Classical Animation - Getting Started - Supplies

On a recent poll, it seems that the crowd watching me on deviantART is mostly animators! Surprising to me, but very interesting none the less. Animation is a very complex art that will require very indepth areas of discussion, so I think the best method to undertake this on a blog is to break it down into tiny steps.

Getting Started
This is always the hardest part for any medium of expression, but it's made more daunting by all the technical aspects of Animation. Beyond the actual physical animation proccess there are many other steps of Pre and Post Production that I haven't even touched on! Someday I'll break down my entire production proccess for you, but in the mean time, Tony white has a great page breaking down the production process for animation here. Its a good read, and pretty interesting to see all the steps. but most people I talk to want to dive into the animation part, so I think this post will be about that.
Lets assume you are wanting to use good old fashioned classical animation on paper. Here is what you will need!

• An already written storyboarded and shot animatic to work from and filled out dope sheets. (I'll post about this in the future)
  
• Animation Paper. This can even be bond paper (printer paper) but really any paper that has a slight translucency to it will do. Don't get the most expensive stuff, thats pointless considering how much you will go through! You might be confused at first by the way the paper is labeled as 10f, 12f, and 16f. What the F stands for is "Field". I'll discuss the importance of that later on, but for now, dont worry about it!
• Peg Bar.There are 2 basic types of peg bars Acme and Round. Acme is the one with 2 flat pegs, and one round peg, and round is standard 3 hole punch. See the chart I yoinked from Cartoonsupplies.com.I recommend sticking with round to start, since the hole punches for acme are expensive! Very Expensive! Its cheaper to just punch your own bond paper
  
• A board or light box, or animation Disc. An animation disc is an investment. if you are sure you want to animate a lot, definitely get one! I recommend the Port-a-disc for the space limited animator. I have it, its beautiful and perfect! it fits 12f paper. It uses ambient light for the light box, or you can slap it over a light box if you feel the need. If you don't have a disc, just tape your pegbar to a slab of Masonite, or board, or a light box. Please note: you do not NEED a light box to animate! the animation is seen by "flipping" the pages, and viewing them. I only ever use light to clean up animation.
• Pencils! Blue, Red, and graphite! Blue is for Rough animation, Red is for camera information and graphite is for the final clean up. Sanford Col-erase pencils are the best for coloured ones. and (in my opinion) tombow makes the best graphite pencils.
• Tape. Low tack tape, and masking tape! Low tack is good for repositioning things on a rough if you need to cut something out and reposition it (easier than redrawing!) and masking tape is good for fixing torn peg holes. you can also get reinforcements for that, but why bother? (Guru has 2 boxes! LOL)

So theres all the physical supplies to get started! but theres all that pre and post production I skipped over! I found a website called yourresumesucks.biz that has some really good Free downloadable forms! I was very impressed! it includes not only the dope sheet, but many other forms for running a home studio! I customized mine, and built a single multi-page excel sheet for each of my scenes. It's a great thing to have!

Paperless PLZ!
Paperless work flow? Kudos on you for choosing an earth friendly animation system! I work totally paperless now, yes it is possible to do classical animation, paperless. This is a cheaper alternative to the classical animation. Buying paper, and hell, even storing the animation is sometimes a daunting task! I have several programs I use for my paperless animation

• Rough & clean animation: I use Plastic animation Paper for all my rough and clean animation. I have the pro version, but for simply rough animation the free version is perfectly fine! I cannont even begin to express how much I enjoy this program. its a light weight extremely friendly program to use! I recomend it to anyone and everyone! I've done a video tutorial on it and more will come.
  
• Clean animation alternative: If you only use a free version of PAP (plastic animation paper) then you can export the rough frames from PAP and then open them in photoshop, Gimp or ToonBoom and do the clean animation in there.
• Digital Ink and Paint: I use Toon Boom Studio for my digital painting. It's fairly easy to use. I've done a tutorial or 2 on this proccess so far, and I will do more!

So thats very basic, again I'll go more indepth later on in future posts. Please feel free to discuss anything in my posts, or promote your stuff in my new Forum! Its new, and needs love. <3