Disney Animation Art, ca. 1938
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GUEST:
I brought two albums. One is the animation that I inked as an inker in 1939 with Disney Studios.
APPRAISER:
You worked in the studios?
GUEST:
Yes, I did.
APPRAISER:
And your job at the studios was to actually take the paint and apply it to the animation cels?
GUEST:
That, and I was an inker too.
APPRAISER:
And inked the lines that go around. And how long did you work at the Disney Studios?
GUEST:
Several years. I worked on Pinocchio and Fantasia and Bambi, and later on I worked on Sleeping Beauty. Each girl was given a sequence to ink, and they were timed before you received them. And each picture was timed by another girl. And you were to keep up with those timing, and it was counted for or against you. And if you didn't keep up on their time, you were let go. But it kept you on your toes. You had to listen to a radio through earphones so that you wouldn't slow down by talking to someone.
APPRAISER:
And how many cels would you say you painted a day?
GUEST:
Say 35 to 65.
APPRAISER:
That's a lot of work for a day.
GUEST:
It was fun, though.
APPRAISER:
Good.
GUEST:
Yeah, I really enjoyed it.
APPRAISER:
The other interesting thing is that Disney now uses computers. So they no longer have people to hand-ink and paint them. So that makes them, and yourself, and your career that much more special. The interesting thing about these is you can see how the movie was really made. It's an interesting historical book to actually look through the whole book and to be able to see how much work is involved. And then here you have some practice tests, which I think is really interesting because these aren't the colors that they'd use in the film. This book I found fascinating as well. It's a wonderful collection of animation drawings. This particularly is from Snow White, and the whole book is filled with things that are very similar to this. And I was quite impressed-- these are from Pinocchio-- with your collection of animation drawings. It's really neat. If you add everything up together and you're looking for a value, the cels are actually the things that are the most valuable. Unfortunately, they've been cut down and they're not on their full sheets. And the animation drawings, unfortunately, have been trimmed as well. But if you go through the entire book and you add up the whole collection of animation cels and the drawings, the whole collection itself is worth about $15,000 to $20,000.
GUEST:
Well, that sounds good. (laughs)
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