How To Create Animation "Cels"

In a perfect world we'd all be rich and you could just order your supplies from the one-stop shopping hub for all things animation, "Cartoon Colour Company" located in Culver City, CA (see link below). 

I've found their prices a bit steep and that substitutes work just fine.  To create a cel picture you will need:

• Paint brushes in various sizes.  You don't have to get expensive ones, you can get cheaper ones and tailor the tips to whatever size you want, but the more I have, and the THINNER they are,  the better I feel.

• A sturdy work area with space to spread out and tons of NATURAL light.  There's no other way of really scrutinizing your work than good, strong, natural lighting--many times I've looked at my pictures with the best indoor lighting available only to look again the next morning and see flaws I hadn't picked out before.  It's best to work, or at least check your work, by a window in the morning to see it clearly, I've found.

• Acrylic paints in primary colors.  Theoretically you could buy different paints for all the colors you expect to use but for me, buying the basics (red, blue, yellow, black, white and I got all wild and purchased a nice "brown" too) was fine, and I can mix whatever hues I want.  You'll use a LOT of some colors and not much of the others depending on what you're painting but you'll always need tons of white and black. 

• Celluloid sheets you can run through your printer.  I found "Graphix" brand sheets affordable and high quality.  The main thing you have to get right is that the sheets are *printable* and work with your printer.  I made the mistake of buying actual production-quality cels once and they're incredibly expensive and no one I've encountered will run them through their printer.  Anyone want to buy them from me, cheap? Ha!

• Paper.  You should have some "scratch" paper for testing your prints out on and sketching and whatnot.  If you want to make your own background  (again, you can make one or grab something nice off the 'net but I didn't tell you to, 'kay?) I'd suggest using some stronger form of paper--I actually use canvas-textured painting pads for my backgrounds.  I used to actually paint them but I get better results now, I think, building them in Photoshop and printing them off.

• Assorted plastic cups.  You can get these at the grocery store or 99 cent store cheap, or you might have them around.  You'll use these for mixing, for washing brushes in water, diluting paint a bit if needed.  But get things that are semi-disposable, the last thing you want is to spend your time and energy scrubbing away on some fine china covered in sturdy acrylic colors!

• Assorted towels.  I'm torn on this--sometimes I use cloth towels and old rags for keeping things clean, knowing the work I'm doing will render them useless eventually, sometimes I use paper towels, knowing I'm wasting resources with their one-time use.  I feel guilty either way so try not to think about it, use whatever works best for you! 

• Gloves, cloth or plastic.  I have an old pair of cloth gloves made for this sort of work I use, the fingertips are cut out.  You can also use plastic gloves that come with hair dyes.  The idea is you want to keep your hands off the celluloid sheets as much as possible. 

You don't have to be an artist for this one...I'm not encouraging stealing images from the net but you CAN do it if you like.  What you want is something that is a drawing or image with a clean line in black and white or color, with limited or no shading. 

In animation, we'd sketch out a rough drawing then go over it with a line so clean it looked like a computer drew it.  Nowadays you can do this with Photoshop (or, if money is an issue, "Gimp," a free sister program to Photoshop that's pretty good) and a digital pen/pad.  If you plan to draw your picture on physical paper you just have to be able to scan and print it. 

The first thing I would do is run some test shots to see how strong the print looks on paper before running celluloid sheets, which cost more money. Eventually you probably WILL have to waste a sheet or two getting the printing quality just right but if you can avoid it with some test runs it's a good idea. 

Another thing I do is "audition" my colors in Photoshop (or Gimp) to see if they're complementary.  You could also do this with paints or crayons on a drawing.  The idea is just to make sure you aren't painting "on the fly," once you've started glopping paint on your cel it's sometimes hard to get it off completely and mars the delicate surface of the plastic. 

Once your image has been copied onto the plastic sheet you can turn it over and begin painting the back side.  This is where technique is all--it takes a while to get the "flow" of it. 

First and foremost, your paint--mixed or straight from the bottle, should be about the consistency of yogurt--if it isn't you might either water it down or mix in another color to thicken it. 

You can start with big dollops in the center and work out or work from the edges first and then fill in, whichever is your preference, I go back and forth depending on the image or my attention span!  The main things to keep in mind are:

• Start with the smallest areas, in the center of the image, first...eyes, fingernails, jewelry, details.  Small areas will dry faster and then you can paint over the top of them later rather than trying to fill in the details AFTER you've painted the larger areas.  

• Don't be timid with the paint.  You really have to glop it on.  If you have ever tried painting on glass or some other slick surface you know you have to be very liberal to get a solid color.  You also have to watch your stroke patterns; it's best to keep the amount of paint the same thickness everywhere.  The best way I've found to check this is hold  your image up to sunlight and see if any light comes through.  If not, add another layer, either at the time (if you're impatient like me) or after it dries.  Another trick, if you have lighter colors, is to lay down the first color, let it dry and then paint over it with a slighter darker shade.

• Let certain sections dry before moving on--otherwise you'll get a smeary mess.  And try to keep your palms up at all times, at least once you have a lot of colors down, you can, and will, smear colors by accident sometimes.

Chances are, despite your best efforts, when you examine your cel later it'll have sections where the paint has gone outside or inside the lines.  If you were good and saved all the colors you mixed in little bottles (I didn't mention it because I never do it, I'm too lazy) you can go back and touch up places you missed.  If you went outside the lines you can use an Exacto knife or other sharp point to scrape the paint back a little.  I like to use the head of a mechanical pencil (without lead in it) and do it before the paint dries, you can kind of "push" the color into place. 

You can do a little polishing with water but I've yet to find any chemical that doesn't somehow affect the picture.  You definitely don't want to use alcohol--if it gets on the printed side of your picture it'll eat at the emulsion that makes things printable and create ugly scars, if you get it into your paint it'll become a watery mess.  Actually, if you know of a good chemical to do this kind of polishing on this material I'd love to hear about it!

I like to wait 24 hours to lay my image over the background just to be safe, but acrylic paint usually dries fast--often faster than I can paint with it! 

When the paint is dry you can lay your image over your background and either stick it in a frame or otherwise marry the two. 

And that's all there is to it, really!  Some final tips:

• Mix in fluorescent paints, they make colors more vibrant sometimes, Disney did this a lot (Madame Medusa's hair in "The Rescuers").

• Experiment with acrylics--some have a shine or sparkle to them, but sometimes they're not very opaque.

• Sparkles and glitter.  You could lay down a touch (a very LIGHT touch) of spray glue or mix them into your paint or something.  I experimented with using sticky-backed celluloid for a while and that made sparkles easier but I found them un-workable ultimately.

• Once your picture is done you want to keep it out of direct sunlight and you don't want to HANDLE it too much.  The paint and inks are pretty sturdy but the final work is still fairly delicate. 

I find painting cels rather relaxing and I really like the vivid results, and they're a great conversation starter.  I've also sold some of them, which is always fun!  I'd be curious to know if anyone else has experimented with this medium. If you have, or if you decide to, drop me a line, I'd love to know about it. 

Meanwhile, if you'd like to see more examples of my work, check out the link below.  Some of them are not (ahem) particularly "work safe," just fyi! 

Thanks for reading and good luck!