Cel Painting For Animated Films
| Field | The creation of film-based animated enertainment |
| Went Obsolete | As soon as photoshop and other computer-based programs were used to color |
| Made Obsolete By | Computer technology |
| Knowledge Assumed | Carefully painting in the lines and applying an even layer of paint |
| When useful | This skill can still be utilized if you are creating a personal film, not using Flash |
Once upon a time animated films were made using celulose acetate sheets with the characters painted on them. In fact, cel-art is now a highly prized collectable, but the cel-painting artists went mostly anonymous, even if the animators were relatively well-known.
The task was to flip the inked acetate sheet over and paint on the underside of the ink, carefully filling in the color with special paint used for animation. in order to avoid any discoloration, a thin, even coat needed to be applied, with light colors being particularly onerous, because you didn't want colors from the background to show through the paint applied to the acetate sheets.
Nowadays, animation drawings are scanned into the computer, and paint programs are used to fill in the colors and drop out anything that isn't the background. Also, the rise of the 3D animated film over the more traditional cartoon has effectively killed the art of cel-painting. People are still coloring in animated drawings, but it's not the fine art it used to be.