Flickering is bad, here is how to eliminate it.
When creating components, you sometimes need
to constantly redraw your component for animation
effects etc.
The problem is that the surface you are drawing to is visible,
so the user can actually watch the component being drawn.
The solution is to have your own procedure for drawing
the Component's image to an offscreen canvas, which you
then DRAW to its canvas. You simly call this
procedure every time you want to update the appearence
of your component without invalidating, and you can
still call this procedure from Paint.
If you just want an existing form / panel to stop flickering,
try setting Panel1.DoubleBuffered := True;