Drawn on film-Cel Animation-Painting on Film

Drawn on film-Cel Animation-Painting on Film.

CELL

A cell, short for cellulose, is a transparent sheet on which objects are drawn or painting for traditional, hand-drawn animation. Actual celluloid was used during the first half of the 20th century, but since it was flammable and dimensionally unstable it was largely replaced by celluloid acetate. With the advent the computer assisted animation production, the use of cels has been practically abandoned in major productions. Disney studios stopped using cels in 1990 when Computer Animation Production System replaced this element in their animation process.

TECHNIQUE

Generally, the character are drawn on cels and laid over a static background drawing. This reduced the number of times an image has to be redrawn and enables studios to split up the production process to different specialised teams. Using the assembly line way to animate has made it possible to produce films much more cost-effectively. The invention of the technique is generally attributed to Earl Hurd, who patented the precess in 1914. The outline of the images are drawn on the front of the cel while colours are painted on the back to eliminate brushstrokes. Traditionally, the outlines were hand-inked but since the 1960's they are almost exclusively xerographed on. Another important breakthrough in cel animation was the development of the Animation Photo Transfer Process, first seen in The Black Cauldron, released in 1985.