Oct 1, 2012

Cock O' The Walk


This animation cell from came framed under glass, and the donators said that when they attempted to get it restored, some charlatan actually ruined it, so now they were donating it to us.
I looked at animation cell and could immediately tell that is was the back of the cell that was being displayed under the matt. Hand drawn animations are colored from the back so it just was all color fills without any of the details or outlines. I opened the frame and flipped it and here you go:


You can see that the restorer did do a shit job, but mainly just the yellowing and fading on the chicken girl's white fill. Otherwise this is an awesome piece of rare Depression-era Disney animation.
Thousands of these hand drawn and hand colored cells were created for every animation from that era. Nearly all of these cells (perhaps except from some of the popular feature films, and even then) got destroyed.


A little research (aka reading the back of the frame and then doing an internet search) revealed that this is a cell from Disney's "Cock O' The Walk", a Silly Symphony from 1935. It's on youtube, embedded at the top of this post.

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