The Baloo cel on a yellow printed jungle background, as photographed by the dealer
Matches  /  Baloo
No frame found

Baloo

The Jungle Book · 1967

No frame of the film fits this pose, and the background is a print that was never in the film. That is a common story for cels sold in 1967, and it doesn’t make the cel fake.

Searched
9,027 stillsThree separate passes
Nearest pose
About 43:53Telling Mowgli about the man-village
Background
A printed jungleNot from the film
Most likely
Real 1967 artOn a display background
Nearest in the film

Close in shape, wrong in the face

The best body match is Baloo telling Mowgli he has to go to the man-village. Two things agree and two don’t, and the face is what decides it.

The Baloo cel
The celChest-up, turned to the rightForearm raised across the chestHead tilted up, eyes looking upWorried brows, mouth open
Baloo at about 43:53
About 43:53Chest-up, turned to the rightForearm raised across the chestHead level, eyes looking downCalm, mouth closed, paw open
Baloo with Bagheera at about 45:55
About 45:50 to 45:57Baloo with Bagheera after Mowgli runs off. The mood is right, but in every drawing here the paw is at his chin. On the cel it is at his chest.
The best automatic hit

Pegbar’s automatic pass also searched every still for Baloo’s outline. Its single best hit across the whole film was Colonel Hathi, the elephant.

That score sat inside the range that unrelated shots get. When the best answer is an elephant, the honest result is “no frame found”.

The background

A print, and that’s normal

The yellow sky, bamboo and pink flowers behind this Baloo don’t appear anywhere in the film. In the scenes closest to this pose, he is in green jungle.

Cels sold to the public in 1967 were often set on printed jungle backgrounds like this one. Other dealers say the same about their own Jungle Book cels.

So the background tells you how the cel was sold. It tells you nothing about whether the cel is real.

Signs that still point to a real cel

  • Paint past the camera’s view. At the bottom edge the paint runs on in ragged brush strokes where the camera never looked. Reproductions don’t bother.
  • A Xerox line. The line work looks copied from a drawing, the way the studio made cels in 1967.
  • Honest wear. The seller discloses paint lifting with age.
What would settle it

Three questions for the seller

  1. Photos of the back

    Paint is applied to the back of a production cel. The back shows how it was painted and how it has aged.

  2. Peg holes, or a trimmed edge

    Production cels were punched to sit on the pegbar. Holes, or a strip where they were cut away, say a lot.

  3. A seal or a production number

    A studio seal or a number written on the cel can tie it to a scene even when the frame can’t be found.

Learn the terms

Lithographs, seals and peg holes

The collector’s guide explains every term on this page in a sentence or two.

Collector’s guide