The Lightbox

Recently I built my own lightbox.

The one I had before was a thin plastic LED panel. During Inktober, it died on me. It lay there on my desk, dark. And I thought of my first lightbox.

Before I started studying animation, I was already drawing and experimenting. I needed a lightbox. So I turned to my great grandfather. He was a very handy man.

He once bought an old Chinese chess set. The rook was missing. So he went looking for the right wood and carved a new one by hand. Next to the others, you couldn’t tell the difference.

So I asked him. And he made me a lightbox.

Long ago I wrote a story about the elders on my dad’s side of the family. I saw them as chess pieces.

My grandmother was the queen. She moved in every direction. Involved in everything, everywhere in the family. She was small, but her voice carried weight.

Beside her stood the king, my granddad. He moved one step at a time. Thoughtful. Never impulsive. Sometimes a little slower than needed. Some things simply asked for more time.

They were not always easy people. Stubborn. Rooted like oak trees.

And then there was my great grandfather. The rook.

He moved in straight lines. You asked, and he went straight for it.

He was the father of my grandmother. A small man with a huge reach. White hair. Very kind. When something needed doing, when someone needed help, he was there.

He and my dad had a strong bond. So every Thursday he came over. He arrived around four, just after I got home from school. My mom cooked. My dad came home around quarter past five, half past five. And we ate together.

I had a lot of time with him.

In my mind he became an icon. A figure to live up to. Of course that picture was idealised. The bad days, the moments life didn’t go as planned, were never really shown to me when I was young. But to me he was a foundation. Someone people could rely on.

The lightbox was the same. It just kept working.

One of my old films, The Duel, was shot on it. Every frame photographed with the light shining through from below. It gave the film a warm sepia glow, as if it came from a long time ago.

It was big, though. When I moved out, it couldn’t come with me. So I bought an A3 LED lightbox. Very thin. Very light. Very modern.

A while ago my mom asked if I wanted the drawings that were still at their place. It turned out to be two of my old animation films. Stacks of paper I hadn’t seen in years. I thought they were in boxes in my own house. I was wrong. I was glad to have them back.

That bag was sitting next to me when the lightbox died. Not long before, I had remastered Darkness, another old film of mine, and I was thinking of putting more time into it.

So I didn’t buy a new one.

I decided to build my own. Made for what I need now. And the rook kept lingering in the back of my mind.

While I worked on it, I kept thinking of him. The Thursdays. The white hair. The quiet way he made things.

When it was finished, I looked at it for a while.

All those skills he had. All those things I aspired to when I was young.

Look at this now.

My temples are turning white. Slowly, I’m getting things from him.

When he passed away, my dad took much of what he was onto his own shoulders. He became the rook. The one many people relied on.

I am different from them.

I don’t know if I’ll become the rook when the time asks for it.

But pieces of the man who carved that rook have become my own.

And hopefully they will reach the ones after me.