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Cel Shading: the Unsung Hero of Animation?


Left: a computer graphics render with soft shadows. Right: a cel shader and border detection.

This is a guest post by Olivia Lennox.

As you’ll well know, there are far more animation techniques out there than the average movie-goer or TV watcher knows about. You can’t blame them for only really knowing about stop-motion animation, CGI animation, and what goes into shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy. These techniques are what ‘make it big’, and what can be seen on screens, both big and small, all over the world. But there are plenty of other forms of animation that don’t get the credit they deserve.

Dale Hemenway then and now

Dale Hemenway wrote an article in Animator number 24 telling how some of his cartoon sequences came to be shown on the BBC programme ‘Hartbeat’. The programme was hosted by […]

Paul Thomas of Tiger Trax animation then and now

Paul Thomas was interviewed in Animator Issue number 11 in 1984. At the time he was running the Tiger Trax animation studio, situated in a block of flats just off the Old Kent Road.

Paul began his animation career at Bob Godfrey’s studio and at the time of the interview, was doing sequences for Tony Hart’s BBC TV programme “Take Hart” and design work for the Kate Bush fan club magazine. He also contributed a regular cartoon strip to Animator mag under the pen name of Dr Scratch, featuring a rather droll dog called Scratch.

Paul recently discovered the Animator mag web site whilst searching the Internet and dropped me an email with his latest news.

He has left the concrete jungle of London for the green and pleasant land of Salisbury, Wiltshire. Paul is now the director and writer for a children’s puppet performance group called Tin Harlequin. He told me that forming the group “was a dream come true”.

Sheila Graber then and now

The films of Sheila Graber were featured in Animator’s newsletter number 5, summer 1983. At the time she had recently given up her post of Head of Creative Studies at King George Comprehensive School to pursue animation on a full-time professional basis.