Marvel Animation Cell? 0

[Silver Surfer]

Okay so I bought this many moons ago, I believe on Ebay, but I can't recall the full back story, etc. Probably looking to move this soon so any help on the decription would be appreciated. This was sold as a painted Marvel animation cell I believe from the 60's, possibly from the The Marvel Super Heroes TV series (seems like the only one art version that matches). I will keep doing some Google searches but any insight would be appreciated. 

Edited June 8 by Silver Surfer

[Kevn]

Is this really an animation cel? Do you have good photos of both the front and the back the cel, without the mat. I know for Marvel Super Heroes they used actual comic production art and cel xerography to get the actual comic book images on screen (though this meant the show wasn't really animated in the usual sense), but the actual cels from the show would have thick cel vinyl paint on the back of the cel and there would not be any color gradients. That is, the Hulk should be a flat green, his pants a flat purple, etc. There should be peg holes on the bottom of the cel, and between the peg holes there should be some hand written notes indicating the sequence, scene, frame number, and whatever else would be needed so that it would be shot in the correct order. 

This is a cool image, but I suspect it's more of a digital print that was printed on a piece of acetate, and not an actual production cel. 

[Silver Surfer]

Thanks for the info. I have no idea to be honest, will have to take a closer look at it.

[Will_K]

I forgot the name but there was an ebay seller (going back to the early 2000's) who was selling animation cel-like pieces.  The story was a theme park commissioned the cels as part of their signage or displays (maybe prototypes).  Not merchandise for sale.

[Silver Surfer]

Interesting. I think I may have purchased this from a EBay seller in California? Might try and dig through m6 purchase history.

[Dick Pontoon]

That's not an animation cell.

[Will_K]

I finally found a previous topic on these things.  And the seller is still on ebay.

 

Edited June 9 by Will_K

[Silver Surfer]

Thanks again. Looks oddly familiar but I can’t find anything in my thousands of old emails that match. Mind you I had lost a bunch of emails but this old thread is helpful. 

[Kevn]

The info from the old thread is very interesting. I've looked at the ebay sellers pitch for these sericels, and I think it's rather misleading. Here's an edited version of the sales pitch on each of these. I've bolded some key words and phrases that I think are either telling, or and italicized and bolded parts that are downright misleading:

<Late in 1999, Universal Studios of Central Florida began to wind #1 down a five-year investment of transforming Orlando into one of the country's leading centers for television and film production. Though in previous years production groups regularly processed material in town to avoid the high union wages of the west coast, both at Universal and MGM Studios, high players like Viacom pulled out...taking with them the syndicated likes of Sea Quest, Super Force, Swamp Thing, Super Boy...assorted Wrestling and Roller Derby programs...a live action Tarzan show... To this day, investors and producers remain in courts trying to sort out the mess. I know little of how they did things at MGM, but I worked for a number of people stationed at Universal's 22 A building...host of some twenty-two independent companies. This sericel...and others like it... are prototypes for a product intended to be sold in a number of galleries and shops.  No contracts were finalized.

 

The line art is printed on an acetate sheet...it is hand painted on the back to render the printed inks opaque. The background an original airbrush painting rendered on a quality card stock.......the final effect is the stunning 3-D quality of an original animation sericel....This art is in near mint condition and is matted in white with a cardboard backing. A plastic sleeve covering is included. The artwork viewing area is 8.5 by 11 inches. The mat is larger at 11 by 14 inches.>

 

Those old enough to remember the heyday of Disney (and later Warner Bros.) having studio stores in shopping malls across the country, and Disney releasing their animated films on VHS and then DVDs through these stores with much fanfare, will remember sericels. They're fairly high quality digital prints on thin acetate sheets that are designed to replicate the look of actual animation production cels, and were released with printed color backgrounds. These were billed as 'limited editions' (limited to tens of thousands!) and usually gave them away as a premium with the VHS/DVD of the animated film if one ordered the film in advance (as I recall). The technology allowed these to be very cheaply produced, but they looked impressive at a glance and were popular with Disney fans. There is no hand painting on sericels (it's in the name, for god's sake - they're machine-produced serigraphs on acetate) and the backgrounds were just color prints or sometimes just a colored card (i.e., also not hand painted). Disney created them by the tens of thousands.

I think the sericels in question, like the one shown by the OP, are fine for what they are, and probably look great on a wall. By the way, the image shown is taken from the Avengers #3 cover. It's a cool image. I see the seller who was apparently selling them back in 1999 is still active, and they're selling at starting bids of about $30. So I doubt this is a very valuable piece, though there may well be multiple people who want a serigraph of the Avergers #3 cover and might pay a premium. 

There's a quote from Local Net Plus, LLC in the 2020 thread that I agree with: "I have a theory now after seeing this information.  It seems very odd that he has been selling "prototypes" for nearly 20 years.  He has over 2200 feedbacks and the vast majority are regarding these cells.  If you conservatively said half were cells then that would be over 1000 cells that were "prototypes".  I suspect that this guy is creating all of these cells himself (or a "friend" is creating them and this guy is just the seller)."  Note that the seller now has about 6.5k feedbacks, so the point is ever more true.

 

I'm not sure, though, that this is that much of a scam. For the trouble it would take to create these sericels, that fact that he's not just cranking out the same few popular images, and the prices he's selling them for, it actually doesn't seem like bad value for the money spent. I do admire that he's actually doing stuff from the pulp era, golden age, etc. Of course, this could be a cagey decision. He's unlikely to get a cease and desist order as long as he avoids Disney images and also sticks with images from many decades ago.