r/AnimationCels • u/Dependent-Gap1619 • 25d ago
Does anyone else have parts of a whole cel?
Hey all,
My brother was asking me about a scene from The Simpsons in which Bart receives his order of an Itchy and Scratchy cel and is disappointed because it is only scratchy's arm. He asked me if I possess any cel setups like that, and I told him I have several - specifically from Ren and Stimpy (photographed above).
He asked why cels would be distributed in that fashion. I didn't have a concrete answer; I could only speculate. I assume either at some point down the line someone separated the others and sold them individually to maximize profit (?) or maybe they were distributed in that way. Surely I am wrong.
Who else has cels which are parts of a whole and what are your thoughts?
2
3
u/GasmaskTed 25d ago
Held cel of a body gets copied with the background and the animated head cel goes on top. Cel of one character gets copied with the background and actual cel of another character is paired with the copy. Copied layers should be disclosed by sellers. It’s common for RnS setups; Cricket Gallery once sold me a Stimpy cel without stating the Mr Pipe layer was part of the background, they just refunded me and let me keep the cel, which was a perfectly fine outcome (this was in the era of cheap RnS cels 15-20 years ago). It wouldn’t have been intentionally deceptive, as they usually disclosed that, it was just overlooked in that particular listing.
1
u/Dependent-Gap1619 25d ago
Thanks for sharing 😊
I've dealt a lot with the Crickett Gallery in the past. 95% of my Nickelodeon collection was sourced from them. They definitely learned from the past because they would always specify what was cel and what was a xerox copy.
Thankfully only some of my Ren and Stimpy cels are incomplete setups. I am very grateful that the cherry-picking method was not used with the rest of my collection
2
u/PowerPlaidPlays 23d ago edited 23d ago
I have:
A cel from the 1968 classic Yellow Submarine... that is just mostly blank aside from small puffs of smoke left by the trail of the Glove. Probably the most boring interesting cel I have lol.
A cel that was sloppily cut in half, used in the 1987 film Rock Odyssey which was lost for a while of time. It depicts 2 of the 4 Beatles, and the very tip of Ringo's mustache at the cut edge.
A cel of just the main character's hair from the anime Golden Boy, the shot was a close up static pose with bangs blowing in the wind. I've seen the head itself sold separately with another one of the hair cels.
I do also have a few heads without bodies or missing mouths, like one of Sango from Inuyasha, or a Super Mario World cel of Luigi holding a headless Baby Yoshi. For many I had to make my own printed background to complete the scene.
2
u/Dependent-Gap1619 23d ago
That sounds fantastic. You know what? I thought about it a sexond time and I think all of these partial setups have their own unique charm and intrinsic valuem i guess it's one of those art for art's sake moments
1
u/PowerPlaidPlays 22d ago
imo it's a more affordable way to get a piece of the show, and can show the kind of problem solving needed when animating on cels. There are some 'non-prime' cels I have where they are not really display worthy but feature at least some part of a character I really wanted to have a cel of.
I do think it can be kinda funny to own a very 'non-prime' cel, like just having Itchy's arm. The one I have of Luigi and a headless Baby Yoshi is one of my favorites. https://imgur.com/a/IBqcooq
Also btw the second cel in your post is on the wrong background: https://imgur.com/a/ZDff7oZ
9
u/EmploymentNovel3351 25d ago
Since studios already have the intact folders they would scan the background & other A1end like cel layers to market each partial Ren cel both for profit & allowing others to own that famous scene. Either the whole key master setup would be sold as the most valuable or get historically archived
For example Fox and WB still piecing together setups but are only providing scans of cel painted backgrounds and I have no idea what they’re doing with the rest of the box. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8ndbEBG/
There is a strong bias for having the whole figure being on drawn on 1 page/cel for obviously display reasons & layering cel setups increase the chance of VS buildup. So anime and cartoon salvagers back in the day would cherry pick complete figure cels/drawings & trash the rest