Ask John: What Exactly are Anime Cels?

Question:
What exactly are anime cels?

Answer:
Anime cels are the actual paintings on clear plastic that are photographed and turned into film to create the anime we watch on screen. Each image in an anime episode is drawn on paper with colored pencil then photocopied onto thin clear plastic sheets. Artists then paint these sheets on the reverse side so that the color looks flat and solid with no brush strokes from the front. Each frame of animation is usually a separate painting, so a character running may actually be a dozen individual paintings with the character’s arms and legs in a slightly different position in each painting. Because anime uses so many cels, and there’s so much anime produced, it’s not uncommon for anime studios to simply throw away or burn used cels because there’s not enough storage space to keep these thousands of cels. Anime fans and art collectors cherish production cels because each cel is a one-of-a-kind hand painted work of art that was used in the production of an anime series.

Cels with small images, odd or obscured camera angles, minor characters, or single layers from a multiple layer cel may be worth very little to collectors while attractive, large images or very popular character cels or cels from series that don’t have very many cels released to the collector market can command relatively high aftermarket values. With the advent of digital animation, some series such as Sol Bianca: The Legacy, Black Heaven, and Love Hina which were painted on computers will have original hand drawn pencil sketches that were scanned into a computer, but no actual cels because these series was not colored by hand but with a computer graphics program.