Fascination St. Gallery: Art Glossary : -- (( Animation Artwork + Animation Collectibles )) --

Words Associated with Animation Art and Collecting

ACETATE: Refers to cels made of cellulose acetate, a much more stable material than nitrate, and still in use today. Early acetate was hard, thus susceptible to cel denting; and, it had a dark tint, making it difficult to stack up more than two or three cel levels.

ACRYLIC/VINY: A non-rewetable watercolor more durable than gum-based; currently the industry standard.

ANIMATION DRAWING: The original production drawings by the animators from which the cels are traced or xeroxed. While cels may be beautiful examples of technical draftsmanship, it is often argued that animation drawings represent the "true art" of the animated film. The terms "clean-up" and "rough" are often used to refer to the line quality of a drawing.

ANIMATOR: An artist who draws characters in motion. One is not classified as an Animator until he is able to take a scene and put the character into motion so as to get the desired result on the screen. The actors of the animation process.

ANOMALIES: Various types of deterioration or alteration of cels are sometimes seen which include the following:

ART PROPS/STUDIO: Denotes a STUDIO-prepared background, hand-painted or other, created specifically for enhancement of an individual cel for marketing or promotional purposes.

ASSISTANT ANIMATOR: An artist that works in direct contact with the animator. His duties are to keep the scenes in workable order and to clean up enough drawings (rough drawing) of a scene so as to enable the inbetweener to finish the scene prepatory to inking.

BACKGROUND: A painting or artwork, usually in watercolor, acrylic, oil, sometimes in airbrush or tempera on paper, over which a series of cels is photographed to make up a scene in an animated film.

BACKGROUND SKETCH: A pencil sketch from which the background is made.

BALANCE: Proper distribution of weight in a drawn figure or object.

BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS: Refers to original art created for reproduction in a book, in any media.

BREAKDOWN ARTIST: An artist who "Breaks down" the action of a scene and follows-up with the assistant animator.

BRIDGE ANIMATION: Animation produced to bridge or tie tigether shorter segments into a longer film.

CALL-OUTS: Color notes found on animation drawings as guidelines for the Ink and Paint Department.

CEL: Short for celluloid; a piece of clear plastic containing the images that are placed over a background to be photographed in succession to form the action of a completed film. The outline of the image, whether hand-inked or Xerox, is applied to the front of the cel. The colors are painted on the back of the cel, with certain colors, notably black, sometimes painted onto the front (for glare reduction). Most cels are "still cels" with only set of peg holes.

CEL LEVELS: Denotes the number of individual cels in a set-up including characters and any effects overlays, but excluding backgrounds. This differs from the studio production definition which pertains to the four thickness of celluloids that were used at all times when photographing a scene. Bland cels were used at times to make up the four levels so as to compensate for the loss in density caused by varying cel levels.

CEL SET-UP: A combination of two or more cel levels or a cel with background or other elements, whether matching or non-matching.

CEL SIZES:

12-FIELD: An industry standard cel (and drawing paper) size approximately 10" x 12", depending on the studio and year. The term 12-field can also refer to the size of a background.
16-FIELD: An industry standard cel (and drawing paper) size approximately 12" x 16", depending on the studio and year. The term 16-field can also refer to the size of a background.
CINEMASCOPE: A wide screen film format. Cinemascope or Technirama films, such as Lady and the Tramp and Sleeping Beauty, often used cels measuring approximately 12" x 30".
REGISTERED: Refers to a portion of a character on a cel that appears incomplete or cut off because it had been drawn to align with a background, another character, effects, or other elements.
CUTOUT: The character has been cut from the cel, often around the outline of the image, and then usually attached to a backing cel or directly to a background.

CHARACTER DESIGN: Pre-production sketches, drawings, and cels depicting preliminary character studies.

CLEAN-UP: The process of refining the lines of rough animation and adding minor details.

CLEAN-UP DRAWING: Clean-ups or finished drawings are necessary for tracing onto the cels and are usually done by the assistant animator. Clean-ups may be done directly over the animator's roughs, either erasing or leaving the original lines, or may be fresh drawings traced from roughs, some animators did their own clean-ups.

COLOR MODEL: A cel created by the Ink and Paint Department for accurate color-referencing during production. Color Models may be exact duplications of cels appearing in the film or original creations from a similar drawing, the only criterion being that it contain all the colors in the given scene. They can be superior in quality to the regular production cels and can only be identified by their markings: Color Models are typically inscribed at the bottom with the production, sequence, and scene numbers, and may additionally be stamped "Color Model." Cels shot for the film simply have the frame number in lower right corner.

COLOR TEST: Rarely seen are preliminary Color Test cels, which were created for the purpose of working out the color styling of a particular character. Color Test cels are easily identifiable by having different colors than appear in the final film.

CONCEPT ART: Includes all pre-production artwork created before actual animation is begun.

