My Animation Art and Comic Art Collection

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A limited edition cel showing the Tazmanian Devil, the first cel I ever bought. Catalogue entry:

The Warner Brothers catalogue has this to say about the cel:
"Tasmanian Devil in one of his most classic poses, a 12 field limited edition by the creator of Taz, the late Robert McKimson, Sr. The drawing in which the cel originates from was actually hand drawn by Bob McKimson Sr. The pencil drawing has been transferred to the animation cel (as a serigraph line) and each individual cel is then hand-painted by animation cel painters. Each edition is limited and no further cel art edition of each drawing will ever be rendered. A facsimile signature has been serigraphed on each cel. The facsimile signature is a graphic rendition of Mr. McKimson's actual signature."

My cel has been issued in 1993 and is numbered 478 of 500.

This Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cel is an original production cel from a 1989 commercial called "Warner Cinema Vignettes".

Unfortunatly I don't have the slightest idea what it was. I assume that it might have been a trailer for a compilation of Warner Bros. animation shorts. But maybe it has been a production for some kind of film fair. Or a theatrical trailer. Or a tv ad for some video tape. Or whatever.

If anyone has any clue where this cels is from (or even what the coyote has on the other end of the rope), please tell me. Mail to fuhrhop@fokus.fraunhofer.de.

Update: I received an e-mail from Darell Van Citters (who directed the piece) that sheds some light on the origin of the cel:

The cel is from what you claim it is. It was done for theaters in England to promote things like being quiet in the theater and used Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Wile E. Coyote, etc. to get the points across. The object on the other end of the rope is a giant rock the Coyote was lifting up with a pulley to drop on the Road Runner. Those two cels don't actually go together as the Coyote was to make a grab for the Road Runner and in letting go of the rope, the rock crushed him. The RR then did this little action and zipped out of the scene. That particular scene was animated by Tony Fucile who later was the character designer and a key animator for the animated film, Iron Giant.

Darell

That's good news and bad news. The good news is that I finally know where it's from and that I might actually have seen it once (now that Darell Van Citters mentioned it, I vaguely seem to remember seeing such a 'behave nicely in the theatre' spot at the Warner Cinema at Leicester Square. I know that I have seen the first Batman movie there, which came out in England in August 1989, fitting nicely the reference on the cel). The bad news is that it is unlikely that it'll ever be released on video, so I probably won't be able to see it again.

This Gossamer Model Sheet cel is a limited edition cel. To quote the back of the cel:
In 1946, Chuck Jones directed the classic Looney Tunes cartoon "Hair-raising Hare," which introduced that bigger-than-life orange monster known as Gossamer. Given the fact that this monster only appeared in three Looney Tunes shorts, (as well as brief appearances in a Tiny Toons and a Tweety and Sylvester Mysteries episode) his success and reognizability are nothing short of phenomenal.
Though, of course, I like him because we share the same haircut...

From a shopping point of view, it is a companion piece to the Wile E.Coyote and Road Runner cel. On the opening day of the Warner Bros. shop I was there, saw the Wile E.Coyote and Road Runner cel, stood in front of it for ten minutes, and then decided to buy it. Because of this, I was on their 'gallery customer list'. Sometimes there were 'special events', like sunday brunches and 'after hours' shopping opportunities, to which only those customers were invited. In December 1999 was one of those events, and they had a price reduction of 50% on all their cels. The reason for this was a sad one. The shop will close within the next six months, so this was the last gallery event in Berlin. So I bought a cel on the first day of the gallery and another one on the last one. [Yes, for better symmetry I should have bought the cel on the last opening day of the shop, but then it wouldn't be a at half price. And given the speed with which the cels were ripped from the wall, it would have been unlikely to be available then anyway.]

My cel has been issued in 1997 and is numbered 301 of 750.

This is an Original Production Cel of Gandalf from the Ralph Bakshi Adaptation of J.R.R.Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

The movie was made in 1978. The cel is a 12 field cel.

The cel is from the scene in Moria where Gandalf reads about the final days of Thorin and his dwarves. The white area near the bottom of the cel is the place where the book belongs.

My sister and her husband went to New York and all I got was this lousy animation cel... (Well, I'm not sure whether these are actually suposed to be lice, but I couldn't resist the pun.)

Anyway, this is an Original Production Cel from a Raid Bug Commercial created by Tex Avery Productions. The certificate on the back claims it's from the early 70's, but it is probably from the mid-60's.

I don't know to which tv ad it actually belongs, but I intend to buy a couple of 'commercial animation' videotapes and hope that it will be on one of them. [Update: Did that. Didn't find the ad.] But if you happen to know on what tape I can find the commercial for this cel, you might as well send me a mail (to fuhrhop@fokus.fraunhofer.de) and I won't have to search at random.

[And yes, I got pretty neat (but weird) things as presents from that New York trip.]

It seems that everyone has some animated movie he likes more than the others. (Ok, that's rather obvious, in any list of movie preferences there is one that comes out on top; what I mean is that there's usually one 'best liked movie' that stands a long way above number two on the list.) While this usually is something remembered from childhood ("It was the first Disney movie I've seen as a child" seems to be a popular reason.), in my case it isn't like that at all (although I still like "Jungle Book") and my favorite animated movie is "The Last Unicorn".
It was produced by Rankin/Bass and the author of the original book, Peter S. Beagle, did also write the screenplay. Due to this, the mood of the movie is close to the original story, even though significant parts of the written story are missing. But Peter S. Beagle managed to distinguish well between the core story and the 'nice but not utterly required' embellishments, and doesn't fall into the trap of stitching together scenes that look good on screen, but don't make sense as a story and do are only understandable if the novel has been read in advance.
Anyway, I've been trying to get Last Unicorn cels for a long time now and I'm glad that I've finally managed to get hold of some of them. (Well, basically I'd be happy with just the Schmendrick and the Unicorn cel, but for various reasons that are TOCOTOX [too complicated to explain], I ended up buying a couple of them, even though only the two shown here (Schmendick and Unicorn, Molly and Unicorn] are actually framed and hanging on the wall right now.)

This isn't an animation cel at all.

I like the Night on Bare Mountain Segment from the Disney movie Fantasia, but cels from that movie are way too expensive for me.

Fortunatly my sister and her husband know someone who is a really good painter and he painted a large two panel image for me, combining parts from the Night on Bare Mountain sequence with parts from the Ave Maria sequence as a birthday present.

(Maybe I should mention that the painter claimed that this picture is one of the worst he ever did and it took some persuation for him to even sign the picture. So if you think that it's a great picture (as I do), be aware that he can do even better. And if you think it's a bad picture, just remember that the artist thinks so as well...)

Back in the 80's Phil Foglio used to draw a series of cartoons called "What's New" for Dragon Magazine. This is the original art from issue #65 (Sept.82) which discusses the difference (or lack of) between fantasy and science fiction role playing games.

It's probably difficult to get hold of the original magazine, but the cartoons have been rereleased as a collection that is available from Studio Foglio, which is also the place to buy original art from Kaja and Phil Foglio.

Concrete is one of my favourite comic characters. Given the fact that I read very few comics, he is probably the favourite comic character, but that would have sounded a bit too pathetic. And since Concrete is not only one of the far too few comic characters that are able to speak in full sentences with words containing multiple syllables, but he's also able to do that without resorting to smart pub talk (e.g. pseudo-philosophical ramblings that sound meaningful, but seem quite pathetic and empty once you are sober again and think about them), pathos just doesn't fit here. Anyway, the Concrete stories are written and drawn by Paul Chadwick. The images here are not from the comic itself, but they're sketches drawn at conventions.