Having a great animation setup doesn’t need to cost a fortune. Decide on what type of animation you will pursue and buy its corresponding items.
Everyone Needs to Purchase and Create:
- Set of pencils (I’m a fan of the Eberhard Faber sets)
- few extra 2B pencils
- non-photo blue pencils for weekly drawing exercises
- Eraser (art gums are nice)
- an unlined sketch book whose binding makes it easy to scan
- an email associated with a wordpress account
- a youtube or vimeo account
Traditional 2D:
- light box (Artograph 10 Inch by 12Inch LightTracer Light Box $31 on amazon or at DickBlick)
Artograph Light Tracer
- non-photo blue pencils (If you want to easily clean up your work on a xerox machine. You sketch using the blue pencils, clean up your line using a dark ink, and photocopy the paper. The blue doesn’t photocopy and you are left with a nice, clean frame.
- 2 peg bars (or rulers with dowels glued into the holes) Make sure your peg bar holes will fit the size of the holes in your paper. The link here fits Xerox paper which is much cheaper than traditional animation paper.If you get paper without holes, you will also need a 3 hole punch that fits your pegs’ dowels. Tape one of the peg bars to your light box and the other to your scanner or to the bottom of the shooting bay. Can’t decide on where to place your peg bar? Richard Williams breaks down the good and bad of both locations.
- 3 hole punch computer paper (a 20 lb weight is good).
- rubber band
- 3 hole binder to hold your work in
- you can find lots of supplies at cartoonsupplies.com, but their prices are a bit higher than I think are warranted
Stop Motion:
- tacky wax is a nice to have but not necessary
- paper towels
- small spray bottle of glass cleaner (windex or something healthier) to clean your plexi of any traces of fingerprints, wax, or tape
- tape, string, other things to hold and stop gravity for a moment
- found objects (i.e., coins, paper – no lego people if you want to pass this course.)
- if you are shooting from home (or want a little nicer set up at school)…
- plexiglass 18” x 24”- if shooting straight on stand plexi up vertically and place the object you are animating against it to defy gravity with no retouching. If shooting straight down–like the bays in the lab–lay it flat over your background for easy clean up between frames. Keep an eye out for glare.
- 2 pieces of white foam core 24” x 36” – use as a backdrop and to bounce light
- 2 to 4 clamp lights from home depot ( $7 each) – to light your set
- if you are using paper:
- package of construction paper
- scissors
- tweezers
- if you want to use clay:
- van aken modeling clay – note, the stronger colors will turn your hands colors. That’s why you will also need paper towels and a hand cleaner, like Goop, if you chose to use clay.
- clay shapers (or other silicone tipped modeling tool)
- ClayAlley has an amazing array of supplies for sculpting, including dental tools – which are phenomenal
- if you want to create a puppet later in the course – no need to purchase now:
- armature wire
- plumbers epoxy (one that dries in 5-10 minutes)
- wing nuts, nuts, bolts (2 of each)
- peg board or additional piece of foam core (used as flooring for your puppet to walk over)
- small piece of soft foam
This could be you. Not this semester–unless you have a trust fund–but someday.
Animation Concepts 
