My Video Pencil Tester

[Herb Montes]

To cut down on the wear of my scanner I decided to build a video pencil tester. This way I can use my scanner just for the cleaned up animation I'm importing into Toon Boom. The pencil tester will interface with my laptop through a video digitizer which plugs into the USB port of the laptop. One thing I found while setting this up was the video camera's small image chip required a long distance to capture a 12 inch wide field even with a wide angle lens ( a 12.5mm). My smaller copystand with the 24" column was not tall enough so I got my big Polaroid MP-4 copystand out of storage. I ended up setting the camera almost 4 feet above the animation pegboard to get enough of the 12 inch field in the video image. As you can see in the picture the 5 foot column almost reaches the ceiling even though the stand is sitting on a 2 foot high table. The video camera is almost dwarfed by the copystand which was made for larger and heavier cameras. The translucent plexiglass pegboard is mounted on a frame above the copystand base to allow lights underneath so several layers of animation on paper can be captured. The MP-4 stand cost me $100 at a local camera collectors show. The video camera was purchased from Supercircuits online for $50. The lens was found on eBay for $10. So it cost less than $200 for this setup minus the cost of the laptop.

http://www.hmontes.com/Images/vidtester01.jpg

http://www.hmontes.com/Images/vidtester02.jpg

http://www.hmontes.com/Images/vidtester03.jpg

[Afraser]

Nice looking setup you got. I should look into something like that myself. It took me a week to scan all the frames on a 3 second ball bounce. Then again who ever said Animation was instant gratification.

[Herb Montes]

Scanners can be slow by comparison. But they are best for final high quality scans. The digitizer I used is this one:

http://www.cooldrives.com/griiiusb11au.html

It plugs right into a USB port and acts like a Twain device so any application will detect it. It seemed to work okay with Monkeyjam. I could even plug a VHS video player into it so I can grab frames or video clips from tape onto my computer.