WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.070 --> 00:00:01.310 Welcome to Scribble Kibble. 00:00:01.310 --> 00:00:05.970 Today we’re going to take a look at a piece of art equipment called a light box or light 00:00:05.970 --> 00:00:06.970 pad. 00:00:06.970 --> 00:00:11.000 This is useful for traditional artists and traditional animators. 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:14.610 This model is a Huion LED Light Pad L4S. 00:00:14.610 --> 00:00:17.730 It costs about $40. 00:00:17.730 --> 00:00:23.019 The work area is slightly bigger than a typical piece of 8 x 11 printer paper. 00:00:23.019 --> 00:00:25.669 Some of these light pads come with a glove and pencils. 00:00:25.669 --> 00:00:28.050 Mine is a simpler package. 00:00:28.050 --> 00:00:34.420 Open the box and there’s a thank you card, manual, USB power cord, paper clip, and the 00:00:34.420 --> 00:00:36.280 light pad itself. 00:00:36.280 --> 00:00:39.370 This model is extremely thin and light. 00:00:39.370 --> 00:00:43.940 At first I was worried about breaking it, but it’s an acrylic surface instead of glass. 00:00:43.940 --> 00:00:52.710 It’s more flexible and stronger than it looks. 00:00:52.710 --> 00:00:56.039 It also has non-slip pads on the bottom. 00:00:56.039 --> 00:00:59.410 I was surprised that its power source is a USB cable. 00:00:59.410 --> 00:01:03.750 You can plug it into your computer, or into your cellphone charger, or into your car. 00:01:03.750 --> 00:01:08.040 I’ve seen some people complain about other light boxes saying the length of the power 00:01:08.040 --> 00:01:09.500 cable is too short. 00:01:09.500 --> 00:01:10.670 This one is not. 00:01:10.670 --> 00:01:13.510 It’s six feet long. 00:01:13.510 --> 00:01:17.540 Once it’s plugged in, tap the power button once to turn it on or off. 00:01:17.540 --> 00:01:24.329 Press and hold the power button without letting go to change brightness. 00:01:24.329 --> 00:01:30.530 So: what might you use a light pad for? 00:01:30.530 --> 00:01:35.980 Most artists are going to use it to turn sketches into clean line art, to transfer a drawing 00:01:35.980 --> 00:01:41.579 to a new type of paper (for example on to watercolor paper), or to trace stuff. 00:01:41.579 --> 00:01:44.570 You can also use a light pad for traditional animation. 00:01:44.570 --> 00:01:51.770 I’m drawing three key poses of a dragon sneezing to work with later on. 00:01:51.770 --> 00:02:03.320 The Huion L4S is bright enough to shine clearly through about five sheets of printer paper. 00:02:03.320 --> 00:02:05.869 Any more than that and it gets hard to see. 00:02:05.869 --> 00:02:15.390 It’ll shine through cardstock too. 00:02:15.390 --> 00:02:18.601 The silver paper clip slides onto any edge of the light pad. 00:02:18.601 --> 00:02:22.250 It is a tight fit so you have to use a bit of force to get it on. 00:02:22.250 --> 00:02:26.640 The clip is a bit difficult to use because it is so tight, but it will hold papers in 00:02:26.640 --> 00:02:29.080 place once you manage to get them under there. 00:02:29.080 --> 00:02:33.350 They don’t need to be that far beneath the clip for it to work, and the clip doesn’t 00:02:33.350 --> 00:02:35.580 leave any imprints on the paper. 00:02:35.580 --> 00:02:39.250 You may not even need the clip because even though the surface of the light pad is smooth, 00:02:39.250 --> 00:02:40.440 it is slip-resistant. 00:02:40.440 --> 00:02:49.560 The piece of paper directly touching the pad won’t slide around. 00:02:49.560 --> 00:02:52.310 Tracing an image is really easy with one of these. 00:02:52.310 --> 00:02:56.320 You can make clean line art out of a messy sketch quickly. 00:02:56.320 --> 00:02:59.640 Turn the light box off once you don’t need the sketch any more. 00:02:59.640 --> 00:03:00.780 There. 00:03:00.780 --> 00:03:08.200 Clean line art with no pencil lines or sketch marks. 00:03:08.200 --> 00:03:11.530 For animation, you definitely want to use the clip. 00:03:11.530 --> 00:03:16.480 Stack two of your keyframes together and adjust the brightness so you can see both. 00:03:16.480 --> 00:03:25.470 If the light is too bright you won’t be able to see your top drawing. 00:03:25.470 --> 00:03:27.500 Draw the in between pose. 00:03:27.500 --> 00:03:30.020 I don’t really have any issues at all with this light pad. 00:03:30.020 --> 00:03:31.020 There are no cons. 00:03:31.020 --> 00:03:38.680 It’s just a simple piece of equipment that works really well when you need to trace stuff. 00:03:38.680 --> 00:03:42.690 Or, y’know, draw a lot of traditional animation frames. 00:03:42.690 --> 00:03:50.260 I’m going to make another in between pose leading to the top of the inhale. 00:03:50.260 --> 00:03:55.560 The nice thing about the light pad is I can see motion arcs - for instance the arc the 00:03:55.560 --> 00:04:06.200 nose follows - by stacking keyframes on top of each other. 00:04:06.200 --> 00:04:12.250 If drawings have a lot of details it can be hard to see clearly through multiple papers, 00:04:12.250 --> 00:04:25.150 so it’s nice to be able to turn the light off and draw details more accurately by memory. 00:04:25.150 --> 00:04:29.720 The light pad is especially useful for frames that are close together. 00:04:29.720 --> 00:04:34.310 I want to draw an open mouth pose that is only slightly different from the original 00:04:34.310 --> 00:04:35.310 drawing. 00:04:35.310 --> 00:04:39.810 Being able to see the first picture lets me make sure the head is in the right position 00:04:39.810 --> 00:04:44.250 on the page. 00:04:44.250 --> 00:04:48.500 Same thing with the sneeze: I need three drawings that are fairly identical. 00:04:48.500 --> 00:04:52.480 For the most part I can quickly trace what is already there, even keeping the sketchy 00:04:52.480 --> 00:04:59.950 look by copying rough lines from the image underneath. 00:04:59.950 --> 00:05:09.160 Now if you wanted a clean animation, all you would need to do is use the lightbox to create 00:05:09.160 --> 00:05:14.040 final line art of each image the same way I did for the forward-facing dragon earlier. 00:05:14.040 --> 00:05:20.240 It’d be time consuming, but that’s traditional animation. 00:05:20.240 --> 00:05:30.130 I like the gritty sketchiness, so let’s scan all of this in and see what happens. 00:05:30.130 --> 00:05:39.570 By the way even after an hour the light pad did not get hot, since it uses LED light. 00:05:39.570 --> 00:05:42.930 My hand didn’t get sweaty and stick to the surface. 00:05:42.930 --> 00:05:49.860 So my favorite thing about this light pad is its lightweight portability, its non-slip 00:05:49.860 --> 00:05:52.690 surface, and the fact it doesn’t get hot. 00:05:52.690 --> 00:05:56.250 Oh yeah, and because it’s LED light it’ll last forever. 00:05:56.250 --> 00:06:01.700 You could leave it on all day and night for five years and it’d still work. 00:06:01.700 --> 00:06:04.240 That is the Huion Light Pad L4S. 00:06:04.240 --> 00:06:10.210 For more art product reviews, go to ScribbleKibble.com, click on the episodes page, and hit the Product 00:06:10.210 --> 00:06:11.590 Reviews button. 00:06:11.590 --> 00:07:53.340 See you next time!