The Snowman and The Snowdog

Pencils sorted by colour (© Rare Day)

Pencils sorted by colour (Image © Rare Day)

The Snowman

I know, Christmas is over, but the weather is still fairly wintery and it’s just starting to get warmer now, so you might forgive me if I wrote about snowmen. Since 1982 Channel 4 has been showing The Snowman every year for Christmas. It’s a 26-minute animation drawn using pencils.

A blue Prismacolor pencil at work (© Rare Day)

A blue Prismacolor pencil at work (Image © Rare Day)

I don’t think The Snowman is very well known outside the UK, but if you’re not on the British Isles you might know another animation from the author Raymond Briggs: When the Wind Blows.

Are these Caran d'Ache pencils? (© Rare Day)

Are these Caran d’Ache pencils? (Image © Rare Day)

According to the Cumberland Pencil Museum, where you can see a making of video, it has been drawn using Derwent Cumberland pencils.

A Mars Lumograph in the Lupus Films Studio (© Rare Day)

A Mars Lumograph in the Lupus Films Studio (Image © Rare Day)

The sequel

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the animation Channel 4 made a sequel: The Snowman and The Snowdog. When I first heard about the sequel I was sceptical and didn’t expect it to be hand drawn using pencils, but to my surprise it’s hand made using pencils. The sequel cost £2 million and according to a documentary about the making of the sequel 200 000 sheets of paper and 5000 pencils were used.

Prismacolor 20044 blue (© Rare Day)

Prismacolor 20044 blue (Image © Rare Day)

In a documentary, also shown on Channel 4, you can see all sorts of pencils being used in the studio in North London where the cells were hand drawn. I was surprised to see fairly few Derwent Cumberland pencils1. The pencils visible in the documentary don’t have to be representative of those used for the animation, but the pencils you get to see in the documentary are not from Derwent – they are mainly Prismacolor pencils. The 20044, an eraser-tipped blue pencil, seems to be particularly often used for outline animations2. I believe the reason blue is being used is because cameras or copiers will ignore this colour or shade of colour, so that sketch lines don’t need to be erased and the final black lines can just be drawn over the sketches3. You can also see some Caran d’Ache pencils, Staedtler’s Mars Lumograph and two mechanical pencils, which I think were both Pentels.

Some of the pencils in the home of Raymond Briggs (© Rare Day)

Some of the pencils in the home of Raymond Briggs (Image © Rare Day)

Some scenes were filmed in Raymond Briggs’ House where many Derwent Cumberland pencils were visible and where you can also see him using a Staedtler Mars Lumograph.

 

Composer Ilan Eshkeri is using a red and blue pencil during recording at Abbey Studios (© Rare Day)

Composer Ilan Eshkeri is using a red and blue pencil during recording at Abbey Studios (Image © Rare Day)

The images in this blog post have been taken from Rare Day‘s documentary How the Snowman Came Back to Life. I believe that the use of the images shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

The Snowman and The Snowdog (© Lupus Films, Rare Day)

The Snowman and The Snowdog (Image © Lupus Films, Rare Day)

  1. I would have thought that Derwent Cumberland would have an interest in sponsoring this movie – 5000 pencils wouldn’t have been a lot for them. [↩]
  2. If that’s the right word. [↩]
  3. I first read about this when I discovered Staedtler’s non-photo-blue pencils. [↩]

Sharpening a Wopex …again

My previous experience with KUM sharpeners wasn’t very good. Some of the models I have are good, some are not so good and overall I usually prefer sharpeners from other brands.

You might remember that the Staedtler Wopex is a difficult pencil to sharpen. Nevertheless, I like it so much that on an average day it is my most used pencil. Even though sharpening it with a knife yields good results I thought I should try sharpening the Wopex in KUM’s Automatic Long Point 2M, a sharpener I haven’t used in a while because of the unsightly marks it leaves at the base of the exposed graphite1. To my surprise I got fantastic results when I used it to sharpen a Wopex.

KUM’s Automatic Long Point 2M and Staedtler's Wopex

I get best results if I align the Wopex with the top of the sharpener during the second step. If you have a Wopex and the Automatic Long Point 2M try them out. My Long Point sharpener performs much better than the dedicated Wopex sharpeners I have.

Pencil talk has a review of KUM’s Automatic Long Point 2M.

  1. These marks are one of the reason why I prefer the Deli 0635 or the Eisen 402. [↩]

350 years pencil making craft

Right hand side: Dr. Konstantin Czeschka (Image © Bayerischer Rundfunk)

To celebrate 350 years of Bleiweißsteftmacherhandwerk1 the Franconian and Bavarian regional news reported live from Staedtler’s factory on 25 September 2012. The reports were only a few minutes long.

Leads (Image © Bayerischer Rundfunk)

Dr. Konstantin Czeschka, Chief Technology & Production Officer, and Axel Marx, Managing Director, talked about the history of the pencil and included these interesting details:

 

  • The graphite used for pencil leads is ground to particles whose size is in the range of a micrometer, one millionth of a metre.
  • In 1900 there where 23 companies manufacturing pencils in Nuremberg. They employed 10,000 employees.
  • One machine, shown on TV, can produce 1000 leads per minute.
  • The pencil leads are heated to 1000°C
  • The leads seem to be made in Nuremberg, but the pencils seem to be assembled in their factory in Neumarkt.
    I thought Staedtler’s mechanical pencils are made there, but didn’t expect their pencils to be made there, too. I mentioned Neumarkt in a previous blog post when I wrote about the ONLINE All Wood Marone. ONLINE is based in Neumarkt, too, as is e+m Holzprodukte.
  • Producing a pencil is a fairly automated process. You only need about 1-2 seconds of human labour time. 100 years ago about one minute was needed, 200 years ago it was about an hour.
  • The price of graphite is expected to rise. One of the reasons is that it is needed for manufacturing batteries for electric cars.

