Page 8 - pg_1955_08

The second of a series of articles sp eci ally
d esigned for all who are inter ested in this b1·anch
of cinematog1·aphy by a professional cartoonist
w hose w ork appears in the national press
Cartoon

Film Work

by Brian White
An easily made tracing desk
with 40-watt pearl lamp

OR your first attempt at animation you will need a tracing
F desk as shown above. If you are working in a room
where the light is too bright for tracing purposes, you
will find that by holding a piece of cardboard over your work
to shield the top light, you can see to trace quite well.
Our la:st article on cartoon film work gave a brief outline
of how animation is handled in a film studio. As this method
is beyond the resources of most amateurs and would also take
too much time, I am going to suggest using an older method
which is cheaper and far more suitable for the use of amateurs
working in black and white and using sub-standard film sizes.
If your camera has not a single picture turn it can be geared
down, and we will describe later how this can be done.
For the moment we will proceed with the business of
animation and leave the camera work until later. We will
presume that at this stage you have made a tracing desk of
sorts and that you have some thin smooth drawing paper cut ·
to size or some good quality duplicating paper, get paper
without a watermark if possible, you will also need an office
type punch. The sheets of paper should all be puncbed in
the same place. This can best be done by fixing the punch
to a board. After you have centralized the paper in the
punch, put a stop for the paper at one end, using either a
block of wood, a nail or mak a mark
You can have any scr en size you like, but I would suggest
keeping it between 7" x 5! " and 8 ~ " x 6f '. Mark it out on
your tracing desk, keeping it c ntral and at least an inch
above the pegs. .
You must remember that in this instance your cartoon film
will be black Indian ink line drawings with .some solid blacks.
l
The line work needs to be simple and fairly thick, if you have