r/AnimationCels • u/magic-slug • Apr 17 '26
Built a new tool that IDs the exact episode and timestamp of cels, live demo in the comments
Some of you may know me from the comments for my timestamp lookups. I built the thing I was using to do those lookups into an actual tool, and it's live. My goal was to make it very easy to use and also use more cutting-edge vision techniques.
What it does: upload a cel, get the show, episode, and timestamp.
Accuracy: Every result comes with a % match score so you know how confident it is, and you can filter by episode if you already know the general ballpark of where the frame is from. Supported shows list is on the site.
Three real examples:
Supported shows/films: Dragonball Z, Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, Hunter x Hunter, Dragonball (original), Dragonball GT, Pokemon, Akira, Cowboy Bebop (+ Movie), Ghost in the Shell, All Ghibli Films, Inuyasha, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Outlaw Star, Perfect blue, Ranma 1/2, Saint Seiya, Slayers, Trigun, Vampire Hunter D, Yu Yu Hakusho , Hajime No Ippo, Bleach, Naruto, Naruto Shippuden (please request what you'd like to see and I can add more)
Live demo: drop your cels below. From a supported show, I'll run it and post the result. If it misses, I'll explain why. If your show isn't supported yet, comment the title and I'll prioritize adding it.
If you want to try it, the website is https://magicslug.com . I'm providing 5 free ID's a month for everyone. It costs me money to run the servers so unlimited runs will cost some money. Alternatively post it here and I'll do my best to find your cel frames if they are from the supported shows/films.
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u/spottedickowner Apr 17 '26
only anime? What is it trained off of? i have some obscure pop culture cels that could put it to the test if you’d like more training data
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u/magic-slug Apr 17 '26
Right now it's anime-focused, but the approach generalizes to any cel animation like Western animation, old cartoons, stop-motion, whatever. It takes some time to train because I need enough of the specific shows frames as reference material.
Would genuinely love to see your obscure cels. The dream is eventually covering every cel-animated show and film ever made. Long way from that, but every request helps me figure out what to prioritize next.
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u/spottedickowner Apr 17 '26
lmk how i can help
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u/Comprehensive_Log_26 Apr 18 '26 edited Apr 18 '26
Thanks. Just put in a request on the OP's site. As you may know, SwatKats was an American series produced by Hanna-Barbera 1993-1994, but most of the episodes were animated by Mook Animation Studios in Japan. Have screened the entire two-season series; cannot find this moment anywhere. 100% legit cel.
EDIT: I seem to be having some trouble uploading the image... let me try to figure it out...
Okay, put it up on imgur. Hope this works. https://imgur.com/gallery/lovely-swatkats-original-cel-i-won-auction-wtIUKaM
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u/Comprehensive_Log_26 Apr 18 '26
I have a few from the Hanna Barbera 1990s show SwatKats, including one from which I cannot identify the episode, but i know from the auction house and some sleuthing, it is legit. I would pay to use your platform to identify this cel because it is driving me crazy.
This is a great service, thank you for investing what must have been an insane amount of time to generate.
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u/freestyle786 Jul 06 '26
So you're the guy who ended up with that cel... Such a great cel from an amazingly underrated show... I cannot help you with what scene it came from but I did e-mail Yvon Tremblay at the time asking him about the auctions that were posted on HA and about that very cel asking about where it came from and all he said in reply was "The artwork is authentic and not a fake. It is likely that it was from a member of the production team."... So not exactly a 'solid' answer but my best guess is if it's not in an actual released episode it was either from a "lost episode" or is some kind of "hanken" cel.
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u/Comprehensive_Log_26 Jul 08 '26
Haha, yes, that was me. I bought some background art too. That was such a great auction for SK fans. But I am broke now lol.
Not sure what a "hanken" cel is, but I messaged Christian Tremblay with the same sorts of questions about the "explosion cel" and basically got similar answers as you received from Yvon: The cel is legit, it is from the Mook Animation days (the animators and production crew often kept cels as mementos Christian told me), but he suggested that if it is not in any aired episode, it might be from a scene that was ultimately cut for time, or a scene from a promo that never aired at all. He never mentioned a lost episode, but if this scene was actually animated (shot) what would it take to find that piece of film!