The Noris being painted (Image © Bayerischer Rundfunk)

You can find reviews of products from e+m Holzprodukte at Lexikaliker and Lung Sketching Scrolls.

The images in this blog post have been taken from Frankenschau and Abendschau. I believe that the use of the images shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

 

  1. the craft of making pencils – Bleiweißsteft is what the Bleistift (German for pencil) was called during the 17th century [↩]

Staedtler Welt

End of July I visited Staedtler Welt, Staedtler’s shop in the centre of Nuremberg.

Mechnical pencils

The weather on the day was great, around 35°C (~95°F), and I even passed Staedtler’s headquarters when I drove into Nuremberg. This was because my wife, I and two friends went to Herzogenaurach first, the city where Adidas and Puma are from, and when you drive form there to the centre of Nuremberg on the Bundesstraße (B road / national highway) you pass Staedtler’s headquarters, a nice surprise and something I didn’t know or expect.

Nuremberg Souvenirs

Staedtler Welt opened in November 2010 and offers a great selection of Staedtler products – obviously the best I have seen so far in a shop, but I was slightly disappointed because there were many current Staedtler products I am aware of that I couldn’t find in this shop. To be honest I was expecting to see more products, but nevertheless, the products available include some items you don’t usually see in shops, like the Mars rasor and even products that are not made any more, like the Mars stenofix.

 

The Mars stenofix was still being sold

 

Most of the space in the shop is used to display stationery, but there is also an area in the back of the shop dedicated to FIMO and related products, like FIMO accessories. In this part of the shop you can even find ovens and an area that is probably being used for FIMO workshops.

The employees were extremely friendly. One of the employees is originally from the UK and started to talk to our British friends who went there with me and my wife. The prices in the shop were similar to what you would pay on the high street or in a typical department store.

The FIMO area is on the left. You can also see an oven.

 

Wopex and the trend line colours are also on display in the shop. These trend line colours, many are different shades of brown, were first released about a year ago. I thought that they were originally colours exclusive to the Wopex range, but I couldn’t find any evidence for this. In any case, you can now find non-Wopex products in trend line colours, too. When they were first released the trend line products were only available in the Staedtler Welt shop, but during my trip to Germany this July I saw trend line products in department stores, too.

 

Most items were reasonably priced. This leather(?) mouse pad was nice, but expensive.

 

I would like to thank Vernon Antcliff for letting me know his camera when we were in Staedtler Welt.

Factis and Ty/iwako erasers

 

The Factis 60 RP and the Ty Peepers (unboxed)

Post offices in the UK sell all sorts of things and the things they sell are often quite reasonably priced. This can include things like cakes, hand bags or kitchen foil, but naturally there is also a selection of stationery available. In July I bought the Factis 60 RP eraser at the Cinnamon Hill post office in Walton-le-Dale for 25p (~39¢; 32c). I have seen Factis erasers in Germany, too1. It is often not possible to identify the manufacturer of these erasers, but I assume many of them are made by Factis. I assume the company is named after one of the components needed to make natural rubber erasers.

The Staedtler 1810 KP72 and the two erasers

Another eraser I bought in July is the Ty Beanie Puzzle Eraser Peepers. When I saw a selection of the Beanie Puzzle Erasers on the MS Pride of Rotterdam I remembered Shangching’s positive review and bought one for £1.19 (~$1.87; €1.50). There were many erasers to choose from, so I picked Peepers, the duck, one of the erasers with a more complex looking surface structure.

The Factis 60 RP and the Ty Peepers taken apart

Performance-wise both erasers perform similarly well, with the more rubbery 60 RP needing a little bit less effort to eraser graphite than the Peepers. Both erasers perform worse than a good eraser, like my favourite non-dust erasers or the Mars plastic stick 528 55, but better than the typical non-name eraser or the most erasers you’ll find at the end of an eraser-tipped pencil.

Comparison of the Factis 60 RP and the Ty Peepers

You can find out more about Factis on the Eraser World web site.

I bought the Staedtler pencil with the mathematical formulas, the 1810 KP72, used in the photos and for the comparison in Nuremberg’s Staedtler Welt for 95 cents (~$1.18; 75p).

  1. I would even go as far as saying that there has also been a surge in Spanish made erasers in Germany, but it could just be that the few shops I have seen just happened to stock more or display them more prominently. [↩]

The yellow Wopex

As a complement to Lexikaliker’s yellow Wopex, here a photo of the yellow Wopex blister pack available in the UK. I bought this pack of five Wopex plus eraser and sharpener  this April for £2.991 (~$4.69; €3.70). Unfortnately I haven’t seen the eraser-tipped version from Lexikaliker’s blog post yet, but I will definitely buy it if I ever see it.

East…West…Everywhere wrote a blog post about the green version, available in the USA, that comes with Staedtler-made eraser caps. These eraser caps are basically a white version of the eraser caps that are quite common in North-America2.

Price: April 2012
Exchange rates: June 2012

  1. plus 90p shipping [↩]
  2. Some pencils in North America come with these erasers attached to them, the Magic Writer for example.  You can also spot them fairly often in American TV shows, e.g. in Two And A Half Men. [↩]