Cel overlay

A cel with inanimate objects made to make the impression of a foreground when laid on top of a ready frame. This creates the illusion of depth, but not as much as a multiplane camera would. A special version of cel overlay is called line overlay, made to complete the background instead of making the foreground, and was invented to deal with the sketchy appearance of xeroxed drawings. The background was first painted as shapes and figures in flat colors, containing rather few details. Next a cel with detailed black lines was laid directly over it, each line drawn to add more information to the underlaying shape or figure, giving the background the complexity it needed. In this way the visual style of the background will match the visual style of the xeroxed parts of the animation. As the xerographic process evolved, line overlay was left behind.