Value For Money?

If I told you I was thinking of spending around £900 on a hole punch - would you think I was mad?

Last month I was considering buying one of the new iPad Pros. For now, that's probably a no, but I am thinking of buying something considerably lower tech and longer lasting - a hole punch. And it's kind of down to Apple...

It's not any old hole punch though - it's an Acme studio animation punch. These are used to punch holes in animation paper and animation cels used in traditional animation. Over the years there have been many different approaches, but Acme is the one that was used in Hollywood and eventually became the standard.

Although animating on paper is a rarity these days, some people are keeping it alive, and they're likely to be using Acme punched paper.

So what has this got to do with me, and why am I thinking of buying an Acme punch?

I do produce digital animation as part of my work, but I've started going back to basics and I'm relearning the things from the period I was at art college in the 1980s. It matters to me that these craft skills aren't lost, and I hope to get my daughter interested enough that I can teach her.

Like I wrote yesterday in my post about creative environments, you don't always need the expensive tools - and I could certainly do without an expensive punch. But I do have a reason for wanting one.

There are very few suppliers of traditional animation equipment left. I know of one in the UK, one in the USA, one in France, and one in Belgium. The Belgian company is mostly a reseller, but the other three have their own brand equipment, which includes the punches. (There are also suppliers in Japan who support the Anime production companies, but buying direct is complicated, and resellers add crazy markup.)

At the weekend I was browsing the website of the US supplier and they had a notice saying that they only have three Acme punches left in stock, and once they're gone they won't be making any more. That got me wondering about whether the others will eventually follow them.

These punches are pretty much impossible to find secondhand - I know I've been looking for one for years. I worry that if I don't get one soon, the opportunity may be gone forever.

So, what has Apple got to do with it?

I know that a lot of people don't understand why, but I'm still really annoyed about the iPad Pro advert where they crushed a bunch of creative tools. In the advert, towards the left was something that most people probably wouldn't recognise - a brown rectangle, on which there's a black disc, with a smaller white rectangle inside it. That is a traditional animation disc.

And that got me thinking. Do I want to give £2,000 to the richest company on the planet for a piece of technology that will last maybe five years, and at best always be a shallow imitation of the real world? Or do I want to give £900 to a small business for a piece of hardware that should outlast me?

What would you do?

This is post 29 of 31 for WeblogPoMo2024. My goal is to write and publish 31 posts in 31 days - with no set theme or plan.