The Little Mermaid colored animation celluloid: Museum Object and Cultural History
The Little Mermaid colored animation celluloid: date made: around 1988. Associated Name: Disney. Object Name: cel.
The object in the museum catalogue
Animation cel from the 1989 Disney animated film The Little Mermaid. In 1990, The Little Mermaid won two Academy Awards – one for Best Score and one for Best Song (“Under the Sea”). This drawing, labeled #183/500, depicts the main character Ariel sitting on a rock with her friend Flounder by her side.
A celluloid (or cel) is a transparent sheet used in the process of hand-drawn animation. Characters were drawn on cels and superimposed on a fixed background image to reduce the number of reproductions necessary to produce an animation. The Little Mermaid was the last Disney feature film to use this hand-drawn method of animation. Starting with the 1990 feature film The Rescuers Down Under, Walt Disney Animation Studios began using a digital method of animation known as the Disney Computer Animation Production System (CAPS).
Materials, dates and provenance
- date made: around 1988
- Associated Name: Disney
- Object Name: cel
- Physical Description: cellulose; paint (overall material)
- Measurements: overall: 17 in x 11 1/2 in; 43.18 cm x 29.21 cm
- Subject: Movie
- Subject: Entertainment, Film
- Subject: Animation
- ID Number: 2010.0046.01
- catalog number: 2010.0046.01
- accession number: 2010.0046
- Credit Line: The Walt Disney Company
- 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.
Sources
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