It’s been my goal for some time to put together a hand-drawn animation pipeline/station, if you will.  I’ve been acquiring the different things equipment necessary: animation disk, the camera stand, the software, but a big piece of the puzzle is the animation desk.  Now, you can buy animation desk online, but a great part of animation’s history: building your own animation desk, is an all but forgotten hobby.

So, I began making plans.  I wanted to build the whole thing for about $100 dollars.  Yeah, sounds cheap, but it can be done.

My only prerequisite for the project was to find a small hard wood (none of this particle board stuff) computer desk and convert it to an animation desk.  I eventually found the exact desk I was looking for on Craig’s List.   I passed up a ton of larger desk for something small because I didn’t want it to be bulky and heavy.  The desk I purchased is 44″ wide and 26″ deep.

Here’s my initial design that my Dad altered appropriately.

Step 1: Secure a foundation to build the new table top on.  We used 1″x4″ and 1″x 2″ pine for this.  These were screwed in from underneath.

Step 2: I wanted to have the option of adjusting the angle of my desk, so we made slots from the 1″x 4″.

Step 3: We cut the slide arm from a 1″x 2″.

Step 4: For the slide arm to work properly, we needed to a spacer.

Step 5: Before drilling holes, we used a nail gun to hold the spacer in place.

Step 6: We drilled our hole to fit a 5/16″ bolt and fit the the slide in place.

Step 7: We then drilled holes and fastened the slide arm in place using a 1/4″ bolt for the frame side and a 3/8″ bolt for the slide.

Step 8: Click Copy and Paste to duplicate the other side.  Ta Daaaa!

At it’s highest, the desk top sits at a 45 degree angle.  This design doesn’t allow for it to lay flat, but it can angle down to around 20-25 degrees if necessary.  It’s comes in handy when transporting the desk.

Step 9: Here’s Dad nailing a 1″x 2″ to add support.

We added a second support at the bottom as well.

Step 10: We lined up the 48″x 24″ table top and nailed it down.

Step 11: We penciled the 16 1/2″ diameter circle needed to fit the Alan Gordon animation disk.

Step 12: We drilled four holes to help us when cutting it out.

Step 13: I got to work cutting that hole.  I was so afraid I was going to cut it wrong.  This hole is the most important part of the desk cause if cut wrong, the disk will not spin freely.

Step 14: After cutting the hole, we decided to add one final support to strengthen the center of the table top.

Step 15: We added these blocks to strengthen the hold just to make sure it would not slip.

I put the animation disk in place.

Step 16: I spinned the disk to find the spots where it would stick and sanded those down till it could spin freely.

This only took us a total 5 hours to build.  All the credit goes to Dad, who is a great carpenter, and who also owned all the correct tools necessary to build this desk.  I could not have built this on my own.

Here’s the desk set up in my office.  I’ve added all the proper things every traditional animation desk needs.  I plan to stain the wood to match the rest of the desk and add trim to the table top.  I’m deciding if I want to finish the top with wood veneer or formica.  I’m not sure what would look best.

I would love to here everyone’s thoughts and questions.  Plus, how do you think I should finish off this table?

In a future posts, I’ll outline my process of animation from this desk into the computer.

With home life and work, it’s been hard to find a moment to post anything here.  AM has kicked off and the experience is greater than I could’ve imagined.  I liken it to Facebook, except it’s much more video/web cam driven and everyone on the site is a student of animation!  My Class 1 mentor is Joe Mandia.  He’s currently animating online games for Sony Online entertainment, but his resume includes feature animation at Disney and Sony Imageworks.  Joe is a super cool guy and it’s been great getting to know him.

As for school itself, I’m finishing up week 3.  I actually have homework to finish that’s due tomorrow by 2pm central.  I’ll start posting this work shortly when I find the time to gather the files, but in a nut shell, we’ve been drawing lots of human poses.  This week’s assignment was to pose the CG character, Stu, in a pose that expresses “excitement.”  The idea behind the assignment is to learn our to communicate attitudes through one drawing or pose.

Also, this week we have our first animation assignment: the infamous bouncing ball.  With squashing or stretching the ball’s shape, we have to animate it to bounce like a basketball.  Next week, we take the same CG ball and animate it to bounce like a bowling ball and a ping pong ball.  The question being answered is: What is the difference between these very different balls and how do you animate them to convincingly express the differences?

Fun stuff.  I love it to no end.  I’ll be showing this stuff off very soon.  I will also try to get picks of my new old school animation desk up on this blog later today!  Yes I know, animation used to be made with graphite marks on paper.  Sounds crazy, but is true.

Rio

Hi everyone,

I’ve made the transition from Blogspot to WordPress for one simple reason, I want everyone to be able to comment without having to sign up to be a member.

Another change is the scope of this blog.  I will now include not only my Animation Mentor progress, I am now including everything I do as an animator from my sketchbooks, freelance work, and personal animation studies.

And one other bit of news to mention, I’ve started one other blog solely devoted to the works of professional animators that inspire me and from which I’m learning personally from.  It is aptly titled, “Drawings in Motion.”  You can link directly to it from this site of course.

Thanks for spending a few minutes of your day to read what’s going on in my world.