenless.
For those that are fortunate enough to not be familiar with screenless tablets, let me make their flaw apparent: You draw on the tablet. But you look at your computer screen to see the product of your motion.
It doesn't sound too bad written out. But in practice, it is horrible. It disrupts a fundamental feature of art: the mark from your pencil, or paint, or pastel, no longer appears beneath the area onto which you press your tool. The separation is so disorienting. Your eyes are torn between watching the path of your hand across your tablet and the actual path of the line on the computer screen.
If you wanted a proper tablet that had a screen and displayed your brush strokes right beneath your hand, well, you were shit out of luck. Wacom's Cintiq 12WX would have run you $999. And that was the CHEAP Cintiq model! I know that at this point I have been going on and on about costs, but I really cannot stress enough how unaccessible digital animation was in the late 00s. Flipnote Studio basically ripped a triple-bolted steel door off its hinges and tossed it over its shoulder like a wad of paper.
And so, thanks to Flipnote Studio, DSi handhelds around the world became home to all sorts of animations. They ranged from the classic bouncing balls and stick figures to music videos and anime-inspired pieces. There was a very heavy influence from late 00s meme culture, represented with figures such as the Epic Face and Shoop Da Woop. Music of the time played a similarly large role. However. there was an especially noticeable presence of electronic and dance music. Some particular songs that come to mind for me are Italo Brother's "Radio Hardcore", Nomico's "Bad Apple", and Basshunter's "I Can Walk on Water".
Other artists were less interested in the animation features and just wanted to make drawings or comics. Although the color palette was technically limited to black, red, and blue, artists could also use purple by mixing red and blue. Many artists did want to make animations but were completely stumped on what to do, resorting to making 1:1 recreations of pre-existing cartoons.
Some artists imported photos from their cameras and gleefully vandalized them with silly mouths, tears, blood, and other features. Sounds may have been recorded from YouTube videos or voiced by players themselves. And music tracks were often ever-so-crunchy, having been recorded by players holding their DSi microphone up to their computer or television speakers.
Nintendo even included a handful of pre-made flipnotes in the app for inspiration. Users could edit these flipnotes and put their own spin on them. Subjects included a cat on a skateboard and a hairball monster. Most notable was one of a person kicking another off an invisible ledge. This latter flipnote is by far the most recognizable flipnote ever. I guarantee you that every single Flipnote Studio user edited it in some way.
A handful of folks also made some truly impressive works. For as much as I love Flipnote Studio, it is undeniable that it was overwhelmingly home to the amateur scribblings of kids and teens. And there is nothing wrong with that! It is actually wonderful, because the relentless, repeated, doodles of a child are what form the ground beneath their feet as they climb to peaks of incredible skill.
But it was nonetheless jaw-dropping to see some folks push the software and hardware to it's absolute limits! Nintendo themselves made Flipnote Studio's capabilities extremely clear, as one of their pre-made animations was a masterful, Zelda anniversary piece. The animation was slick, filled with the same fluidity that has graced countless 2D Disney films. It was genuinely professional.
Now you might be thinking: "Where did all these artists see each others' works?" This was on the DSi, after all. Nintendo has never been known for fostering complex relationships between its players. While Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 gamers spent 2009 threatening each other over voice chat and direct messaging, Nintendo didn't even attempt to implement voice chat in its games until 2017.
In an uncharacteristically forward thinking move, however, Nintendo decided to partner with the web services company Hatena. And thus, Flipnote Hatena was born.
This was an online community where Flipnote Studio users could upload their work for others to view and comment on. Stars were the main social currency, and everyone had an unlimited amount of the regular yellow ones. If you thought a "flip", as they became known, was just fine, you could tap the star button once to give it a single star. On the other hand, if you absolutely adored it, you could tap away for minutes to give it hundreds. If you were feeling desperate, you could even add stars to your own flip. But since star counts were public, everyone would be able to see you pumping your own numbers.
Anyways though, gold stars were just the beginning. In another move that was, for Nintendo, REALLY ahead of its time, the company implemented what I think was its first ever use of micro transactions. Users could pay cold, hard cash to get special green, red, blue, and purple stars.
Getting a green star on a flip was a firm and earnest compliment, a user letting you know that they thought you made a genuinely enjoyable and respectable piece. Most users earned at least a few green stars throughout their time in the community. Purple stars, on the other hand, were the holy grail. They were a crown of glory and honor, reserved only for flips of nigh-professional quality. If someone gave you a purple star, that was an undeniable sign that you had "made it". You were basically a micro-celebrity.
