Q: I recently saw some production cels from Snow White. How many production cels were needed for an animated film before the digital age? And thanks for your recent book—loved reading it.
DJ, Dallas, Texas
A: This is hard to count. There are 24 frames per second, but some cels are held over for two frames. Also, if there are several characters in a scene, they are sometimes painted on separate cels. So Snow White, as a guess, might have had in the neighborhood of 100,000 cels.
Dave Smith