10 Essential Art Supplies for the Traditional Animator

Non-Photo Blue Pencils

With all our recent talk of traditional animation in Flash, I thought it might be a good idea to take a look at some essentials to have around the home (or studio) if you're going to work on actual traditional, cel-painted animation. Top on my list is non-photo blue pencils. These pencils are great for doing your initial sketches, because they're just the right shade of pale blue that they tend not to show up on copies when you're transferring your work from paper to clear cels.

If I'm working on an actual hand-drawn animation instead of digital animation, I usually do my motion captures, my basic rough work, and then my detail work in non-photo-blue pencil before retracing with a well-sharpened 2B pencil.