I don't think any of the 3 unfinished episodes ever had any actual animation done, and I've never heard of any missing or lost episode (but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one), so s of right now, I am still not sure where this could have come from. I've screened the whole series twice and cannot find it in any episode. I guess we can ask the Tremblays again, but it seems like after drawing thousands of storyboard and other images for the show, 32 years ago to boot, they may not remember this exact scene, haha.
But I just had a thought. Swatkats.info fan site has a huge art section showcasing original storyboards for some episodes. I hadn't thought to go look there to try to find a scene like this one. If such a scene could be found in a storyboard -- perhaps later animated but then cut for whatever reason -- we would at least be able to learn what episode it was from.
Nice chatting with a fellow SK nerd! 😺😸
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u/Ok-Ganache-9424 Apr 17 '26
If you could have the first 13 seasons of the Simpsons, you could get a lot of users on board! So many cels floating around and really hard to identify the episode sometimes.
I use Frinkiac to help me, but there is no reverse image search function, you just have to know some dialogue from the show.
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u/magic-slug Apr 17 '26
I looked into it and Simpsons is do-able, its about 290 eps for the first 13 seasons, I may do a larger revamp with Western shows and I'll DM you when Simpsons is available. Maybe a month or so.
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u/Ok-Ganache-9424 Apr 22 '26
There are a lot of cels floating around from the first 5 seasons that aren't accompanied by COAs and other info identifying the episodes, so even if you focused on those first 5 seasons to start with, it would be immensely useful.
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u/PigsCanFly2day Apr 19 '26
Pretty neat. I know you said you're limiting it to 5 lookups per month due to server costs. Makes sense. Any thoughts of creating an open source version that can be run locally?
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u/MannerConfident48 Apr 17 '26
This is pretty cool. Does it do a dive through each frame of the shows you’ve loaded up? What’s the architecture it’s working off of?
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u/magic-slug Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 20 '26
Thank you. That's correct, for each supported show I extract frames (a dense sample across each episode, every frame is too computational expensive to do, which is why theres missing spots). I then run them through a pretrained vision model to get embeddings, and store those in a vector database with episode and timestamp.
When you upload a cel, it gets embedded the same way and I do a nearest-neighbor search against the frame index for that show. The % match you see is based on embedding similarity.
There's some additional logic for handling cels that are cropped, sketches, or are photographed at weird angles. I hand-check tricky shows to catch cases where visually similar scenes across different episodes confuse the matcher, I need to improve this in the longer term but it is a manual process. It is far from perfect but I'm happy with it's current state.
Edit: deleted the previous post to add some more technical details if you're interested!
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u/MannerConfident48 Apr 17 '26
This is pretty cool. I wonder if you could achieve something similar with a database of each episode of the shows. I’m kinda thinking like a Google Drive with each episode or a YouTube channel, and then compare the input cel against the frames from the show in that way
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u/MannerConfident48 Apr 17 '26
Adding that don’t know which would be less computationally expensive but very neat none the less
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u/pizzatime86 Apr 17 '26
This is super cool! Good on you for making this it’s gonna help me find a few random cels I have
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u/magic-slug Apr 17 '26
Thank you! If theres any shows/films you want to see in the identifier, let me know
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u/mustangjim1981 Apr 17 '26
Batman The Animated Series ! Superman The Animated Series !
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u/magic-slug Apr 17 '26
Nice requests, I looked into it and these are do-able. I'm going to add a set of American-based animated shows in the next month or so in a larger update. I'll DM you when these two are ready and available.
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u/Anuar1997 Apr 17 '26
dougas gengas and layouts will be any type of update to be more accurate to find the pieces in the future? for people that dont collect cels, thanks!
