Cel Animation Research

In order to develop my book covers designs, throughout the critique it was agreed that I needed to focus more on the back cover. The previous back cover with the Excel grid and 4 colour squares looked a little bit too dull; it needed to be more energetic to relate to the childlike theme.

The back cover has now been developed to the point where I am happy with it.  The design of the back cover takes it references from Cel Animation; the original Disney movies were created using this technique. A cel (short for celluloid), is a transparent sheet on which objects are drawn or painted for traditional, hand-drawn animation. The technique was the dominant style of animation in cinema until the development of computer animation.

The idea of cel animation has been used for the back cover through the use of overlaying shapes and colour. Solid block colours have been used for the shapes, as well as overlaying shapes in low opacities over the block colours to create a new colour through transparency.

The idea of the shapes comes from the original Excel characters on the front; I have selected chunks out of each character where I think there is an interesting shape, and then enlarged it and carefully placed it on the back layout.