Cels Forum

My friend and I painted cels (I did the one pictured below) and this is how
we did it:

You need the following: a cel, a piece of paper of approximately the same
size, a pencil, an ultra-fine Sharpie, a 00 size paintbrush (eg, smallest
you can find), lots of acrylic paint (you'll need LOTS of white!), and a
lightbox (optional but encouraged)

1. Draw a picture that you want to do a cel of on plain paper

2. Once you have it right, make sire the lines are clear and dark enough so
that you can trace them onto a cel

3. You CAN do this with paint but we just used an ultra fine Sharpie (MUCH
easier), put the pencil sketch under the cel and trace the outlines onto 
the cel itself.

4. Use the pencil sketch and shade in the areas which should be shaded on
the cel, this will help you know where to use darker and lighter paint

5. Turn the cel upside-down and put it on a lightbox (you dont NEED a 
lightbox but it helps ensure that the paint is thick enough) pick an area
to paint first (its better to start with small areas, like eyes and weapons
etc, I did Kenshin's sword first, and fill in the big areas like skin and 
clothing later)

6. If the area you are doing has shading (both light and dark areas of the
same color) mix the dark shade first and make sure you ahve enough of the
color to do both the light and dark areas (its very hard to match a hand-
mixed color again).  Paint the dark area first, then add enough white paint
to lighten to a desired shade and do the light part.

7. Do this for all the regions of the cel.  If you go outside the lines you
can wait for that section to dry and scratch away some paint with the other
end of the brush.

8. Wait for your cel to dry and display it proudly!  Try to be more 
responsible than I was and keep the pencil sketch in good shape too (I still
have mine but it got wet when I was mixing paint, so I used a Ranma sketch to
put behind the cel in the picture, forgive the traces of red paint, they're
from Ranma-chan's hair!)

Any questions you can email me, I'm not an expert but I think this cel came
out pretty well!  Good luck!  ^_^

Tifa