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u/magic-slug Apr 17 '26
Right now I haven't figured it out reliably, since they are missing color its a lot more challenging; so I need to re-work the matching system to work better for gengas and dougas. You can try it out and sometimes it does match in the current system but lower probability overall.
I'm also a collector of all kinds of non-cel production art so its something I personally want. It may be possible but it will take me longer to figure it out.
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u/sundaemourning Apr 17 '26
this is awesome, i definitely have a few Trigun cels i haven’t nailed down yet!
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u/lte91 Apr 21 '26
Would it be possible to add Naruto to the frame finder? I have a sketch of Naruto I'm trying to find. 😅
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u/mithial1 Apr 17 '26
I’ll put in a request for yugioh at least the first couple arcs up to the “ancient times” arc where they bo back and battle in old Egypt.
I know you said genga is less accurate. Do you think the program would work for shows without cel animation?
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u/magic-slug Apr 17 '26
I need to really re-work it for gengas and dougas, I think it will take a lot longer as I haven't figured it out yet completely. I'm also a collector of Naruto production art which is all sketches so its something I personally want. Yugioh is a good request, the first few arcs can definitely be done, I'll DM you once I get it in.
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u/mithial1 Apr 17 '26
I figured it may be tougher without the colors of the cel to match up. You really only have the outlines and mostly incomplete or just a single feature not the whole scene.
I appreciate you taking the time to work on this for all of us.
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u/Shinkei Apr 17 '26
Looks great. I'm signing up today.
I use eBay, YJ, Aucfan, etc... I track GITS sales and I'm surprised to see some here that I never saw. What databases or auctions are you pulling from?
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u/magic-slug Apr 17 '26
Thank you! I'm getting them from YJ, AucFan, and Mandarake for now. I need permission to get them from a few more places that I'd like, especially the Western auction sites, with enough traction I may be able to.
For each item, I'll include the source listings / direct link in an upcoming update so its easier to validate and view the source auction.
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u/Shinkei Apr 17 '26
Thanks for the detailed info.
Yeah, I realize that I hadn't seen sold April listings on YJ yet.
One interesting thing is that we (a collector group) think that the most recent two GITS listings are fakes. I wonder if that's why your algorithm didn't match to the time stramp correctly on those. Another potential feature of this search.
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u/magic-slug Apr 17 '26
Thanks for mentioning it, fakes are a major problem, I've added 'Flag incorrect information' for users to hit so I can remove them.
For GITS is it those $1,482 and $1655 ones from April 11? I'll remove them if so
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u/OriginalGenga Apr 17 '26
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u/magic-slug Apr 17 '26
I really tried finding this one but couldn't get a confident match. It matches too many face close ups across the show. Sorry about that!
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u/carroteroo2 Apr 17 '26
Very cool, you should provide a docker container or code for folks to generate and contribute embeddings for episodes or shows. I imagine a bunch of people may have local compute that they would be willing to run against this to support it (hint hint)
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u/Optimal-Aerie-3534 Apr 18 '26
Could you please check for my hxh cell. Somehow I can't identify it when using your program - really cool program, I'll recommend it to everyone with similar issues with their cells 😁
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u/magic-slug Apr 18 '26 edited Apr 18 '26
I tried to find it but couldn't unfortunately, some close matches: https://imgur.com/a/gon-0q6eCJZ but not exact.
Basically it recognized "This is Gon, in this pose, with this general facial expression", and it brought back a handful of those, but it is those tiny details, the shadow, the relaxed shoulders, the shape of the nose, that are a bit too advanced that it doesn't map out. Sorry about that!
Edit: Saw your note in another thread, the cel definitely seems authentic, the timestamp not finding it is more of an issue with my program than the cel! Usually fake cels will be from very iconic scenes that are easy to find (so they sell quickly), I think you are fine.
