Animation Art Draws Buyers

From ‘Snow White’ to ‘The Simpsons,’ images from movies and TV shows can provide a financial windfall for collectors

Featured on wsj.com

Collectors with a taste for nostalgia, and satire, are breathing new life into the market for animation art.

Specialist dealers and some auction houses report steadily rising prices in recent years for many of the drawings, storyboards, backgrounds and hand-painted bits of celluloid, known as “cels,” used to create classic cartoons and animated features from “Snow White” to “The Simpsons.”

“Over the past five years, we have seen a 20% increase every year” in the number of buyers and the prices they are paying, says Mike Van Eaton, owner of Van Eaton Galleries in Sherman Oaks, Calif., which specializes in animation art. Some art from “The Little Mermaid,” a 1989 Disney release, has jumped to $2,000 from $500 just three years ago, says Mr. Van Eaton.

Many thought demand for animation art had petered out after a boom in the 1980s. But new generations of collectors have stepped in. Most of today’s collectors “want to buy back a piece of their childhood,” Mr. Van Eaton adds.

Desirable periods run the gamut from the 1920s, when animation shorts began, to the late 1990s, when studios producing animated films switched from hand-painted to digital images. Walt Disney Co.’s Pixar Animation Studios, responsible for such hits as “Toy Story,” was an early practitioner of digital animation. But while the occasional hand-drawn storyboard for a Pixar film will appear in collector circles, experts say they are rare and generally not for sale.

Art from more recent animated films and TV programs is attracting millennials, says Jim Lentz, director of animation art sales at the Dallas-based Heritage Auctions. Millennials collect “concept” drawings used for TV shows such as “Family Guy” or hand-painted cels from early episodes of “The Simpsons,” Mr. Lentz says. Generation Xers, he says, prefer images from 1970s-era cartoons, such as “Super Friends” or “Scooby-Doo.”

There is plenty of material for buyers to choose from. A single minute of an early animated movie could involve as many as 1,200 individually painted images, first on paper or cardboard and then transferred onto sheets of celluloid that would be put under a camera. In addition, preliminary “concept” drawings could be used to identify how a character in the movie would look. Storyboards would guide artists on the expected course of action. Paintings used as backgrounds are sold as well.

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