Cel Animation

セル・アニメーション / 1915–1990s / Technique / Animation Techniques

The division-of-labor technique of painting only the moving parts on transparent celluloid layered over a still background. It defined the industrial structure of commercial animation for nearly a century.

Cel Animation — Winsor McCay, The Sinking of the Lusitania cel 1918 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain — Winsor McCay, The Sinking of the Lusitania cel 1918 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

Cel Animation — Painting a cel (CC BY-SA 3.0) · © Janke | Talk — Painting a cel (CC BY-SA 3.0) · CC BY-SA 3.0 · © Janke | Talk

At a glance

Visual cues

Layered transparent cels
Uniform paint
Background separated from movement
Traced ink lines

Best used for

Keeping a character stable over a long run with even paint and clear outlines
Pairing richly painted backgrounds with plainly drawn moving figures

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Dictionary entry

Type: Titles live on their own layer, never sharing a plane with the cels
Composition: Split moving and still elements into layers and compose each layer
Material: Painterly backgrounds under figures filled with perfectly even color
Caution: Calling it cel shading while adding gradients and soft shadows, which muddies the area inside the outline and loses the strength of the flat plane.
Further study: Earl Hurd's 1915 patent / Havoc in Heaven, Shanghai Animation Film Studio / the transition to digital ink and paint

Related entries

Limited Animation (リミテッド・アニメーション)Same Animation Techniques lineage.Compare Cel Animation and Limited Animation
Rotoscope (ロトスコープ)Same Animation Techniques lineage.Compare Cel Animation and Rotoscope

Cite this entry

The dictionary is meant to be linked to. Take whichever form fits where you are writing.

Link: https://indexstyle.org/styles/cel-animation
Markdown: [Cel Animation — IndexStyle](https://indexstyle.org/styles/cel-animation)
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