The stars that a user earned were displayed on their Creator's Room page along with all of their flips. And to incentivize even more spending, Hatena also had special themes you could purchase to decorate your page. If you were a regular Hatena user, you could really carve out what felt like a very cozy little nook in the community.
And I cannot emphasize enough how much of a community Hatena really fostered. It was basically Facebook for artsy kids and teens. People made real connections, constantly commenting on each others' flips. Some grew audiences, with fans foaming at the mouth for their next music video or comic chapter. Others role played, uploading a few panels of a story for a friend to download and add a few more panels to. A few hosted contests for someone to draw their next profile icon or to add visuals to audio that they uploaded.
Hatena staff themselves were even active in the community. Every week or two they would feature a different theme, like dinosaurs, extreme sports, or the beach. Users could submit flips for each theme and the staff's favorites would be highlighted at the end of the period.
Of course though, the community had its shares of problems as well. Some people didn't care as much about drawing and animating as they did attention. And so the platform was rife with "star begging" flips in which people would literally just write "donate stars" or something to that extent. Or they would import a photo of their dog and draw a sad face on it.
Theft was also unfortunately common. Users could decide to "lock" their flips, which would prevent any downloaded copies of their flips from being edited. Meanwhile, flips that were left "unlocked" could be downloaded, edited, and re-uploaded as spinoffs. Any spinoff flip would be marked with a very noticeable, purple icon in the corner of its thumbnail.
I am sure that the spinoff system was made with pure intentions. Hatena probably envisioned someone hearing funny audio on a clip, wanting to draw their own scene to go along with the sounds and music, and downloading the flip to do just that. Or, they may have imagined users doing multi part collaborations where each user animates 100 or so frames of a flip. And to be fair, both of these things did occur.
But what happened most often was that users would download unlocked flips, make virtually zero edits, and reupload them. This would create pages and pages of the exact same flip, bloating users' feeds. Now, you might point out that there was a very simple solution here: just lock the damn flip. However, this also prevented the many honest and well-intended uses of the spinoff feature. Essentially a cool thing would be ruined due to some bad eggs. And from what I recall, I don't think Hatena ever really fixed the issues with theft.
Despite these problems, I look back on Flipnote Studio and Flipnote Hatena with very fond memories. Studio was a highly accessible introduction to animation while Hatena was a thriving community that I made some genuine internet friends through.
So, what has become of Flipnote Studio since its heyday? Well, as you might have guessed, Flipnote Hatena was shut down years ago. Nintendo did try to continue the series with the 3DS's Flipnote Studio 3D. They added green and yellow to the color mix as well as allowing the use of a third layer. It should have been a smash hit, but Nintendo really fumbled it.
Flipnote Studio 3D launched in Japan in July 2013. However, it wasn't released in North America until February 2015 and Europe in March 2016. This delayed release schedule already prevented players in different regions from experiencing the game together.
To make it even worse though, it wasn't given a proper release in the west. Rather than being listed in the eShop, it was released via Club Nintendo in North America and later on MyNintendo in North America and Europe. Distributing it through these optional customer loyalty programs meant than many players, especially kids and younger teens, completely missed out on the opportunity to download it. And, as a reminder, these were the main demographics that helped the original Flipnote Studio explode in popularity to begin with.
Honestly though, even if Flipnote Studio 3D was listed directly in the eShop, it was still unlikely that it would have ever reached the original's heights. And that's because Flipnote Gallery World, the successor to Flipnote Hatena, was only released in Japan. Western audiences were completely cut off from its social community.
But even if the west did get a proper release AND access to Flipnote Gallery World, its success would still have been debatable. You see, the reason why Hatena partnered with Nintendo back in the DSi era was to grow their user base for their other platforms. Flipnote Hatena itself was not actually profitable. Far from it. But, it was a cost they were willing to bleed in hopes that Flipnote Hatena users would start to use Hatena's image sharing, blogging, bookmarking, and countless other platforms.
But, that never really happened. At least not outside of Japan. Players were interested in the Flipnote part of Flipnote Hatena, not the Hatena part. There wasn't a single western kid who knew or cared what Hatena Haiku or Hatena Fotolife were.