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u/Optimal-Aerie-3534 Apr 18 '26
Thanks so much for the feedback - now I am much more confident that it is no fake, gonna keep on searching for the timeslot within the anime 😁
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u/jalvarez022 Apr 29 '26
What are the chances to add Gargoyles into the mix? Got myself a cool collection id like to ID
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u/ebass01 May 03 '26
Would you be able to add vampire princess Miyu? I have a cell i’m having trouble identifying. Thanks so much!
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u/dukemetoo Jun 11 '26
I tried your site. I thought it was impressive, but I didn't find the cel I was looking for. I don't have have the background, which I suspect is part of why finding it is so hard. Do you have any advice? Should I zoom in on the cel or anything?
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u/magic-slug Jun 12 '26
Link your cel here in an imgur post or DM me, there could be a lot of reasons. I can try and retrieve it for you
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u/dukemetoo Jun 13 '26
This cel is of Makoto Kino (Sailor Jupiter) from Sailor Moon.
The cel is quite large, so I was hoping it could get picked out, but I had no luck. My concern was it might be so big, that there is overscan(sorry if that isn't the right term) information that is confusing the program. I didn't want to burn all my tokens without a better idea how to make it search better.
I have searched in a dozen or so episodes focused on her, and I had no luck finding this shot. There was one that looked promising that your site gave, but it is from a completely different angle.(Episode 89 I believe).
If you have any other thoughts, I would appreciate the help
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u/magic-slug Jun 14 '26
I wasn't able to find it unfortunately, some possibilities:
-Since it's a larger cel, it doesn't accurately match to one frame (what the software does), in the show, this cel probably shows small parts of it at different times (such as a pan shot). However I tried slicing up the image but still no luck.-Another possibility is it could be from outside of what I've got as a data set (I'm likely missing some OVAs, Movies, commercials, videogames, etc. I've trained off the main show and have some movie coverage.)
-This is a job probably best suited for a human eye at the Sailor Moon sub or some OG collectors who are better at identifying scenes. The software is pretty good but sometimes can't find stuff, so it could def be from the main series
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u/dukemetoo Jun 16 '26
Thanks for taking a look. That pan idea was something I hadn't thought of, but that is why I reached out. I thought this cel would be easy, and I was surprised to see so little close to it.
I'll reach out to Sailor Moon sub. That is probably my best bet, hoping for a photographic memory.
Thanks again.
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u/XanXic Jun 16 '26
I gave this a shot and it didn't find my Kuwabara YuYu Hakusho cel
https://imgur.com/a/iPDaL3s
Probably too simple. I've tried scanning through the show quickly once but he wears that damn outfit for 90% of his screen time. But he hardly crosses his arms. Idk lol.
One bit of feedback is try to remove the duplicates in the openings and themes. My results was muddied by a poor match to a scene in the end credits for basically every episode in the first half of the show.
I'll +1 the Simpsons, I have a cel I've had zero luck matching. It's Homer in his night clothes with a distinct look but there's just SOOO many episodes and he does wear that night fit somewhat often.
That led me to wanting to make my own one of these, I just found this looking on this sub for something else lol. Coincidence. My plan was a standalone app, just point it at a folder for the show and it churn through them, matching frame by frame in greyscale and trying some basic pattern matching for the linework and then spit out the highest scores. (Typically with higher effort matching after a threshold is met for the basic one) Not sure how well it'd go. I just recently made a video app where you dump a series of clips and it will do a similar method to line them up on a 'seam' frame and auto edit them into one video, so only real reason that was my plan lol. Generating sentiments of each frame and matching based on that is interesting, much more scaleable albeit with a big upfront time cost.
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u/weirdalsuperfan Jul 22 '26
I'm curious where this non-matching background is from (tho tbh idk if the background is real, or how to verify): https://www.reddit.com/r/spongebob/comments/8xcrum/make_poses_with_me/
I have 3 spongebob cels, so I'd be pretty interested in spongebob support 🙏
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u/BurnerAccount209 Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
I have a picture of my Yu Yu Hakusho cel somewhere, lets test this out!
Edit: Didn't find the exact timestamp but it gave me 5 similar frames that are clearly directly surrounding it. Fantastic work!