Saint Doyle's Thundercats Animation Cel Collection

Saint Doyle's Thundercats Animation Cel and Comic Art Collection

Here is my collection of Thundercats original animation cels. I bought my first cel in 2006 and have been acquiring more whenever they become available.

I spent a good amount of time trying to provide exact screen captures corresponding to each cel. Any assistance in helping locate my "episode unknown" cels would be greatly appreciated.

A note on the rarity of Thundercats cels: Rankin/Bass never officially sold any cels to the public. Any cels that exist are those that were smuggled out by animators after the show was cancelled. All remaining stock is believed to have been destroyed.


Lion-O head shot from the episode "Sword In A Hole." You have no idea how excited I was to finally, finally locate this cel's origin episode. I must have watched 100 hours of television looking for this frame.



Thundercats team from the episode "Good and Ugly." Note the coloring error between Lion-O's neck and Tygra's head.



Mumm-Ra close up. Episode unknown.



Cheetarah from the opening sequence.

I had trouble locating this cel in the opening sequence. The specific frame that this Cheetarah cel is from is mostly covered by a Reptillian overlay cel (shown here in the middle). I would be interested to know how they turned the black "speed lines" yellow in the final product.



Tygra from the opening sequence.



Lion-O from the opening sequence.

This cel was used in 2 frames of the opening with 2 different overlays shown here. I would love to get my hands on one of these overlays so this piece would display better.



Tygra cel. Episode unknown.



Two-Time with matching copy(?) background from the episode "Return To Thundera Part 3." This is made up of 2 cels (one of rubble, the other of Two-Time). The background may in fact be an original background that has been trimmed, though I am hesitant to make that claim for certain. It is on thick water color paper and does not have any of the typical signs of being printed. I would love to get my hands on the "blast line" overlay to better display this cel.

New cel!!! New cel!!!

Cheetarah from the opening sequence. This may be my new favorite cel I own.

I finally got around to scanning in my Ed Benes comic pages from Thundercats: The Return

Here is a pencil prelim sketch of Mumm-Ra's transformation sequence.

Beautiful collection!!! I hope you find more of these rarities and thanks for the share!

Man this cell collection is really astonishing:thumbsup:
Well done mate for collecting all these jewels, since i am a long-time, hardcore Lion-o devotee i pick as my favorite animation cell, your first one from 'Sword in a Hole' and Lion-o from the opening sequence :liono
Mumm-Ra's close-up is truly awesome too. We've seen this scene repeated several times, so i don't think it belongs exclusively to one episode

I always wanted to acquire one cell from the Series, but as you said they are hard to find, i think recently one popped up at e-bay!, they are pretty expensive too but certainly worth their weight in gold!:roll:

Thanks guys.

Lordore, the Lion-O from "Sword In A Hole" was the first cel I bought. I never intended to collect cels, but I saw it at a convention and knew I had to have it. Then the team cel from "Good And Ugly" came up on eBay for what I thought was a decent price and things began to snowball. I assume everyone on this board has the same addictive OCD collecting tendencies that I have, so be careful when you say you want "just one."

I updated the original post to include a pic of the cels I have currently on display. I will update again after I get more of them hung on the wall.

Awesome cells! The Mumm Ra is amazing.

Chris here...

These are absolutely gorgeous cels, thanks so much for sharing them with us!! :thumbsup:

Take care... :)

Nice collection!

Hi, just wanted to thank you for posting these, my favourite is Lion-O from the opening sequence - coloured in such a way that it is a great piece of pop-art as well as a great cell.

Originally Posted by Saint Doyle
I had trouble locating this cel in the opening sequence. The specific frame that this Cheetarah cel is from is mostly covered by a Reptillian overlay cel (shown here in the middle). I would be interested to know how they turned the black "speed lines" yellow in the final product.

I actually know how this is done. The black lines are a hold-out matte. Basically black doesn't show up on film. So they film once then run the film back and on a second pass they film a bunch of black mattes with the cut outs of where the speed lines would be. To get the glow they usually shine a light (such as a light table) underneath. Lot's of toons used it back in the day but you don't see it hardly at all anymore because most all animation doesn't use cels.

It's a great collection. I had a Thundercat cel awhile back and I am kicking myself for selling it. The economy claimed another victim:(

Awesome pieces man, would like a Cheetara one for myself one day :)

Very much enjoyed the cell + vid cap. Hope you are successful in locating cells from the new series, if there are any to be had.

"WileyKit, post: 56413" said:

Very much enjoyed the cell + vid cap. Hope you are successful in locating cells from the new series, if there are any to be had.

I believe its all digital now...

A truly magnificent collection you have there, sir! You must be very proud of it.

If I'm not mistaken, I think that the Mumm-ra cel is from the Season 1 Episode "Spitting Image".

"Wilycub, post: 57159" said:

If I'm not mistaken, I think that the Mumm-ra cel is from the Season 1 Episode "Spitting Image".

I scoured that episode and came up with this:


It's very similar, but not quite exact if you really start looking at the fine lines on Mumm-Ra's face. This cel is likely from part of the common sequence of Mumm-Ra laughing while standing over the cauldron in his pyramid. The animators probably re-used the same sketch to make a new cel every time they needed to animate this sequence.

Thanks for the lookout, Wilycub.

New cel!!! New cel!!!

I updated the first post in this thread to show off the new Cheetarah opening sequence cel I just got. :thumbsup:

I updated the first post in this thread to show off the Ed Benes art I have collected from the comic series Thundercats: The Return.

Wow, I love the opening sequence pieces, specially the afford you did to match the scene and share with us, thanks

The animation cels are so colorful compared to their finished TV/comic book presentations.

Very nice collection - you must be really proud of them!

Mumm-ra Cel

Sweet Collection!

I think that the Mumm-ra cel was used in episode #3 "Berbils" and also in part 3 of the Thundercubs 5 part series.

Mad Bubbler
:tygra:

Over the past (I can't even remember how many) years I've been scanning the Thundercats DVDs while running on the treadmill. I "watch" the episodes in fast-forward with the specific goal of locating within the series the 2 cels (Tygra and Mumm-Ra) which I have not yet been able to place. Anytime there is a close up of Mumm-Ra's face, or a waist-up shot of Tygra I rewind it and watch that section over and over to see make sure it doesn't contain one of the cels I'm trying to locate. This has been a very daunting process.

And now I have 4 episodes left in the show. I'm starting to think I missed these cels and that my scanning method doesn't work. I don't want to start over.

Does anyone know of any computer programs that I could run that might do this for me? Surely this can't be too unrealistic, considering how far facial recognition software has come. (This may be a question I need to pose on Rubberslug, the cel collecting forum.)