Photo Credit: USPS
ANAHEIM (CNS) - A first day of issue ceremony for a sheet of 20 ``forever'' stamps featuring 10 Disney villains was held by the U.S. Postal Service today at D23 Expo 2017 at the Anaheim Convention Center.
Postmaster General Megan J. Brennan described the stamps ``as miniature works of art.''
The stamps are based on digitized versions of the original animation drawings, Brennan said at the ceremony.
Because each drawing showed the character in motion ``Disney redrew some of the poses to generate a crisper image for the stamp,'' creating ``a unique set of new images created specifically for these stamps,'' Brennan said.
Each stamp depicts a villain set against a blue background.
The villains in the stamp set are
-- the Queen (``Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'');
-- Honest John (``Pinocchio'');
-- Lady Tremaine (``Cinderella'');
-- the Queen of Hearts (``Alice in Wonderland);
-- Captain Hook (``Peter Pan'');
-- Maleficent (``Sleeping Beauty'');
-- Cruella De Vil (``One Hundred and One Dalmatians'');
-- Ursula (``The Little Mermaid);
-- Gaston (``Beauty and the Beast''); and
-- Scar (``The Lion King'').
Brennan said the stamps ``serve as a tribute to the unequalled artistry and storytelling skill of'' Walt Disney Animation Studios Ink & Paint Department, which was founded in 1923.
The Ink & Paint Department would receive animators pencil drawings. Highly specialized artists meticulously recreated each pencil line in ink, capturing every nuanced movement and expression.
Artists first used black and white, and later shades of gray to color each celluloid or cel. In the early 1930s, the artists began using rich colors on the animation cels. ``The Little Mermaid,'' released in 1989, was the last full-length animated Disney film to use the hand-painted cel process.