Meaning of "合成親" on a douga?

[JustVan]

I just got a really awesome new Ranma 1/2 Nabiki cel today. It came with two douga that were in a format I'd never seen before. It's a single layer cel but there are two douga. The A4 key cel has a tiny sub 1 next to the key circle, and there is a second douga of her body with 合成親 (gosei oya) written instead of a sequence number, then a circled katakana A. I am assuming this is a correction layer or something, but I'd love to know more information if anyone has it.

You can see the cel and douga here. You may have to right click and open the douga in another tab/window to see them full size.

Here's a close up of the marks:



Thanks!

[Rekka Alexiel]

I believe it's related to composite layered scenes. This page talks a little bit about it:

http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa ... 1487775624

The layer on the top is called "ko/child" whereas the layer on the bottom is called "oya/parent". The page above gives the example of moving mouths. The layer of the mouth closed is called the "parent" where as the open mouth layers are called "child". It depends on the scene in which your cel comes from, but to me it looks like maybe the body "parent" layer stays static/unmoving, but the head "child" layer will move. Does that make sense...? This is new to me, too, so this is just how I understood it from doing a little research.

[JustVan]

Hmmm. I rewatched the sequence it's from (which you can see here at about 18:53) and it seems to me that only the mouth would move during this time. It's strange to me since the head, mouth and body are on one layer, but her head/mouth does move while her body doesn't. So I have no idea what's going on there.

Interestingly enough there's a Vegeta cel that just appeared on Mandarake auctions that also has something like this written on it. You can see it here. The auction says "without gose-douga" which I assume is the other half of that douga drawing... Really interesting.

[Rekka Alexiel]

it seems to me that only the mouth would move during this time. It's strange to me since the head, mouth and body are on one layer, but her head/mouth does move while her body doesn't.

That's why the body layer would be considered the "parent" layer. They don't need to illustrate it more than once since it doesn't move for the most part, but the head and mouth changes--that's the whole section that needs to move, which is why it's the "child" layer. Unlike just illustrating the mouth moving as the character talks, it's included in the movement of the whole head. The required movement is a little more complicated, which I think is why it calls for this sort of composite setup.

[JustVan]

That makes sense, except for the fact that it's not a two-layer cel. If the body was one layer and the head was a second layer like in the douga I'd understand completely. But it's a single layer cel so I guess that's why I'm confused. Maybe they redrew the bodylayer each time with the body douga and used a different head with different head douga... but for some reason redrew the whole body/head combination each time instead of having just a head layer. Not sure why they'd do that, but that's all that makes sense to me. The body layer douga was used mulitple times in creating the cels whereas the head layer changed...