Animation cel from The Little Mermaid: Museum Object and Cultural History
Animation cel from The Little Mermaid: date made: around 1988. producer: Disney, Walt. Object Name: Animation Cel.
The object in the museum catalogue
Hand-painted animation cell of Ursula, Flotsam, and Jetsam from The Little Mermaid. With her back to the audience, Ursula has both arms extended with her right arm pointing upward. This film is a cinematic adaption of Danish author Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale.
The character, drawn by Disney Studios artist-animator Ruben Aquino, is a cecaelia or half woman, half octopus, and is loosely patterned after Divine, the larger-than-life female impersonator of John Waters films. Comedienne Pat Carroll voiced the character of Ursula. The cel also depicts the characters of Flotsam and Jetsam, a pair of moray eels that are Ursula henchmen. It was the final Disney feature film to use the traditional hand-painted cel method of animation and is generally regarded as the film that revived the classic Disney animated feature film.
Materials, dates and provenance
- date made: around 1988
- producer: Disney, Walt
- Object Name: Animation Cel
- Object Name: cel, animation
- Measurements: overall: 12 1/2 in x 17 in; 31.75 cm x 43.18 cm
- ID Number: 2005.0135.05
- accession number: 2005.0135
- catalog number: 2005.0135.05
- Credit Line: Gift of Walt Disney Animation Research Library
- Data Source: National Museum of American History
Sources and reuse
Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.
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