The Evolution of Animation Stands

How far have we come in animation stands?

What's an animation stand you ask?

It's a custom built desk meant for animating characters on a specific type of paper meant for animation. The paper is a few centimeters larger than your standard photocopy paper you get from stores like Staples or London Drugs.

The desk seen above is one example of an animation desk. But it's not just for holding your papers on pegs, or lights underneath the translucent white acrylic sheet but if you see what's next to the paper, you know it's something that's actually vital for your animations.

On the left is reference photos or whatever the hell is needed for your animations. 

On the right is an exposure sheet. That's a piece of document that allows you to time your animations and dialogue to the beats.

Nowadays, animation, both 2D and 3D, is now done on the computer.

But what's interesting is that when companies like Hanna-Barbera and Disney started using computers for ink and paint, they still did animation the old fashioned way. Maybe it's because the computers used at the time, even though they were more powerful and more expensive than consumer PCs, didn't have everything needed to replace the old school animation desk.

WACOM tablets did exist back then but none of them used screens for professional animation purposes. 

I mean, Wacom Touch screens did exist back in the early 90s but almost all of those used those goddamn passive matrix LCDs and were mostly used in Tablets sold to government, education, and medical fields.

Nowadays, all our animation is done on state of the art machines with a state of the art animation screen:

A WACOM CINTIQ!!!!

The above photo isn't my workstation. This is something I pulled from the Internet but It looks as if almost every photo of people's home workspace for animation is always going to be a laptop connected to a Wacom Cintiq via HDMI or Mini-Displayport. Why laptops instead of desktops? Not much desk space for a full tower.

I'm one of the few animators who actually uses a Desktop, and a Custom Built one for my own animations, albeit with a smaller Cintiq. Take a look below:

Yes. This is my Custom Built PC I've been talking about. This is my Maverick Warhawk PC.

The photo I have however is outdated. For one, I have 3 Monitors on my desk. The MSI, the Acer, and my Wacom ONE Creative display.

Also, This photo was taken when I had my ZOTAC Twin Edge RTX 3060 GPU installed. I now use a GIGABYTE EAGLE RTX 4080 GPU.

Anyway, back to Computers and 2D Animation. We're now at the point our animation desks are just PC's or Mac's connected to a Wacom Cintiq either as our primary or secondary display.

And the software we use for animation greatly differs from Artist to artist.

For me, I primarily use Toon Boom Harmony Premium as my choice of animation Software for 2D Animation. I did at one point switch to Adobe Animate but the software offered little of what I want in an animation software package.

Ignore the Activate Windows Watermark. This screenshot was taken before I bought my license key for Windows 11 Pro.

Also what's not seen is my secondary screen which is where I actually draw and animate my characters.

Just wanted to point that out. 

Update as of February 2024:

As of January 2024, my MSI monitor is now busted. I've been getting these horizontal lines on the bottom and well, after disappearing, the lines came back and more assimilated than ever.

Update as of August 24 2024:

The above image of my PC is outdated as I've since moved bedrooms, mounted a third monitor, and changed the internal hardware of my PC.