CONDITION GRADING: This is a subjective topic which is a source of great confusion among collectors. Rather than use ambiguous terms, Fascination St. Gallery instead describes all imperfections and has only one defined term should the art be free of imperfections:

COURVOISIER: Refers to a cel set-up marketed by Courvoisier's original galleries from 1937 to 1946. In original condition, all have similar distinctive - a cream colored mat with the character and/or film name inscribed in pencil below the mat opening, plus an encircled "WDP (or "WDE" prior to 1939) stamped or embossed on the mat and/or background. Characters were usually, but not always, cut out and glued to the background with a protective cel over the image. Certain cels, most notably from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, were also "enhanced" with additional airbrushing on the edges of the characters to presumably create a more subtle three dimensional appearance.

COURVOISIER LABELS: Labels, which are often damaged or missing, included several types of 1" x 2" labels with the handwritten name of the film, or copywright and framing information, and later the common 3" x 5" Courvoisier label which includes the hand-written name of the film. Disney also used similar labels for their own promotional pieces during and after the Courvoisier period.

COURVOISIER PRESENTATION: The presentation backgrounds were of many different types, including simple airbrushed settings, elaborate watercolor paintings, paper with polka dots or stars, and wood veneer with shadow effects. The better backgrounds and packaging were hand-done by Disney artists; in the later years, Courvoisier took over and quality slipped. Courvoisier also began laminating trimmed and cut-out cels starting with artwork from Fantasia, then, most notably artwork from Dumbo and Bambi.

CRACKING: Appears as a single, or series of, lines or "tears" in the paint, generally accompanied by some degree of separation. No paint is missing.

CUSTOM-PREPARED: Denotes a custom background created by a private individual to enhance a particular cel.

DIRECTOR: Supervisor of the timing, animation, sound, music, and general processing of a picture.

DISNEYLAND ART CORNER: Refers to cels and cel set-ups sold at the Disneyland "Art Corner Store" or other Disneyland locations from 1955 to the early 1970"s. Various character cel images were sold in plain mats which included a gold foil sticker approximately 2-1/2" x 4-1/4" on the back of the art board. Cels were trimmed and mounted in a simple cardboard mat, often against a lithographic background or set against colored art board.

DISNEYLAND LITHOGRAPHIC: A color reproduction of production backgrounds from several Disney films of the period used to enhance the cel image in a Disneyland Art Corner set-up. They did not necessarily match the cels with which they were sold.

DRY TRANSFER: High quality photographic reproduction of key scenes from Disney movies. Produced at the Disney studio in limited quanity for promotional purposes or as gifts for special studio guests and originally packaged in am inscribed mat with a Walt Disney Productions label.

EFFECTS DRAWINGS: Any drawings in a scene that are animated by the Effects Department. The Effects Department handled animation of special effects, such as fireworks, clouds, smoke, double exposed shadows, trick shots, etc.

EXPOSURE SHEET: A form used s a guide by the animators, assistants, inkers and cameraman to establish the proper relationship of one drawing to another.

EXTREME DRAWING: A drawing indicating the beginning and end extreme points of a character's motion. Extremes are usually not in between two other drawings and are usually drawn by the led animator.

FIELD: The area photographed by the camera.

FLAWLESS: No defects of any kind; the cel image - paint, inking, celluliod is in perfect, original condition or is acceptable for a final under the camera production shot.

FRAME: An original picture on the film.

FULL ANIMATION: A type of animation using one cel for every one or two frames of film. This is the oldest form of film animation and always provides the best quality of movement. Because of its extreme cost, full animation is rarely used today, with the exception of occasional full-length feature films.

GOUACHE: Cel paint is sometimes incorrectly refered to as gouache. Gouache refers either to a style of painting or a different type of opaque watercolor not useable on acetate. NOTE: Regarding restoration, Fascination St. Gallery will describe paint only if restored with a type different than originally was used. No mention of paint signifies that the new paint has the same look and characteristics as that originally on the cel.

GUM-BASED: A re-wetable watercolor that consisted of three main components: filler, pigment and binder. Used by many studios, including Disney until acrylic watercolors were developed in the early 1960's. Disney was not the only studio to maintain a sustem of gum-based paint beyond this period. The Disney paint formula contained a humectant, which absorbed the humidity from the atmosphere to keep the paint flexible, and to maintain a strong attachment with the cel. It is because of this humectant that Disney' cels (that were painted within this period) have sustained their original look over time while other studio's cel paint deteriorated.

HAND-INKED: Prior to the late 1950's, the animation drawings were traced onto cels by hand with quill-pen or brush, using ink of one or more colors. Although Xerography is the current industry standard, hand-inking is still used when budgets allow.

HELD CEL: An inked and painted celluliod which is used when animation ceases motion.

HOLD: A stop of action four of more times in length.