Where to SCAN animation paper?

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Where to SCAN animation paper?

Hey what's up,

Me and a group of friends have completed the animation aspect of our short animated film - including clean up. Now, we need a way to scan our drawings into the computer to colour them in Toon Boom.

Does anyone know somewhere like a Kinkos or something, that will scan 10.5x12.5 animation paper? (Meaning, they would need a ledger 11x17 size scanner). Most places only have 8.5x11 scanners for self serve. The output file type should be .jpeg or targa.

We tried kinkos but it was extremely over priced and they could only output PDFs. We've also considered just buying an 11x17 scanner ourselves.

Any suggestions would be highly appreciated, thanks.

Thanks alot! I'll check those out right away.

Something else you may want to consider is "scanning" your drawings using a digital still camera mounted on a copystand. In most cases even inexpensive digital cameras can achieve good image quality at 300 DPI which is fine for line art . Not a video camera because in most cases consumer level video cameras can't acheive high enough resolution when scanning artwork. Look on eBay for used copystands.
Use an animation field guide and a "T" straight edge to carefully align a metal peg bar on the base of the copystand so it is perfectly centered with the camera . Then tape down the peg bar securely so it won't move from it's centered position. (although if you get really ambitious you could use a router tool to cut a groove for a ruled metal peg bar so the bar could be used to slide back and forth for simple East/West pan moves , like on an old-style animation camera rig. Use a ruler to carefully mark the Center position for the middle peg on the peg bar so after shifting the bar east or west you can always get back to perfect center. ) One of the attaced images shows this sort of arrangement, though the camera stand shown was only used for shooting pencil tests, not final image scans, so the camera shown is a consumer level Canon video camera. For high-res. captures use a digital still camera.

The most important thing to have besides the properly aligned pegbar is a glass platen to press down on the drawings so that the glass will flatten-out the surface of the paper so the camera won't pick up any wrinkes or creases on the paper.

Something like this : Glass Platen for Copystand.

Using a digital camera on a copystand to capture images of your drawings will not be as fast as using an Auto Document Feed attachment on a scanner, but maybe a bit faster than using a flatbed scanner. Price it out and you may find that it's cheaper than buying an 11 x 17 flatbed scanner (the good ones, like the Epson 10000-XL Graphic Arts scanner are in the $2,500 range ). Especially if you can pick up the copystand and glass platen used on eBay or at a local camera store. You probably already have a digital camera that would be usable. You can either capture the images directly to the memory card in the camera , then transfer the jpegs over to your computer for coloring in whatever digital ink & paint software you have , or some digital cameras can be plugged in directly to your computer with a USB or Firewire connection and the images can be captured directly into your ink & paint program .

Also, take a look here for Do It Yourself Animation Copy Stand design. If you made one yourself along these lines then all you would need would be the glass platen for flattening the paper prior to taking an exposure .

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The folks at HELIX Digital Studio could help you out . I've worked with them and they are very good. Prices are reasonable. Only drawback is you'd have to ship them the artwork .

http://www.helixstudio.com/xhtml_site/profile.html

They do scanning, digital paint , composite , etc.

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Here's another digital ink & paint service that has a good reputation:

http://www.pipanimation.com/raw%20html.data/Components/service.html

You can get a bid on the job from both HELIX and PIP , then calculate if you'd be saving enough money by doing the scanning yourself to justify purchasing a large format flatbed scanner .

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