Magazine

BUYING ORIGINAL ANIMATION ART (Part One)

By Peter Adamakos

The Hollywood cartoon studios kept very little of their original artwork. The films were the final product and the drawings, preliminary and final, the cels and so on were considered by-products, especially the cels. Disney has almost all of its drawings going back to the 1920s, but the cels were considered expendable. I remember once being in Frank Thomas’ home looking out his kitchen window. He pointed to the little hill out in back and remembered watching his son and his friends spreading out cels of Mickey Mouse from FANTASIA on the hill and sliding down on them. What else were they good for post- production anyway?

After “SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS” was released, museums asked for original art from this masterpiece. Galleries sold cels and drawings in 1938 from that film and various short cartoons, notably “FERDINAND THE BULL”. Courvoisier Galleries, which had the exclusive, continued to market cels to galleries for Disney through most of the 1940s to a dwindling market until interest, dampened by lackluster films of the period, dried up.

When Disneyland opened in 1955, cels were sold in the Art Corner, where you could also buy flipbooks, books on animation and the like. The cels were sold for less than two dollars. You could buy cels from features such as “LADY AND THE TRAMP” and those from cartoon shorts starring Donald Duck, Chip and Dale, and even ones done for the “MICKEY MOUSE CLUB”. You could order them by mail right into 1971 and they still cost less than two dollars!  I bought them regularly and still have the receipts and some of the cels still have their $l.69 price sticker on the reverse.

When Walt Disney World opened in 1971, I recall going through bins and bins of cels, buying dozens of cels from “THE ARISTOCATS” which was their latest release, for less than two dollars each! In 1973 Disney felt there might be a newer upscale market and made an exclusive deal with Circle Galleries to handle “ROBIN HOOD” cels, elegantly framed and priced at $75-$100. This was a success and the animation art market never looked back.

I can remember when there were only a dozen or so serious collectors and we bought, sold and traded with one another. We all knew one another and there was no big money involved. We were able to add dozens of pieces to our collections each year. Today of course big pieces bring big bucks and a few pieces have achieved sales of $250,000. The thought of adding dozens a year to a collection is good for a laugh.  Today there are galleries specializing in animation art, and that is where one has to be very careful when planning to buy.

There is only two kinds of genuine animation art — Pre-production art such as inspirational sketches, model sheets, storyboards and the like, and production art consisting of backgrounds, animation drawings and cels.  Other things may be called animation art, but they are not. There are limited edition cels, actually new cels made up to look like the original production cels of old and sericels, which have the cartoon image printed on acetate sheets instead of being painted onto them.

These look like actual production cels when framed under glass because they are put onto acetate sheets. They are copies, reproductions all. This is no different than taking an image of Bambi and reproducing it onto a T-shirt or poster or collector’s plate. The act of reproducing a cartoon image onto a sheet of acetate does not make it any different from a T-shirt. It is a reproduction.

I remember in one week seeing for sale a limited edition of Aurora dancing with Prince Philip from “SLEEPING BEAUTY”, recently inked and painted (you can see rows of people painting them at Walt Disney World) and in that same week receiving a list of animation production art for sale which included virtually the same image—the original, the one and only cel of that frame in the film. The reproduction was selling for $2500, the original $3500. The difference was not that great, yet one was an original, the other was a copy. The reproduction has value, and is pretty, but is not genuine animation art.

My suggestion to anyone who wants a cel of Lady and Tramp eating spaghetti, who does not have the funds to buy an original, is to make their own. If you are a good artist, make your own. If not, hire someone. Your fake is as good as Disney’s fake and it won’t cost you $2500. But why not just buy a nice print of the scene in a poster shop, or buy an original movie lobby card of the scene? Just because the scene is on acetate does not make it anything special, worth charging thousands of dollars for.

I go into galleries and pretend to know nothing about animation art. I have asked managers in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and even in Canada if their limited editions are originals, are they the art that was actually filmed long ago for the original movie. Not one ever told me the truth. They all lied and said they were unique originals, even in the Disneyland Hotel shop. Original production artwork is rare, and every gallery has some for sale. But they all have the factory-produced limited editions as well.  They could not stay in business if they did not also sell these limited editions and the sericels. There would not be enough production art alone to keep the business going, and so new buyers are tricked into thinking they have made a substantial purchase when only the price they have paid is substantial. By the way, limited editions are limited to the number they think they can sell, of course, at the high prices. If they think they can only sell 500 to the market, they’ll make an edition of 500. Other runs are for more, sometimes many more. They are not very “limited” in number, and certainly not in price. Better to sell a few at horrendous prices than many at a reasonable price.

And so lesson number one is to only buy original production artwork. Buy quality, not quantity. You may have to wait to find that one character or one scene you most would like to have. Were the prices in line with what they really are, reproductions could suffice until the real thing came along, just as a Dali or Picasso print will do until we win the lottery. But we knew a print for being what it was. No one was telling us it was original artwork, or charging 75% of the cost of the original artwork for a print.

Next time I will offer some tips on buying original animation art. In the meantime if you would like to see some of the original animation artwork from the silent era to the television era I have bought, please visit my website at www.disada.com

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Peter Adamakos has been a collector of original animation artwork for over 35 years. His collection has formed the basis of major museum exhibitions in cities like Montreal, New York, Toronto, Tampa, Paris, Atlanta, Brussels and many more. His 29 year-old animation company has moved to Ottawa. He can be reached at or P.O. Box 37009, 3332 McCarthy Road, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1V OWO.