Cell Animation

Cell animation, which was first patented by John Randolph Bray and Earl Hurd in the year 1915, uilises a series of characters and objects are hand drawn or painted to utilise the art of traditional hand-drawn animation.

Basically, the characters and objects are drawn and/or painted on cels and are laid over a basic static background.  This technique greatly reduces the amount of times that hand-drawn images have to be redrawn and is considered cost-effective in terms of time and money.

 

In order to re-create the use of cel animation, you will need the following:

- sheets of paper (any size)
- pencils
- paints
- celluloids (transparent sheets)



Advantage - This technique is more expressive, more colorful and it is also looks more artistic when done right.

Diaadvantages - The use of cel animation is more complex as it requires advanced artistic skill and that you would need to create dozens of frames to create a simple animation sequence and can be quite time consuming.  It is also more expensive to create as it requires quite a sizeable amount of resources to create cel animations.

 Here is a video showing off the art of cell animation:

 

And here is a video showing how you can make your own cel animation: