Create Your Own Cartoons with the Flipnote Studio DSi App

Think you can make a cartoon better than Nintendo's animation of Captain Falcon destroying a meteor with a single Falcon Punch? Check out the DSi's free Flipnote Studio app and try for yourself.

I'm not one to be easily swayed by novelty apps distributed by companies, but when I saw this brief flipbook animation of Captain Falcon destroying a freaking meteor with a single Falcon Punch, I was immediately sold on the Flipnote Studio app for the DSi that Nintendo released today.

Flipnote Studio basically does what you'd assume: it gives you an easy way to create animations that resemble those flipbook cartoons you always used to waste time doodling when you should have been memorizing your times tables. Or at least I did that. Anyone else?

The way it works is you draw a picture on the touch screen of the DSi, and when you're done with that, the app will display an outline on a new "page" for you to use as reference for your next picture, thus elimintating the real-world hassle of having to flip back and forth constantly. Once you've drawn all your parts, the app animates them. You can add sounds using the mic and even import photos to use (don't get naughty though).

You can share your works between DSis, or, even better, share them with the world on the flipnote.hatena site, which is where I stumbled on the best thing I've seen all day, the Captain Falcon animation. I'm not sure if anything could be better than that, but I'd like to see people try.