1. What is Cel Art?

Traditionally hand painted on a sheet of transparent celluloid acetate (from which the term cel is derived) with acrylic paint, cel artwork is the most time efficient way to produce color artwork for animation.

Many people enjoy cel style artwork because it has a uniquely "anime" feel to it. Unlike most American cartoons, which place the focus on fluidity of the animation and flat tone colors, Japanese animation places the focus on detailed cel work. In anime, it's not unusual to see an animation cel have up to four unique tones of color in a particular area (i.e. skin or hair) to designate highlights and shadows. In American cartoons, colors will be generally one color (flat tone), or possibly two colors (base and shadow).

The multi-tone shading, which shows where shadows and highlights are cast on the character, helps create the illusion of depth in a 2D image.

The first example image is colored in cel style while the second example image is colored in airbrush style. In the cel style image, the color separations are much more crisp and apparent. There are four distinct tones of shading on the skin alone, including a base color, two shadow colors, and a highlight color. In the airbrush style image, the colors are gradually blended into each other, yielding a much softer look and feel.

2. Cel Art on the Computer

CG cel style artwork strives to recreate the appearance of a traditional animation cel. Although the process of creating cel style artwork is often less time consuming then other means of coloring like painting or airbrushing, it also requires a good understanding of color and shading. Individual shades of color (shadows and highlights) in cel style artwork have a well-defined edge. Since these separations sharply contrast each other, a badly placed shadow will stick out like a sore thumb, and can possibly ruin a well-drawn picture.

Cel artwork created on the computer has many benefits over cel artwork created on acetate. For one, it's much more cost effective, as you won't have to buy acrylic paints, paint brushes, or acetate paper, all of which can become very expensive purchases. Furthermore, it's much more time consuming to create cel artwork on acetate, and mistakes are not easily undone. Finally, it's possible to achieve a much higher level of detail and quality with cel style artwork on the computer.

Most artists generally utilize either Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro for creating cel artwork on the computer. I currently use Photoshop 6.1 for cel artwork, and that's the program I'll be using while I walkthrough the process of creating cel style artwork. Photoshop is a wonderful tool for producing high quality works that achieve the look of a traditional animation cel, and much better!

3. What should you already know?

This chapter has a couple of prerequisites. You need to be familiar with several other chapters first, so that your artwork will be properly prepared for the cel art process. First, it would be very helpful to have a basic understanding of Photoshop's layers. The colors and the line work for your picture will have to be placed on separate layers, so take some time to read through that short chapter on Photoshop layers before proceeding. 

Second, the chapter on color filling, and color choice are suggested reading as well. These three sections will help you set up your image for cel coloring.

Finally, there's a chapter dedicated to the placement of shadows and highlights that directly corresponds to cel shading. This chapter will show you how to get the most out of your image by carefully explaining the concept behind the placement of lights and darks. If you have not yet read this chapter, or any of the other chapters listed above, do yourself a favor, and become familiar with the concepts these sections present before proceeding into the next cel style coloring section.