Do any of you collect anything? I started collecting animation art last year and I LOVE it.
If you aren't interested in reading a book about how animation art is done (it's really cool, you should read it :P) skip to the bottom for pretty pictures!!
For those of you who don't know, cartoons used to be made by hand. Originally, they were sketched on paper, then a clear sheet of acetate was placed over the paper and the lines were hand-inked onto the acetate, then it was passed off to be painted and the artists then hand painted the character from the back side of the sheet.
This was repeated for every. single. frame. of a movie or show.
They didn't realize that these frames would be desired by collectors and that they were, in themselves, works of art. So for the earlier films like Snow White, it's hard to find animation cels, and when you do they are very expensive. Disney actually used to wash them clean and reuse them!
Backgrounds were also done by hand, but these were watercolor and they were used for many frames at a time and sometimes for entire scenes.
Disney started doing xeroxed lines following Sleeping Beauty instead of hand-inking the lines for each cel. They instead xeroxed the lines from the sketch onto the sheet of acetate. This started with 101 Dalmations. Any idea why that might be? :P
The Little Mermaid in 1989 was the last hand-painted Disney movie, every movie following that was fully computer animated.
Disney used to sell the animation cels at Disney world and they still sell some. They sold them for dirt cheap a long time ago, and now they are being sold from animation art galleries and dealers. There are original production cels, where you can literally freeze the movie and see the exact frame as it was photographed, and there is no other one like it in the world. Then there are also limited edition cels which are reproductions from the movie, also hand painted, but made in batches of 100-1,000. Once they reach the amount they would like to sell, they stop and never create more.
We have a few original production cels and limited editions. Here's my collection
I hope you enjoy!
Ariel was my first and favorite purchase. She is an original production cel and you can pause the movie on this exact frame following the song "A part of your world" this is when Sebastian is yelling at her about her human obsession.
Ariel is on one sheet of acetate, flounder is on another, and the bubbles on yet another. Flounder is actually 2 frames after Ariel in this position in the movie.
This one is a fun limited edition based off the couch gag called "Homer's Evolution"
FI Also just bought one of the simpsons' family where they are all choking each other. It's awesome and from a great episode-- a fight sparked by a game of monopoly. The cel is out for framing now! I'll post a picture once he responds to my email asking for one! (ETA got the picture
)
I just put the deposit down on this one and it should be mine in a couple of months... with better framing. Yuck. Also a limited edition.
We also have (but I don't have pictures on here) a mickey mouse cel from when he presented an academy award, and a cel from the cartoon "Doug!"
Please post your own collections!