Concept Art

Concept Art Inspirational sketches or paintings used to establish the situations, color choices or mood of a particular sequence. These were rendered in a wide range of media, from pastels and graphite, to watercolor and cut paper.

Courvoisier Backgrounds & Setups

In the late 1930's, San Francisco gallery owner Guthrie Courvoisier convinced Walt Disney that the cels used to create Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs were actually art, rather than a valueless byproduct of the movie's production process. He convinced Disney to allow him to market cels from this feature through his gallery. His unique style of marketing these nitrate cels included trimming the cels to the outline of the images and affixing them to beautiful, specially prepared backgrounds.

Gallery Wrap

A method of art presentation in which the artist's canvas is stretched and wrapped around a thick wooden framework. The difference between Gallery Wrap and a standard stretched canvas is that the art image wraps around the sides of the framework and is secured to the rear, making it a modern, frameless and ready-to-hang piece of artwork.

Giclée

- (pronounced zhee-klay) - The word "giclée" is derived from the French language word "le gicleur" meaning "nozzle", or more specifically "gicler" meaning "to spray or squirt." In the art world, the term denotes the highest level of quality in printmaking technology. Prints are created from super-high resolution digital images onto a number of substrates (canvas, arches paper) using premium-quality archival inks. Giclées are found in museums and fine art galleries and  values of rare and sold-out editions can exceed several thousand dollars.

Hand-Deckled

Hand-Deckling refers to the process of using a "controlled tear" to stylize the edge of a piece of artwork resulting in a unique look. Hand-Deckled works are typically floated in the frame so the edges of the art are visible.

Hand-Embellished

Hand-Embellished works are limited edition prints that are either hand-painted over in certain areas, remarqued, or in some manner enhanced by the artist. Embellishment adds uniqueness to the reproduction, allowing collectors to own a semi-original work at a fraction of the cost of the original.

Hand-Painted Multiple (HPM)

Term used to describe a work that is produced in limited quantity but has some element of original touches painted by the artist, for example a print that is hand-embellished or painted over. For an edition of Hand-Painted Multiples, each piece will be markedly different, giving the artwork a unique quality.

Intaglio Print

Intaglio is a family of printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface, known as the matrix or plate, and the incised line or area holds the ink. Normally, copper or zinc plates are used as a surface, and the incisions are created by etching, engraving, drypoint, aquatint or mezzotint. Collographs may also be printed as intaglio plates.

Limited Edition Cel

A hand-painted cel (signed or unsigned) produced in a fixed quantity specifically for sale to collectors. All are numbered and edition sizes typically range from 100 to 1000. Prints or cels intended for the artist's personal use art called Artist Proofs (AP). Artist proofs can be distinguished by the abbreviation AP. Hors D'Commerce, (HC) are identical to the limited edition print but intended only to show to dealers.

Lithograph

A print made by using a press to transfer an image that was created initially on stone or metal plate to paper. Lithographs are usually signed and numbered editions.

Lowbrow / Pop Surrealism

Lowbrow is a term coined by artist Robert Williams, founder of Juxtapoz Magazine that refers to the underground visual art movement originating in Los Angeles, California during the late 1970s. Known also as Pop Surrealism, Cartoon-Tainted Abstract Surrealism and Conceptual Realism, Lowbrow has its origins in comic art, cartoons, punk music, hot-rod street culture, and other underground subcultures. Notable Lowbrow artists include Mark Ryden, Robert Williams, Joe Coleman, Todd Schorr, Anthony Ausgang, Georganne Deen, Camille Rose Garcia, Stacy Lande, and Manuel Ocampo.

Movie Poster Fold Lines

Folds and/or the fold lines resulting from folding in a poster are not necessarily considered a "defect". Whether or not a fold/fold line affects the value depends on several factors.

Advertising materials released prior to the mid-1980’s were machine folded and mailed flat to the local movie distributors/exhibitors. One sheets were folded horizontally in half twice , then once vertically. Inserts were normally folded in half and then in half again. Half-sheets were folded in half and then quartered. Larger sizes were folded down until they were approximately 11" x 14' in size.

Machine folds are normally very crisp and straight. Since these materials were distributed this way intentionally by the studios, collectors do not consider machine folds/fold lines for pre-1980’s materials to be defects.

Post-1980’s materials present another side. Most, BUT NOT ALL, materials from this time period were shipped ROLLED to the theatres. However, some materials are still shipped folded – even today. Therefore, if the poster was initially machine folded for shipping purposes, regardless of the year released, then folds/fold lines are not considered a defect.

When posters were printed, a batch would be pre-folded for shipping. The remainder, quite often, was stored flat. Then, as more was needed to be shipped, another batch would be sent to the folding machines. The folding was due to the fact that it was the most economical way of shipping the poster to the theater.

