I thought i would be the first to post a review of the still pending, Flip Note Studio for DSi. I can do this because i have been hands on with the Japanese "Moving Memo" and tried all it's aspects. So here goes:
Flip Note Studio will likely be the first app to the DSi shop which is not a clock or calculator. It will also be one of the most enjoyable additions in a long time. For those who don't know what it is, FNS is an application which let's you make your own animations on the DSi system. It works similar to if you had a pad of post-its, and drew a differing picture on each page, then flipped through it quickly to make an "animation". The DSi version of this concept however is much deeper. For one, pad of paper is fine but you don't have any guidelines on what to draw on the next page so animations tend to come out a bit sloppy. With FNS you can have an image of the previous few pages on the current page to help in the creation of said page. The outlines can either be there strictly as guidelines or actual solid lines in the new page. Additionally, you get 3 colors to draw with, black, blue, and red aswell as a few settings for your current writting implement that include small, medium, big tip, semi-transparent shade, and squiggly line. With all these tools at your disposal it's easy to expresse creativity in clever little animations which by the way can be as long or short as you want. It doesn't end there though. After you are finished with the drawing aspect of your creation, you can add sound via the DSi mic. You can also spped the sound up or slow it down to make it sound more like a noise rather than a voice. Another option in FNS is to use the camera to take pictures and string them together in a similar fasion to what was previously described. Unfortunately, This otherwise cool option is ruined by the fact that you are still restrained to the black, blue, red color palette resulting in nearly unrecognizable pictures in most cases. When you have a totally finished animation, you have a few options. you can save to the DSi's internal memory, save to SD card(thank god) or save as a .gif image to be recognized by a PC. any noise connected to an animation will not carry over to computer. When you have a creation all saved your ready to dive into one of the biggest aspects of FNS, the online sharing area. Here you can post your creations to a very Mario vs. Donkey Kong-esque server. you can post it as something someone can download and edit or something just for viewing. People can then rate you creation. You can also browse other's animations and download what you like. The server is relatively fast and animation downloads are very speedy.
All in all it's hard to bash FNS for anything considering it's so awesome and the fact that it's free. It is ultimately a welcome addition to the DSi shop and one I truly can't wait to arrive.
9/10
