Today’s Cartoon Commentary! is going to be a quick one as I’m so busy at work I feel like I need an extra set of legs so that I can run in two directions at once. This cel is another from the She-Ra: Princess of Power cartoon (circa 1985-86) and features one of the Horde Troopers on his wonderous flying machine. I originally picked up this cel to showcase an example of a more rigid technological item instead of the more common fluid character cels.
What I found really interesting about this is that even though vehicles like this come off very straight-edged and technically perfect, when you get close up to the image you can see that it’s not quite so. Some of the line work looks like it was done by hand instead of with rulers and stuff, though I don’t have the pencil under drawing to see this for sure. Because it looks like it was mostly drawn free hand I can only imagine how much of a headache this could be while animating, trying to match up all the little parallel lines and connections between the metal plates and stuff. Maddening actually.
Next week, less stress at work (laugh) and some cels from Bravestarr!
