Acrylic Peg Pad

UPDATE: Now available for purchase here!

I asked Theo Gray to make me this 9.25 x 12″ acrylic peg pad (as opposed to peg bar) so I could do some quickie pencil animations on my glass drawing board, which I use as a cheap light table (see photo above).

Peg pad with punched graph paper under punched plain paper, in case I want grid lines for reference.

Instead of the traditional acme animation pegbar, which requires expensive pre-cut animation paper or/and a $500 hole punch, I wanted 3 round pegs that would line up with a standard inexpensive 3-hole punch. I specified clear acrylic, so I could scan drawings through it, so they’d stay in perfect register.

Peg pad on scanner
For larger drawings I rotate the peg pad on the scanner, but then I have to also rotate the resulting images, and I was impatient when I took these photos.

It works great. It’s small, light, and simple. I punch holes in cheap printer paper and off I go. Here’s a thing I made with it, inspired by Preston Blair:

Clearly this could be better, but it’s the fault of the animator, not the peg pad.  I need to practice my hand-drawn animatin’ to improve. Now I can!

We can make more of these peg pads if it looks like there’s enough demand to sell 5 to 10 of them. Would you buy one for $20? If so, we’ll make them and put them on the e-store. What say ye?

 

 

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Author: Nina Paley

Animator. Director. Artist. Scapegoat.

4 thoughts on “Acrylic Peg Pad”

  1. hi Nina (et al)
    I’d TOTALLY pay $20 for that ingenious invention! Hopefully animators (illustrators too!) out there will feel the same way, enough anyway to make it worthwhile.

    best
    George E

  2. I was rooting around for something to align three-ring binder punched paper for animation the other day. I didn’t think of using Lucite so it works on the light box.

    Brilliant! Lovely! Ordered.

  3. Hi Nina,

    Nice going and great idea!
    I followed the link to try to buy one but it says “expired”.

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