Another piece of original animation art to admire - this time a cel featuring the "Litte Man" from The Pink Panther episode "The Pink Blueprint", by DePatie-Freleng (1966).

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As you'd imagine compared to the character cels it's the backgrounds that are rare (since one background illustration would be used for a shot where a number of character cels would be used), so here it was a case of: find the shot in the cartoon, screen-grab it and photoshop out the character). Overlay the Little Man cel, frame and sorted.

I used edge strips for the cel itself and the frame and mount size is to ensure I don't have to trim the original cel at all, so it remains with peg-holes and production notes intact behind the mount. Edge-strips are simply narrow pieces of acid-free paper folded over each edge of the cel, forming a boundary around the whole piece (while not having to actually be fixed to the cel at all - avoiding damage to it). Tape these edge strips to a narrow mount that's hidden by the frame and you've now go the cel floating within the frame.

This way the character outline (on the front of the cel in black) isn't touching the glass (or in this case perspex), while the painted/coloured part of the cel (on the back side) isn't in contact with the backgound image.

Ta,

Lee

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