HELP - Looking for good light boxes, for animation and illustration

[Esn]

I know I need to get myself one of these things, but I have no idea what to look for when buying one or where to buy them.  So I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions.  Or are they no longer widely used in the digital age?

If anybody lives in Toronto and can recommend a particular store (or how to find one), that would be even nicer...

I'll admit, I'm not too hopeful of getting an answer (since I've never heard anybody here talk about light boxes), but I don't know where else to ask.

[Lockzor]

Make your own like i did.

I just used a box, a slab of glass and a light. It fits an A4 peice of paper comfortably. I can take photo's if you would like.

[Pieter]

I could be mistaking, but I believe Shayne once made a how-to-make-a-lightbox guide on the old forums.
As far as buying goes I don't have any advice, sorry.

[Lockzor]

I'll get my camera out today and take some photos

[Lockzor]

WARNING LONG POST WITH LOTS OF IMAGES

Hokay so here is my lightbox...

It's a cheap black box bought from a junk store. The box is very strong. It has a lid which I used a stanley knife to cut out a section that's about as big as an A4 peice of paper. The peice of glass is bigger than the gap and goes on TOP of the lid. I've used some really strong clear tape and super glue to affix the lid to the box and the glass to the lid.



As you can see the light is just a fluroescant thing only 5 watts. Dont use like 50 watts... you're eyes will hurt.



There is a hole in the box that the light just slips into



You can see here how i taped it, Lots of tape



This is how it looks when it's turned on



One layer of paper Illuminates well, This photo doesn't do it justice



And of course more importantly mulitple layers illuminate well



Feel free to ask any questions but it's pretty simple. The hardest thing to get would be a peice of glass the right size.

[H@m]

You could always got for something for fashionable. Make a table out of some milk crates, bar lights & a big sheet of glass. It also makes for an awesome piece of furniture for a garage or music studio.

[Esn]

Wow Lockzor, thanks for that post! I'm sure it could come in useful to people.

I think this thread would be a good addition to the tutorial forum, actually.

After quite a bit of searching in various places, I decided to buy this lightbox for $30 + $10 shipping:
 http://www.save-on-crafts.com/artograph.html

Some of the others I found were $200. Way too much.

I hope to use it for illustration (inking drawings without having to go over the original pencil lines), and of course for animation.  Would you believe that for the first animated film I tried to finish, I didn't have a lightbox (or a glass table) so I had to hold the paper up to the sunlight and draw that way? Really uncomfortable.

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One other thing: it helps to buy thin sheets of paper, so that the light penetrates through more "frames". It's not easy to find, but it's out there. I think ideally, animation paper should have about the thickness of those packs of lined paper that they sell to schoolkids (but of course it should be blank, not lined). I think that's about twice as thin as "normal" paper.

[Lockzor]

Yeah ive copied the Post over to the Tutorials section. $40 - That is a good deal! I'm even considering it. Is it very big?

As for the paper, I've found thin wads of A5 paper, but nothing A4.

[Pieter]

Certain marker papers are pretty thin and A4...

[adzy-2k6]

I'm lucky in that the part of the desk use is glass, so i can just stick my lamp under it. Very rarely use it though