The tale of finding and prepping a Cosmic Christmas animation cel for display…

This is the first animation cel I ever got from A Cosmic Christmas. I found it on eBay when there were about 10 other cels available, none of any particularly notable scenes, but I was still thrilled for find it! It was offered up fro sale with the wrong background (obviously a handful of colour copy backgrounds that were just added behind cels to make them look more saleable.

But I knew I had Tough Marvin from the scene where he’s stolen Chief Snerk’s badge, right before Peter puts it on the top of the tree.

Tough Marvin holding the police badge. Background unknown.

I knew I wanted to frame the cel and make it something more accurate than what it currently was. So I had to check the video and find out what the actual background was supposed to be.

A screenshot of the actual scene from A Cosmic Christmas.

Overlaying the cel on top of the screenshot showed just how much a difference there was between the original art and the video version that gets shared around now. Yet another reason why I’m begging for a BluRay version to be released. Imagine what a difference a restored version could do for A Cosmic Christmas’ legacy.

Marvin like he did all those years ago.

So I knew what the image of the background would be. And as luck would have it, one of the other cels the sellers were offering had a copy of the correct background for the scene, but with the wrong cel. I didn’t end up buying it, but it gave me a good place to start. It also showed what the original colours looked like for the background.

Another cel for sale on eBay which happened to helped show what the accurate original colours would have been.

If I’d known how hard these cels would be to come by (and if price had been no object) I could have bought this cel as well, but since the backgrounds were just colour copies, it didn’t add anything authentic that I couldn’t fake myself. I set to work to recreate the background in Adobe Illustrator, redrawing the background characters.

A recreation of the background in Illustrator, with the more-correct green background seen in the video.

I had to guess a bit on the background colour since the video was old and dark, but made an educated guess based on how much darker and drabber the other colours were in the scene. Not perfect, but far more accurate than the original random background from some other animation. I’m pleased with how it all turned out. Now all that was left was to drop the cel on top and frame it!

The original cel laid on top of the new, printed background.

And that’s it. It hangs in my hallway and I’m always proud to show it off. A nice little memento from one of my all-time favourite Christmas specials!

Final framed version of the Tough Marvin animation cel and custom background.

Oh, and there’s a certificate of authenticity. Again, no one correct me if it’s fake, I just don’t want to know. I’d worry about fakes on larger scale animated specials, but I love that A Cosmic Christmas is niche enough that it’s probably not worth it financially for someone to go to the trouble of making forgeries. If it is a forgery, it’s a good one, and I’m pretty happy to have it in my collection!

It came with a certificate of authenticity, but that didn’t sway me either way.