We built an Animation Desk

So, my friend and I built an animation desk! I got the idea to do it after stumbling upon this blog a couple months ago. Of course, with no tools or experience with wood I never thought it's actually happen. That's where my buddy Chris came in. He had both! And...did most of the actual building while I was the one who deciphered the blueprints and dictated the measurements.

Anyway!

Here are some pictures


Here's the finished desk in it's collapsed portable form. It was awesome because a lot of the measurements we did were based on guesses and it worked out perfectly!


We actually had to completely improvise the legs in the back that lock into the dowels, and it turned out to be the most sturdy part of the whole thing. But cutting that hole....was a pain....


The light fixture was really hard to find for cheap. I had just so happened to bring this gooseneck clip-on lamp with me and we decided to give see how well it would work as a backlight and:


SHAZAM!

SHAZAM!!!

So psyched!


Now, here's some technical stuff:



This is the blueprint we used to build it (found at the Hand-Drawn Animation Equipment blog)

One thing I wished it had come with when I was out buying stuff was an actual supply list to build that thing. So, here's what we needed.



24 x 48 (3/4 in. thick) piece of Aspen
From which we cut:

• 1 24 x 34.5 in. sheet (for the desktop [A])
• 2 9 x 1.5 in. pieces (for the part that you put the dowels in that the back legs rest on [D])
• 2 21.75 x 2 in. pieces (for the sides of the bottom structure [C])
  

3/4 x 6ft x 6 in plank of...I don't remember what kind of wood it was...but it doesn't really matter...it looked similar to the aspen
From which we cut:

• 2 15.5 x 1.5 in. pieces (for the back legs [B])
• 1 32.5 x 1.5 in. piece (for the bottom part of the back legs that rests on the dowels [E])
• 2 34.5 x 2 in. pieces (for the front and back of the bottom structure [F])
  

1/2 in. dowel rod
2 1.5 in. hinges
2 3 in. hinges
4 corner braces
4 regular braces

Tools, and such
Jigsaw
Table Saw
Wood Glue
Clamps
Drill


That's it, really.

All of the parts cost me $50 in total. As opposed to buying one for $300-$500. The most expensive thing I had to buy was the disk which was $102 (which includes shipping).

The Hardest part, obviously, was cutting the 16.5 in. hole in the desktop. We actually cut it a little too big (...and lumpy...), but the disk fits and spins well. It just has a bit of wiggle room.

Till next time,
Marty

I made a capture station today

So, I'm roaming the internet trying to find good ideas as to how to rig up a cheap capture station when I stumble upon Sunny's Blog, and his post on how he converted a lightbox into a capture station. Awesome, right?!

So, here's pictures of mine. It's not exactly like Sunny's, but I kept to the same basic idea.

I made it out of a beat up old piece of foamcore that I found lying around, some duct tape. It looks really crooked in this picture....but that's really fixable...




Cut holes in the side and taped pieces of vellum to help distribute the light.

The only part of this I had to buy was this webcam, which worked out nicely because I used parts of its package to mount it snugly to the top.


Here it is with the lights on. I tested the video feed and it works remarkably well!

Problem is I don't seem to have a program to actually capture animation with. TVP animation only seems to want to acquire images from a scanner, and Premiere CS3 doesn't seem to capture anymore. Of course, I don't know my way around those programs very well, so it's possible that I just missed it.

Another Mermaid

GET IT?! She's acting like a fish! HA!


I started drawing mermaids again. I think this is the last one for a while. I'm still not all that great with Watercolors, but I rather like how this one turned out. Probably the last mermaid for a while.

Lord Bravery

Playing around with watercolors...

Interrogation

And with that....I'm done