Anyone know what episode this cel is from?
 

Hey gang,
Hoping I can put our collective toon knowledge to use...

I picked up a bunch of animation cels today, most of which are easy enough to identify, but I'm having a hard time pinpointing this April cel.

I imagine the scene must be set in shadow or something because her jumpsuit is darker than all the other April cels I have, and her watch band is not white (though that could just be animation error).

So far I've watched though the first 8 episodes and no matches, but it'd be cool to figure out without having to rewatch the whole series (though I don't mind doing that :tgrin: if I have to!)

Any help is much appreciated!

I don't envy you..... I had to do this same thing a while back when I picked up a pretty big haul of Iron Man original animation line art from a variety of recent shows. Just a sample of what I was doing with them....

https://i.imgur.com/7FJ70nVt.jpg https://i.imgur.com/KkqqL9ct.jpg https://i.imgur.com/dU6KeTKt.jpg https://i.imgur.com/kYThj6Ct.jpg

Finding the specific moments was hard enough across a few Avengers, Iron Man and Spider-Man cartoons. Imagine having to comb through ten seasons of near daily TMNT shows? :lol:

Good luck with that!

It's a good looking cel! I think it might be from one of top-tier animation studios too. Have you compared all the shots from "Turtles on Trial?" I'd start with that one!

I'm also a cel collector and love the process of trying to ID the specific frames of episodes they come from. I'd love to see what else you have. I scan my collection to ComicArtFans:
https://www.comicartfans.com/gallery...sp?gsub=191934

I have discovered some helpful hints as regards TMNT cels. Most of the cels that were sold under the "Animation Art" label come from episodes from seasons 2-4. There are some exceptions, but I probably the most images from those eps. Also, "Turtles on Trial," for whatever reason tends not to have many cels under that "Animation Art" label, and many of the ones I've seen online are in a more "raw" state similar to the one Riches shared. The same is true for most Season 1 and "Red Sky" era production art.

That's interesting! I will check that out and let you know. It is a lot of fun trying to ID cels, it just takes a small eternity. You've got an awesome collection!

I'll take some pics for you soon. I've just picked up a bunch of cels recently. I try mostly to get group shots of the TMNT, and secondary characters I'm a fan of (Metal Head, Mutagen Man, etc)

My #1 most wanted cel is still Muckman but I've yet to see one turn up for sale.

Yes, I understand completely. "Guest characters" tend to sell for more on account of the fact that there are much less of them produced as opposed to a random shot of a Turtle, Krang, April, etc. It's a very tricky market, as the perceived value of a cel can depend on a lot of things (cool pose, multiple characters on various layers, filling the frame nicely), but all of it comes down to "how much does somebody like it and how much are they willing to pay?"

I'm trying to ID a few cels at the moment, so I was still watching in order, just got to "Turtles on Trial" and sure enough, you nailed it right out of the gate! How you were able to do that with so little information, I have no idea, but color me impressed! You were definitely right the animation was noticeably better in this episode though.

Here's some of the others I'm currently working on ID'ing, but I imagine these should all be relatively easy other than maybe Shredder, and the TMNT and April on the Cheapskates.

Cool cels and nice ID! I always thought most April cels were notoriously hard to find. I was looking for a season 1 April cel for a while but never found one. Turtles on Trial is one of the better-animated episodes. Nice pickup.

You have a very nice collection there!

Heh, I'll confess, I often use April's character design as a starting point for remembering animation styles/quality of particular episodes. :tcool:

Remarkable pieces! You really got some gems. Like Turtles on Trial, all of your cels look to be from the higher-tier studios, probably TMS.

You've got two from Casey Jones: Outlaw Hero, and the cheapskates is from Making of Metalhead (obviously with all the ones featuring Metalhead too), and I'm guessing Usagi is from the first Usagi Yojimbo episode. I'm not sure about Shredder, but I would expect him to be from one of these eps, which are going to be more likely to be outside the "Animation Art" labels:
Turtles on Trial
Ninja Sword of Nowhere
The Fifth Turtle
Making of Metalhead
Casey Jones: Outlaw Hero
Usagi Yojimbo

Cool convo in this thread. Some of you guys have some wisdom about this particular market - it's neat!

Anyone ever done any research on potentially how man FW TMNT individual cells might be out there?

I would be curious to know how they were put on the market in the first place. How did these cels leave the animation studios?

A lot of times these studios allocate one person to store or archive this stuff and when the archives fill up or have to be moved somewhere a lot of stuff is "forgotten about".

A TON of Iron Man stuff got out to the public because the person doing the archiving at one point had no choice but to store boxes and boxes of stuff at her apartment and eventually the studio dissolved or changed hands and stuff is forgotten about and she needed the materials out of her personal space.

That's a generic example, but the short of it is that studios try to archive stuff but to them a lot of these pieces are just elements of a job that was done. Often as long as they hold the master edits they don't care about the composite cells anymore and things get thrown away or get out to the public. I think this is especially true of animated series whereas motion picture stuff might be held under greater lock and key - but even that stuff gets out there too.

In the mid-‘90s, many of the cels were individually matted, given a reproduction background, Certificate of Authenticity, packaged and sold through Toys ‘R’ Us. If memory serves, at first they cost like $15-20 apiece.. and were discounted to as low as $1 each as time went on. I think this happened around 1992, so none from season 7 and up were released this way.

Thanks to your help, I've now successfully ID'd all of them! The Shredder cel ended up being from "Camera Bugged".

Just out of curiosity, since you seem to know a lot about the different studios and the Animation Art labeled cels, do you know if the Muckman episode is one that I could potentially find under the Animation Art label, or no? I figure it might help to narrow my search some in the future.

Good work!

I have seen at least one matted cel from the "Muckman Messes Up" episode, although I don't know if I've ever seen a cel of Muckman and/or Joe Eyeball themselves.