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Keys' Little Anime Cel and Animation
Art FAQ |
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| What is a cel? | | | 'Cel' is the common term for 'animation celluloid.' Cels are used to produce pieces of animation. Each cel is a frame in the action. When individually shot and sped up, they create the illusion of motion.
Cels are usually made by putting paint and ink on clear pieces of acetate. Cel images that you find in online cel galleries are scans of cels that people own.
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| What is a background? | | | 'Backgrounds' are painted (often with watercolor or tempra) scenes on heavy paper stock which go behind cels. These create the setting for the animated characters on cels. Most sequences generally have one background. However, a background may be used for multiple sequences.
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| What is a foreground? | | | A foreground is of the same use and material as a background, however, it goes in front of the acetate. Foregrounds tend not to be full sheets of stock though, but rather cut outs (trees, rocks, fences).
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| What is a cel sequence? What is a cut? | | | A cel sequence or 'cut' is a set of cels that combine together to create one single cut of animation. It is a grouping of cels that combine to create an uninterrupted flow of motion. For example, it might be a character turning their head or picking up an object, usually without the camera shifting in point of view unless the shot is panning or zooming. Cels of the same sequence can look very similar.
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| What is a cut number? | | | A cut number denotes which sequence in an episode a cel or background is from. For example, a background marked with 'C-213' would be the background that goes with the 213th sequence of cels in the episode.
The cut number can be written in a variety of ways. For example, the 129th cut in the 12th episode might be written as C-129, C129, Cut129, 12-129, #12-129, just plain 129, and so on. Some cels aren't marked with a cut number but most that are have them between the center registration hole and the right oblong registration hole. Some may have multiple numbers because they were used in multiple cuts during the episode.
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| What is a sequence number? What do those letters and numbers in the corner mean? | | | A sequence number is used to determine proper ordering of the cels in the sequence. That way, the camera man doesn't accidentally shoot the character going backwards or pieces of motion out of order. For instance, a cel with the sequence number 'A19' comes after 'A18' and before 'A20'. Usually sequences start at '1' and can go up to any number.
The letters in a sequence number determine what layer. For instance, the A-layers might be the motion of the head and face without the mouth. The B-layers might be the mouth movements. So, a cel with one layer as 'A5' and another as 'B3' would be the 5th headmovement with the 3rd mouth movement. These numbers are usually found in the upper righthand corner of a japanese animation cel.
Generally, the A-layer is the layer closest to the background and then the B layer goes on top of it and the C layer and so forth. However, this is not a hard and fast rule. Sometimes the order is reversed and sometimes the order isn't alphabetical! This would hopefully be marked on the timing sheet. |
| What is a douga? What is a sketch? What is a pencil? | | | Douga, sketch, pencil, and pencil sketch all refer to the same thing. A douga is the pencil/colored pencil drawing of the outline of the image on the cel. The graphite portion corresponds to what will become the black lines on the acetate sheet. The other lines may refer to what will become colored trace lines or they may refer to instructions for shading, coloring and blank space. Sometimes douga will have more instructions (like boxes indidcating the zoom) written on them as well.
The kanji for douga mean 'moving image' in Japanese. This sometimes causes machine translators to translate 'douga' as 'animation'.
Often the douga is included with the cel. However, some studios, like AIC, in general don't include the douga with the cel.
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| What is a genga? | | | Genga means 'original image' in Japanese. It is the term for the refined key frame images that the key animators (or 'gengamen') draw to show important parts in the motion of a cel sequence. Generally there is about one genga drawing for every 3-5 cels. However, this highly varies depending on the type of shot and the budget of the animation.
In cel collecting, genga is often used differently. Some people use genga only to refer to the very nice images drawn by the animators. Some people use genga to refer to any pre-douga artwork, including the very rough drawings and layouts.
It is uncommon to get genga with a cel (more common to get a rough, but still more uncommon than douga). |
| What is a layout? | | | A layout is a rough sketch of the cel, background, and any special effect. It is often drawn on a special piece of paper with a frame to emulate the screen. This is to give the staff a general view of what the complete scene will look like. Sometimes the cel part is shaded in to differentiate it. Sometimes layouts are included with cels. Often copies or crayoned copies of layouts are included with cels.
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| What is genzu? | | | The word 'genzu' means original drawing. It uses the same first character that genga uses. The second character carries the stand alone meaning for map or plan in addition to drawing. If and or how it differs from genga is unclear, but in standard usage it seems to lean more towards layout like drawings, perhaps drawing from the map/plan meaning of its second character. |
| What is a rough? | | | A rough is simply that, a none-too-detailed drawing of what will become a cel
image. They can be fairly scribbly and just give an idea of the shapes that
will be used or they can be fairly detailed yet still considered rough.
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| What is shuusei? | | | Shuusei is the term for pre-production 'clean up' sketches. Basically, they are the step between the genga and the douga, where the sankuga kantoku, animation correction director/supervisor, goes through and makes change suggestions to the genga such that it matches the art design of the series better. Often times these are partial (if the correction is just drawing the nose differently, sometimes it will just be a nose, some prefer to redraw the entire image for context, sometimes a full redraw touch-up is needed etc) and often they appear on colored paper. Each studio handles these differently though, so there's no one set way of telling.
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| What is a standard sized cel? | | | A standard sized anime cel is approximately 10 inches by 9.5 inches with
registration holes. Most TV and OVA cels are this size. |
| What is a movie sized cel? | | | Many movies have a slightly bigger standard cel size, partially due to the
demand for higher quality that largely projected images need and partially to
accomodate the difference in aspect ratio. These are
approximately 14 inches by 9.5 inches. However, some movies are done with
standard sized cels, regardless of whether the movie was letterboxed or not.
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| What does field mean? What is a 12-field cel? | | | 'Field' is more of a US animation term. A 12-field cel means approximately
12 inches wide. It is the standard sized cel for US animation. A standard
movie sized cel would be 16-field.
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| What are trace lines? | | | Trace lines refer to the outlines of a cel. Most often people are referring
to just the black ones. However, there are handpainted colored ones too that
can also be referred to as trace lines.
These days most black trace lines are done with a copying machine.
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| What are registration holes? | | | Registration holes are the three or more holes (often circular for the center
and oval/slit for the side ones) on the top of most anime cels. Cels are shot
on a special table with pegs for alignment. The cel can be slid over the
pegs to ensure it is aligned properly for filming.
Not all cels have registration holes at the top. For some special shots and
usages, some cels may have holes at the bottom or sides. Incidentally, most
US animation is bottom pegged so the cels have holes on the bottom.
Sometimes due to the size of an image on the cel or the way a cel was cut, the registration holes will be on another piece of acetate that is taped onto the main piece. |
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