What are some ways to take better Flixels?

Done right, a Flixel can be a thing of mesmerizing artistic beauty or hilarity. Done wrong, they can lead to rips in the fabric of space-time. Luckily, it's not hard to take great Flixels once you 'get it'. One of our talented Flixographers (@RyanColeman) wrote a great guide to Flixography , which we'll summarize here

1. Choose the right setting/scene

Consider what you'd like to capture; is it a busy scene where you'd like to isolate some specific motion, or a fully animated scene with an interesting loop effect?

2. Make sure you're steady!

Arguably the most important aspect, especially when creating cinemagraphs. It helps immensely to rest your device on something solid during the capture. Failing that, it's also a good idea to have a solid static background behind whatever it is you'll be animating - solid backgrounds make it easier to hide stability imperfections.

3. Capture and tweak your image to create seamless looping

Since Ryan's article was written, reverse-loop has now become the new default behaviour for Flixel. The key to creating a quality Flixel is for the animation to be seamless. Sometimes a reverse loop can look silly, so in those cases you can change the "Loop" setting to forward, and use the "Trim" feature to edit the start/end timing to create a seamless loop.

Hopefully that helps! Feel free to share your own Flixel tips in the comments