Silver Surfer _hand-painted animation cel _Saban

Super-rare 17"x11" full color hand painted Silver Surfer animated series cel art by Saban Entertainment, INC. The team at Saban was the first animators who blended hand-painted cels with computer animation backgrounds and images. The series is rendered in the style of Silver Surfer creator Jack Kirby.

During an interview with writer/creator Larry Brody, he shared that animator-producer Roy Smith and Fox Vice President Sidney Iwanter wanted the style of the series to be modeled after Jack Kirby's Silver Surfer. This image shown here came from Jack Kirby and Stan Lee's 1978 Silver Surfer Graphic novel (p.19) as inspiration for the artists drawing the series. The intent was to ensure older viewers of the morning cartoon Marvel series had a true sense that the art would honor Jack and Joe Sinnott.

Inspired by various Silver Surfer comic book stories, the Silver Surfer animated series alters the original mythos in some key ways. It removes the Fantastic Four from The Galactus Trilogy, the foundation for the first three episodes. In this version, the Silver Surfer, who has had the memories of Norrin Radd partially restored to him by Thanos, protects Earth from the hunger of Galactus because it reminds him of Zenn-La.

This animation cel was part of a small handful of examples cels used to help the story board team to understand the color and style to be used for the series. Larry Brody (creator/writer) confirmed these were part of the production art cels. This hand painted cel was painted by Pam Gibson (Color Stylist) painted on transparent sheets and laid on top of a digitally printer background created by Kelly Akins and June M. MICU.

As with most of the Marvel Films Animation and New World Animation libraries, the rights to this show are currently owned by Disney Enterprises, through BVS Entertainment and Jetix who acquired the Fox Kids Worldwide franchise and the kids’ entertainment programming properties of Saban Entertainment and Fox Children's Productions in 2001 and also, Marvel Animation, when Disney acquired Marvel Entertainment in 2009.