And They Lived Happily Ever After : In This Agoura Lab, a ‘Search and Rescue Team’ Brings Animation Cels Back to Life

The artworks in Ron Stark’s lab are Disney characters that didn’t live happily ever after. People who remember the conniving Br’er Fox from “Song of the South” or the debonair Jose Carioca from “Three Caballeros” would have trouble recognizing the forlorn handfuls of plastic in the chamber of horrors at S/R Laboratories: Br’er Fox had lost his head and Jose Carioca was curled up almost beyond recognition.

Fortunately, Stark is used to seeing cartoon characters at their worst--the task of his lab in Agoura is to restore the fire and sparkle to rare, aging gems of animation.

“It’s saving everybody’s childhood,” Stark, 40, said of the lab’s mission as a “search and rescue team” for damaged animation art.

S/R works with all types of animation art, from initial pencil drawings to the final product--even the movable models that artists use as the basis for their sketches--but it specializes in cels.

Cels, the transparent plastic sheets on which characters are painted before being photographed frame-by-frame against a background, are the most prized objects in animation art.

Each Cel Is Unique

Owning a cel, with a character crisply painted in vivid colors, is like owning a split second (1/24th to be exact) of a favorite film. As with etchings, cels are limited in number; in fact, each painted cel is unique, differing slightly from all others, even of the same character in the same scene.

But cels are also the most prized objects in animation art because they are the most ephemeral: Many simply vanished into a vat of solvent (remember “the dip” in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”), washed off because the plastic sheets were too expensive to use once and throw away.

Although animation art has always caught the interest of collectors, it has become big business in recent years. At a recent Christie’s auction, a black-and-white cel and background from “The Orphans’ Benefit,” a 1934 Disney short, sold for $122,000. Even the cels that used to be sold at Disneyland for $1.50 to $4 can be worth several hundred dollars today. With prices like these, Stark’s business has also soared.

Started 10 years ago “by accident” when Stark volunteered to restore a Mickey Mouse cel from the 1940 film “Fantasia,” the company was launched as a nonprofit project of the International Animated Film Society. In the early days, Stark worked out of his Hollywood garage, which served as his lab. The society provided him with funding of $50 a month.

“Word was instantaneous,” he said. “Within three months, there were more requests than we could keep up with.”

Tracking Down Chemists

But he quickly found that the people who could tell him about the techniques for mixing paint and painting the cels were no longer at the studios as animation fell victim to prohibitive production costs. Stark spent years tracking down studio chemists and quizzing them about the way they made paint, and talking to artists about the quickly vanishing techniques.

As a result, studios sometimes ask Stark how certain effects were achieved, and the lab was recently asked to supply paint for the limited edition cels of “Sleeping Beauty.”

His work has won the praise of his clients. Most collectors are reluctant to discuss their valuable holdings, but Ken Anderson, the art director for “Snow White,” said S/R did a “fabulous” job, making aged cels from the Disney classic look the way they did 50 years ago.

The lab employs Stark, his wife, Juliann, who handles business matters, two assistants and a color man who mixes their paint. Stark’s educational background is “mostly chemistry with some art,” while the others, including Nancy Ulene, who previously worked in animation production, have art backgrounds and have picked up a smattering of chemistry.

Producing an animated film is a complex process, and each step uses materials that can fall prey to particular ills: After animators finish their drawings on paper (which may be torn or have a high acid content that must be stabilized), the images are traced in ink or photocopied onto the front of a cel. Ink can disappear over time or be washed away, as in the case of a “Lady and the Tramp” cel sent to the lab after it fell victim to overzealous housecleaning.

Early cels used nitrate stock, and although it is more stable than flammable nitrate film, because of its age and composition, it is more susceptible to its environment than acetate, which was introduced in full-length features beginning with “Fantasia,” and subsequently in the short subjects.

Because traditional paints sometimes didn’t stick to plastic, studios experimented with a variety of materials, employing chemists who often relied on their memories instead of keeping notes.

Problems With Paint

Whatever paint was used, it did not expand as much as the surface that holds it. Eventually, the paint on some cels broke into flakes and fell off. In one of his files, Stark keeps a large chunk of gray paint that had been the back of a “Dumbo” cel.

“The emphasis was on expediency,” Stark said of the materials. “Cels were created to last 1/24th of a second. Once you get the print back, a cel becomes movie trash.”

Although Stark says 99% of the cels can be restored, a few are hopeless. The Jose Carioca in question, for example, was cut out, glued to a background and varnished after the 1944 release of “Three Caballeros.” In time, the varnish came off, removing the ink lines on the front of the cel. All that remains is a small bit of plastic and some paint, not enough to repair.

The majority of cels, however, have less threatening ailments. One of the more common problems is for a cel to have paint dissolve on a humid day and become stuck to the background. Although restoration in this instance can be complicated, it is possible.

Stark is quick to emphasize that having a cherished cel restored is not a speedy process. The lab has an 18-month backlog of art sent by customers who live “from down the block to Indonesia,” and once work begins, it can often be painstakingly slow.

The lab makes its own model sheets on every character it handles for use as a key to be sure new colors match original ones. It might seem as though the figures are simple, but Donald Duck, a relatively straightforward character, requires five colors, and an intricate character like “Sleeping Beauty’s” King Hubert takes 13. There are more shades if a character is in shadow or appears at night, and the colors must match existing paints exactly.

Pride in Restoration

How close is exact? Ulene, who worked on Saturday morning TV cartoons before coming to the lab, cited the seven hours she recently spent matching a single color on a King Hubert cel.

“There’s a pride in restoring a cel to the way it was,” she said. “You’re real conscious of the color mixing and match. I wanted to cheat, but I couldn’t because it had to be perfect. By the time I got it done, I was so proud.”

Matching the paint is further complicated because the colors on a cel differ from what is seen in the film. Alice is a blonde in “Alice in Wonderland,” but her hair was painted in a slightly green hue.

There are other mysteries. Why, for example, does the paint on one cel deteriorate badly while another cel from the same sequence survives with little if any damage? Stark said that perhaps it is because more liquid would be used to make the paint on dry days and less on rainy days.

When the work is through, however, renewal is complete, from the labels and stamps that might have appeared with the original cel, to the style of lettering used to write the film’s title on the mat board.

If there are frustrations along the way, there are rewards as well in simply having a chance to handle some of the art. As one of the most remarkable items he has handled, Stark cited a brightly colored background of a street scene in “Pinocchio,” which had suffered scratches across its entire 5-foot length. After being retouched for “thousands of colors,” it was put on display at Disney World.

“The first feeling in seeing a damaged cel is ‘it’s really too bad,’ ” Stark said. “The second is analytical, using chemistry to evaluate the damage.

“The greatest amount of pleasure is at the finish, when we stand back and say ‘There! That’s the way it should be. That’s the way we remember it.’ ‘