So, when Flipnote's 3DS successor was released, Hatena had absolutely zero interest in developing another social community. This left Nintendo themselves to design the platform. And let me tell you, the devs for Gallery World somehow figured out how to code with rusty knives.
Flipnote Gallery World was bloated with monetization and restrictions. It was like a tapeworm: The more you put into the platform, the more it just fed off you. Users needed to pay for a monthly subscription just to access the community. Each monthly renewal would give them a certain amount of coins and star coins which were then used to upload flips, download flips, make comments, like flips, and do pretty much any other basic action. Also, uploaded flips that did not receive any coins within a certain time frame were deleted from the gallery.
Nintendo ultimately made it harder for smaller creators to earn coins, while also simultaneously punishing them for underperforming. It sounds absolutely awful. It probably would have drawn the ire of many gaming journalists had it been released overseas. And very deservedly so.
And so, Flipnote Studio 3D went out with a whimper, if you could even call it that. It's hard to say which was more impressive: the original Flipnote's impact on the gaming community or 3D's complete lack thereof. They perfectly exemplify a hydrogen bomb versus a coughing baby. They also demonstrate that while the the original Flipnote Studio was undoubtedly a powderkeg, it still needed a spark. Unfortunately, Flipnote Gallery World was a sopping wet matchbook.
Thankfully, fans have dedicated themselves to preserving the wonderful creations born from these apps. The website Flipnote Archive is a repository of virtually all the flips ever uploaded to Hatena. According to its front page, it boasts 44 million flips from 1.2 million creators. All of this totals a hefty 12 terabytes of data.
Moreover, it's not just a bucket with flips dumped into it. Each flip is still attributed to its original creator. Each creator also still has their own page along with the years of their activity and their possible other aliases.
Unfortunately, it does not include any flips from Flipnote Gallery World. I am guessing that Hatena's security guidelines were much more lax than whatever hell Nintendo implemented into Gallery World, and so it was just not possible to collect them from those services.
Additionally, Flipnote Archive seems to be an overwhelmingly western effort. I have no idea exactly how users would have collected all these flips, but if it involved using a 3DS that was connected to the service, then western players would have had to get their hands on a Japanese 3DS with Flipnote Studio 3D downloaded. Perhaps archivists figured that the enormous effort required to obtain this last, smaller chunk of flips was just not worth it.
However, games preservationists are known to be some of the most determined and autistic (spoken as a compliment) people on the planet. Nothing short of imprisonment and death will stop their crusade. Therefore, I have a suspicion that whatever barriers stopped them were genuinely gargantuan and insurmountable.
Flipnote's story is far from over though. Such a robust little animation app will naturally garner diehard fans, and those fans are determined to spread their work far and wide. There are dedicated Flipnote content creators who post across Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms. Perhaps the phrase "Let's go gambling!" rings a bell? You can thank Flipnote Studio for the animation that the audio is sourced from.
As another example, I am attending a convention at the end of this month. One of the featured events is for Flipnote users to share their animations with one another. Keep in mind that these are coveted event slots that organizers have to compete for. If an event is selected for the convention, it means there is a hearty audience for it.
But maybe it's not just any community you want- it's a true-to-Hatena community. Amazingly, Sudomemo has you covered. It is a fan-run successor to Hatena with basically all the same bells and whistles. It takes a bit of tinkering to set up- if you don't already have Flipnote Studio downloaded, you will need to download a file from the internet. Once you have it, you need to input particular primary and secondary DNS codes into your DSi/ 3DS's internet settings. This will essentially reconfigure the "Flipnote Hatena" button on Flipnote Studio's home screen to direct you to Sudomemo rather than the now-defunct Hatena.
Unfortunately, Sudomemo only works with the original Flipnote Studio. Apparently, Flipnote Studio 3D's programming is too different from the original's to allow it to be compatible with Sudomemo. Honestly though, I doubt many people care. They are here for the friends and fun, not the color yellow or a third layer.
How does the saying go again? Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a ten-year old how to use animation software and he will make a dumb video of a fish shooting mobsters that he will show to his kids and grandkids for the rest of his life.
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You can visit Sudonemo here: https://www.sudomemo.net/
You can visit the Flipnote Archive here: Featured Flipnotes - Flipnote Archive
You can visit raxdflipnote's Youtube channel here: (17) raxdflipnote - YouTube
The cover image for this article is by rattlethatsail on DeviantArt: Flipnote frogs by rattlethatsail on DeviantArt
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