If a theater owner would come by to pick up their posters, sometimes they could get a rolled poster instead. This seems to have created a lot of controversy in the poster collecting community. However, the majority of the pre-1980's posters found on the market will be folded. When a rolled one is found, it DOES NOT mean that it's not real, it is usually a cause to take a closer look at the poster to make sure that it's not a fake.

Any size poster that has been folded BY HAND generally results in a negative affect on the poster. While machine folds are generally crisp and clean, hand folds are not. In addition, if a poster was initially machine-folded, and then another fold was added by hand, the additional fold/fold lines would be detrimental to the value of the poster.

Folds/fold lines that are found on the smaller card stock materials, particularly lobby cards, are generally the cause of mishandling. Lobby cards were small enough to be mailed to the distributors without being folded; therefore there is no "acceptable" reason for folds/fold lines on lobby cards.

Window cards were normally sent flat because of their size. Some distributors folded them in half before mailing. If the window card is machine folded for shipping, then there is no adverse affect on the value of the poster. Inserts were generally sent to the theatres rolled so a fold/fold line would have a negative affect on the value. There were a number of inserts which were machine folded before being shipped. In this case, the fold/fold lines would not have an adverse affect on the value of the poster.

Original Production Cel

An original production cel is a cel that was used to create an animated cartoon. Cels are hand-painted from behind onto celluloid acetate. Each one represents a frame of a character's movement (1/24th of a second) Cels are based on the animator's original pencil production drawing then placed upon background paintings and photographed during film production.

Original Production Drawing

A graphite drawing on paper created by an animator from which the cel paintings from which original production cels are traced.

Pop Art

Art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art presented a challenge to traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular culture such as advertising, news, etc. In Pop art, material is sometimes visually removed from its known context, isolated, and/or combined with unrelated material. The concept of pop art refers not as much to the art itself as to the attitudes that led to it.

Pop art employs aspects of mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects. It is widely interpreted as a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism, as well as an expansion upon them. And due to its utilization of found objects and images it is similar to Dada. Pop art is aimed to employ images of popular as opposed to elitist culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any given culture, most often through the use of irony. It is also associated with the artists' use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques.

Much of pop art is considered incongruent, as the conceptual practices that are often used make it difficult for some to readily comprehend. Pop art and minimalism are considered to be art movements that precede postmodern art, or are some of the earliest examples of Post-modern Art themselves.

Pop art often takes as its imagery that which is currently in use in advertising. Product labeling and logos figure prominently in the imagery chosen by pop artists, like in the Campbell's Soup Cans labels, by Andy Warhol. Even the labeling on the shipping carton containing retail items has been used as subject matter in pop art, for example in Warhol's Campbell's Tomato Juice Box 1964, or his Brillo Soap Box sculptures.

Silkscreen or Screen Print

A printing technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil. The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink or other printable materials which can be pressed through the mesh as a sharp-edged image onto a substrate. A roller or squeegee is moved across the screen stencil, forcing or pumping ink past the threads of the woven mesh in the open areas.

Screen printing is also a stencil method of print making in which a design is imposed on a screen of silk or other fine mesh, with blank areas coated with an impermeable substance, and ink is forced through the mesh onto the printing surface. It is also known as silkscreen, serigraphy, and serigraph printing.

Splash Page

A Splash page or sometimes referred to simply as a "splash," is a full-page drawing in a comic book. A splash page is often used as the first page of a story, and includes the title and credits. Splashes that are not on the first page of a story are sometimes called interior splash pages. Interior splashes may, or may not include titles and/or credits. A panel that is larger than others on the page is called a splash panel. A splash that appears across two pages of a comic book is called a "double splash" or a two-page spread. 

Storyboards

A series of sketches, similar to a comic strip, which outlines the action and dialogue in a scene. These drawings would be pinned up on a bulletin board and arranged, re-arranged and replaced as the story took shape. Storyboards illustrate a character, mood, scene, costume, plot, sequence of action, gag or other conceptual aspects of an animated film during the developmental stage. Early rough storyboard sketches are referred to as "thumbnails," while more detailed drawings would be called "finished" or "final" storyboard panels.

Watercolor

A watercolor is the medium or the resulting artwork, in which the paints  are made of pigments suspended in a water soluble vehicle. The traditional and most common support for watercolor paintings is paper. It takes several years of study and practice to master the art of watercolor. In the 1930's an 1940's, Disney backgrounds were required to be done in transparent watercolor wash, which was technically difficult because correcting a mistake was usually impossible, requiring a full new attempt. Chuck Jones is noted for his work in watercolor.