How to scan a drawing for animation?
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
Blah asked:
I am just doing some hobby work, so I don’t have any of the expensive supplies that are available to actual animators or students.
I am just doing some hobby work, so I don’t have any of the expensive supplies that are available to actual animators or students.
What would be the easiest way to scan each frame, and keep the drawings consistent, i.e. make it so that the drawing is in the exact same place as the drawing scanned previously. I know people use peg bars, but I don’t have that. Is there something else I can use to keep the drawing in the same spot?
Anyway, your help would be very much appreciated!
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July 23rd, 2009 at 12:39 pm
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So, make your own, “peg bars.”
Get blank paper with three holes punched. If you don’t have a three hole punch, I’ll bet your teacher or someone in your school has one. It’s a pretty standard office supply.
Then, using bits of wooden dowels, glued into a board drilled with the holes in the exact location of the three holes, you can place a fresh sheet exactly on top of the previously drawn frame. You can then see the last frame as you draw the next one, in exactly where you want it.
For the next frame, pull out the bottom and then restack the last frame under the next fresh sheet. Continue the process for the entire film.
If you don’t want to take the time to build this, you can trace your fresh frame by taping them to a window, with the light shining through. Just make sure the fresh sheet is placed exactly and squarely over the previous one.
Still, the best way would be a light box with the pegs built on. One of these can be easily built, and, once made, the entire process of frame by frame animation becomes much easier and faster.
July 26th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Kansieo.com
If you don’t have the tools or the woodworking knowledge to build your own peg bar, a more make-shift solution would be to create a mask for your your scanner out of bristol (poster) board. Measure the bed of your scanner, and cut out a rectangle that matches perfectly. Make sure the rectangle you cut out sits in your scanner tightly, with no movement.
Take that rectangle, and cut a smaller rectangle in it that’s the size of your paper. Make sure rectangular hole you’re cutting out is just big enough so that the paper will fit in it, but not move around.
So now you’ve got a piece of bristol board that looks like a picture frame, where the outer edges match the size of your scanner and the inside edges match the size of your paper. Put the mask (frame) into your scanner, and tape it down. Now you can lay your paper down in the hole that fits your paper, and each paper will be in the same spot.
This keeps your scans registered (consistently in the same spot), but in order to keep your animation from being jittery and jumpy, your papers need to be registered while you’re drawing as well.