Description
Hello,
I have a signed Friz Freeleng Looney tunes painting. It has a Warner Brothers stamp of authenticity. It features Sylevester, Spike and Chester. It has a blank background. Does this make it a production cell? I cannot find this painting anywhere. The interesting thing is there is a Freeleng titled "anticipation" that has the characters in the same places but the background is designed. Any information on my piece will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Re: Friz Freeleng 1992 signed Looney Tunes art
What you have there is an animation cel drawn by Friz Freleng (note spelling) featuring Chester, Spike, and Sylvester. In classic animation the images are composed of a number of layers of transparent celluloid (cel) painted with acrylics stacked and photographed as a single image. Typically a background is one layer, characters another layer, foreground items another layer, and so on. In some cases this can be dozens or even hundreds of layers, all for a single frame of animation! With computer technology cels became obsolete and the last Disney film to use cels (for example) was The Little Mermaid in 1989.
There are two sorts of cels commonly available... original production stills (also known as camera-used) and limited editions (created for the purpose of being sold). Yours appears to be the latter, judging by the WB stamp in the corner. Is there a certificate of authenticity on the back of the piece? It may provide more information.
You'd likely get $100-150 at auction for this. If you're interested, it appears to be from this episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAgfPHP1w0I