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HOW DO I TEST MY ANIMATIONS AT HOME?
A
line tester is something that you can shoot your drawings with and play them
back so you can see how the drawings are moving. The playing back of the animation
of these line drawings is called a line test.
In the old days (pre 1983) a line test would be shot on film. This meant that it would be at least 12 hours before you saw your animation after having shot it.
In the 1980's video line testers became available. This meant that you could shoot your drawings and see the results immedeatly. The problem was that they were big, expensive and cumbersome (and the qulity of the result was poor). During the late 1980's computer linetesters also became available. These were even more expensive, big and cumbersome than video line testers.
In the 1990's cheaper computers became available that you could do line tests on. The best were Amiga 1200 computers with extra memory (8 MB) and hard drives. They also needed a thing called a digitser (called a VidiAmiga 12) that plugs into the back of the computer and a video camera that attaches to the digitiser. The digitiser takes the video signal from the video camera and converts it into a signal that the computer understands. On the computer is a program called “Take 2”. With this we could shoot our drawings and play them back! You could also record to VHS tape strait from the Amiga.
They were quite simple to use (once you get the hang of them) and are cheap to set up. The basic problem with them now is that the Amiga 1200 computer, the VidiAmiga 12 digitiser and "Take 2" are no longer made. They can be bought second hand though. You should be able to set up an Amiga line tester using this equipment for less than £300.
You can buy Amigas from;
A lot of these components can still be obtained from;
or
There is now a PC version of "Take 2" avaliable called "Take 5". Have a look at;
users.skynet.be/cellsoft/take5/index.html
Nowadays it would be much easier to use a PC or a MAC computer. Connect an analogue video camera to your computer via an analogue video capture card (e.g. Matrox Marvel, snappy, snazzle etc.) or a digital video camera to a firewire card and use one of the programs below to shoot your animation. You could even use a “web cam”or a scanner, which will work out far cheaper than a video camera and a video capture card.
The best program to use for linetesting is DigiCel Flipbook (a free demo version comes with the book).
The next best I have found is Tapptoons.
Both of these are affordable and simple to use.
Check out the 2D Animation software links on the links page of this website for other line test software.
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