Adventures in Restoring Faded Lines

[Yuuki]

The last few Friday nights I'd been taking my cel collection into school to use the big scanners to scan things... I wasn't able to do that tonight, so I had a go at fixing up one of my cels that had suffered line fading instead.

I thought maybe someone might be interested in the adventure, so I set up a blog entry for it (full of pictures!)

http://teaelleharris.blogspot.ca/2013/0 ... eally.html

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[sensei]

Interesting, and congratulations on your success in making a new set of trace lines! I can think of a couple of reasons why the lines on the douga don't quite fit the cel. Possibly the sketch had once stuck to the cel, and the process used to unstick the two warped the paper.

Or, since the douga looks in good shape, it more likely has to do with the way the photocopy machine imaged and transferred the lines to the backside of the cel. It's notorious that most photocopies are not quite identical to the originals, being a twitch bigger or (usually) smaller. I'll bet that if you take a sketch you've made and copied it on an average xerox machine, then held them up to a light, you'd see the same subtle distortion: seemingly accurate at one place, then increasingly "off" the farther you get from this point.

Thanks for sharing! You've made Kero-chan happy in his little anime heaven.

[Yuuki]

Interesting, and congratulations on your success in making a new set of trace lines! I can think of a couple of reasons why the lines on the douga don't quite fit the cel. Possibly the sketch had once stuck to the cel, and the process used to unstick the two warped the paper.

Or, since the douga looks in good shape, it more likely has to do with the way the photocopy machine imaged and transferred the lines to the backside of the cel. It's notorious that most photocopies are not quite identical to the originals, being a twitch bigger or (usually) smaller. I'll bet that if you take a sketch you've made and copied it on an average xerox machine, then held them up to a light, you'd see the same subtle distortion: seemingly accurate at one place, then increasingly "off" the farther you get from this point.

Thanks for sharing! You've made Kero-chan happy in his little anime heaven.

Thank you! It was a very interesting exercise. Actually the cel/sketch have been through both scenarios. I had planned to do a line trace of a photocopy of the sketch, but when I photocopied it and compared the two, the lines on the photocopy were off slightly, very similarly to the distortion on my line layer, so I decided to use the original instead (thinking it was exact). Lesson learned - any more line fixins need the cel as a source lol. And the sketch was, at one time, stuck to the cel... though I don't think it was 'professionally' removed - I think it got yoinked off somewhere in it's early life there's a bit of paper stuck to the back of the Clow staff, matching a surface tear on the sketch. Bleh.

Yay! Happy Kero-chan XD

[ReiTheJelly]

She looks beautiful with her new lines! I wish I could do this to a few of my cels, as certain ones are badly faded (I have one with no trace lines at all anymore!)

[Jet]

Thanks for sharing the process, and agreed, the "new" cel looks fantastic. The restoration really does make the colors pop, especially the browns of the hair and staff.

Forgive my ignorance, and I did look at the full blogspot post, but when you're referring to "cel overlay" with linework (as in what you're displaying with the restored version) it's a second cel with just linework layered on top of the original?

[Yuuki]

Thanks for sharing the process, and agreed, the "new" cel looks fantastic. The restoration really does make the colors pop, especially the browns of the hair and staff.

Forgive my ignorance, and I did look at the full blogspot post, but when you're referring to "cel overlay" with linework (as in what you're displaying with the restored version) it's a second cel with just linework layered on top of the original?

I was so delighted to see how things popped out with a strong, fresh line

No worries :3 but yes, that's what I meant by the 'cel overlay' - the additional cel sheet with the line art. Anything that's atop the animation cel layer (an adjustment layer or static foreground element) is an overlay ^^

[BuraddoRun]

Good job on your line restoration, and thanks for sharing the process on your blog!

[LWK]

Brilliant! I like how it doesn't effect the underlying cel as it is just one top layer placed over with the lines. Really good way to restore that fresh look and not adversely effect the cel itself.

[Drac of the Sharp Smiles]

Really nice job there!! Some years ago I did this with one cel, but never pursued it after that since I just didn't have a steady enough hand to pull it off so well.

[LWK]

I wonder how this'd look on my young terry cel.

[JustVan]

Very nice! I did a very rudimentary version of this with a Dragonball Z cel I have, but I have a really difficult time keeping the layers lined up in my cel book. Do you have the two layers attached in any way? (Staples, tape, etc?) I am guessing that bagging the layers separately and then taping them together might work, but every time I look through my cel book my lined-layer has shifted off the cel base. Not a big deal, but it does make me sad. Your method is way more professional than mine, though, so I'm wondering if you have a better solution. I don't really want to put a staple into my original and I worry about the damage tape could do long-term.