cel

American  

[sel] / sɛl /

Or cell

noun

1. a transparent celluloid sheet on which a character, scene, etc., is drawn or painted and which constitutes one frame in the filming of an animated cartoon: may be overlapped for change of background or foreground.

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cel British  

/ sɛl /

noun

1. short for celluloid celluloid

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Etymology

Origin of cel

By shortening of celluloid

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

cel

“I don’t think stop motion will ever be as big as cel or computers,” he said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 5, 2024

Some of its TV shows and movies used traditional hand-drawn cel animation, but it carved out a separate specialty in the stop-motion puppet animation familiar to viewers since “Gumby” in the 1950s.

From New York Times ● Oct. 28, 2022

When a film cel from “Snow White” was acquired by the Met in 1938, Disney was seen as a pioneer, an innovator, even a modernist.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 6, 2022

One could, of course, argue that the cel itself—a tracing of the animators’ drawings on a sheet of plastic—was but a mere simulacrum of the original work on paper.

From Slate ● Dec. 13, 2021

The “Miscellany” was an interesting publication: pronounce miscellany with the accent on mis, and not on cel.

From Five Hundred Mistakes of Daily Occurrence in Speaking, Pronouncing, and Writing the English Language, Corrected by Anonymous