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For People Crazy About 2D Animation!

Acme Punched! is for people crazy about 2D animation. It may be enjoyed by beginners and others, but it is aimed at animators who know already something about the process of animation and the basics of character animation. In large part, it will attempt to provide a deep look into the problem solving that goes on in my head as I work out a scene, often in step-by-step posts that I will sometimes enter in "real time", without knowing in advance what the outcome will be. Mistakes and false starts will not only be included but emphasized, so that the creative process of animation will be portrayed realistically. And, while my own bias is for 2D drawn animation, many of the effects and principles discussed here can apply to CGI 3D animation as well. I hope the blog will prove useful and instructive for all.

-Jim Bradrick

Thursday, May 30, 2013

No. 40, Scanner Trouble, Part 2: My Solution

If you recall, I had complained here about the fact that my upgrade to Mac OS 10.8, known as Mountain Lion, had rendered my Mustek large format scanner useless: no drivers available!

My scanner was, in the words of another online complainant, no better than a doorstop--a dead weight.

My goal was to try to find a fix for this other than replacing the scanner itself.

First, of course, I tried software.  Nothing worked, including VueScan, where I actually talked to the owner, who said that scanner drivers are notoriously badly written.  Mustek's website said to go to Apple and get a driver from them, but there was nothing there.

Then I thought: what if I could get an old Mac that was still running on an earlier operating system, and dedicate it to the scanner?  And that is what I did.  The scanner is now paired with an iMac running Snow Leopard.  I did still have to download a driver for that, but it worked.

The Mountain Lion is tamed!


Now I am happily back in business!

A special thanks to David Nethery, who posted a comment just a few days ago suggesting both Vue Scan, which he didn't know I had tried, and the fact that Brother makes a couple of scanners that might have done the job for me, had I found it necessary to replace the Mustek.
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  1. David June 15, 2013 at 7:38 AM

    Well, yes, that's a good solution , too , especially if you can find an older Mac at a good price that can be a dedicated Scanner workstation.

    I worked at a studio where all the artists were using Macs , but the scanner (Fujitsu fi-4750 ) had drivers that worked ONLY with Windows PC . No Mac drivers. So we purchased an inexpensive Dell PC to do nothing except handle the scanning. Once the drawings were scanned the files were easily transferred to the Macs for digital ink & paint.

    It is amazing to me that most scanning software/drivers are so bad . And it doesn't seem to matter if it's Mustek or Brother with their $200 11" x 17" scanners or the super expensive Fujitsu 11" x 17" ADF scanners that cost $4,000 or more : all of them have either badly written drivers or drivers with severe limitations (such as PC only , no Mac support) . The only good one I know of is the Epson-Scan driver that comes with the Epson 10000XL and Epson GT-20000 11 x 17 scanners. But I've settled on using VueScan because it has so many image adjustment options and produces really high-quality scans which I then import into my animation app (TVPaint) . I'm sorry to learn that VueScan didn't work for your Mustek.

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