Cel animation

Cel Animation or ‘hand drawn’ animation is an old traditional technique and animating form. Cel animation is a long process when an animator would draw each frame individually and usually in separate layers. A simple example would be a background (sky), a foreground (trees or buildings) and the characters in two or three separate layers depending on if they are moving or static. The layers would then be layered on top of each other and filmed with a camera mounted above them; the animator would then simply replace the necessary layer when needed.

Cel animation was the most used form of animating until the arrival of new technology, because of this cel animation is not used as much today, because any hand drawn “cels” today would be scanned into a computer and digitally coloured and edited