Need Help Authenticating Genga

For the n00bs of cel collecting and production art . . . and for some of us old-timers, too. Post your questions on anything that puzzles you.
Pixel
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Re: Need Help Authenticating Genga

Post by Pixel »

sensei wrote:I'd say it's a good bet that you will be the first person to treat a given sketch with the care and respect that its place in animation history should have earned it.
I wanted to go back to this for a second, because on further research, the seller I'm dealing with appears to himself be a genga collector. Hopefully he has treated his items better than I'm afraid I might, if only because I'm ignorant how to handle such things.

As to the auction proxies, etc. I never could get Shopping Mall Japan to turn a result. Rinkya worked pretty well, but not all the pages would load. There was a tug-of-war genga, and a douga from less than a minute prior to the one previously mentioned in E18. I don't think I could put that one on my wall. It looks like nightmare fuel to me. 8O

I think Azumanga Daioh may have been animated using a hybrid system of traditional cel illustrations for BG, and computer graphics for characters. I have to say, I have learned first hand that drawing backgrounds digitally is a tremendous pain in the neck!

Does that process sound feasible? It would certainly explain why only background cels from the show seem to exist.

Such a thing, from a fan standpoint, is the worst of both worlds- no character cels to collect, and no practical way to properly remaster the show in HD, either. :roll:
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Re: Need Help Authenticating Genga

Post by sensei »

Pixel wrote: Hopefully he has treated his items better than I'm afraid I might, if only because I'm ignorant how to handle such things.
I need to find some time to do my bit in the "What Animation Art Collectors Need to Know" pulling together the threads on best practices for maintaining sketchwork. The main thing is to remove all celotape that is browning or does not appear stable. The kind that has a matte surface is better than most, and I sometimes leave it, but the Library of Congress archival standard is to get it all off. (They actually found a piece of celotape that had been put on the Declaration of Independence sometime in the 1930s to repair a rip.) Here's an old post in which I describe how to do this:

Removing adhesive tape from sketches

(BTW, I got curious once and did try the process on a cheap freebie cel and found that it doesn't work. But it also does not appear to damage the cel plastic or paint. It does remove trace lines and sequence numbers written in marker pen, so I'd still avoid trying it on any cel you plan to keep.)

Other than that, keep the art flat with a backing board to guard against accidental creasing (I get acid-free cardstock at Michaels on sale and cut it to size), store it in a good-quality plastic sleeve (Bags Unlimited sells them in quantity for hobbyists of all sorts), and as it accumulates, get an archival quality storage box (I also use Bags Unlimited.) The kind made for collectors of sheet music are a good size for animation art sketches too.
Rinkya worked pretty well, but not all the pages would load.
Rinkya is good as it does provide an "Azumanga Daioh (genga)" search. You get a fair number of false hits but several good ones. You can also go directly to Yahoo Japan and enter "原画 あずまんが大王" (Genga + Azumanga Daioh]. As the results will come back with images, you can at once sort out the items you're interested in. With a little experience you can even make sense out of the descriptions. The heading for this one:

あずまんが大王 原画 動画 20話C-144

... says you get both the gengas [原画] and the dougas [動画] for Episode 20 [20話], cut 144 [C-144].

The gengas are the key animator's sketches for the keyframes, and the dougas are the pencil-on-paper inbetweeners that were scanned and colorized to make the animation. There are normally about 300 cuts (or animation sequences) in a given TV episode, this this one falls right about at the eyecatch in the very middle of the show.) The description adds that you get three gengas and 25 dougas, plus the timing sheet and the cut bag (the brown manila envelope that the studio used to ship the animation products from division to division.

Rinkya lets you transate the pages but the results are Engrishy so you have to translate those. "Original" = genga, "Video" = douga, for instance. And things like "time cut bag filled with sheet" you have to mentally reorganize (Japanese syntax isn't like English) into "also includes time sheet and cut bag."

It looks as if the seller "santasanloved" has a number of these for sale. I recognize this source as one that specializes in sketchwork, and I've gotten several items from the same seller with no problems regarding authenticity or silverfish.
I think Azumanga Daioh may have been animated using a hybrid system of traditional cel illustrations for BG, and computer graphics for characters. Does that process sound feasible? It would certainly explain why only background cels from the show seem to exist.
I believe the backgrounds were done in watercolor (or gouache) on paper and then scanned. That makes sense given the art that later appeared for the first generation of CGI shows. I have a batch of watercolors done for Princess Tutu, some of which were subsequently manipulated digitally, with images painted against a dark blue background cut and pasted into different positions (compare the watercolor with the screen cap for this one and you'll see).

As I understand the process, the watercolor scan was the bottom layer of the CGI art. Then the dougas for the characters were scanned from the sheets on which they were drawn and colorized. If you look at a CGI douga, you'll find that the shading indicated highlights and shadows were done on the back, so the front contains only the tracing. The digital colorizer then would work with the douga placed on a light table for reference. These then would be layered on top of the bg scan, and any CGI effects added.

Watercolor backgrounds exist for quite a few first-gen CGI shows, including Azu. Then it became more feasible to generate the backgrounds digitally. Mushishi was one of the first of these and won a special animation award for their innovations. Now I'd expect this is routine. But it is nice to be able to possess a full-color image from some of the series for which backgrounds were still painted on paper.

Hope this helps some. Being able to hold, inspect, and learn from actual production materials is fascinating and helps all of us better understand the creative human side of animation.
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Re: Need Help Authenticating Genga

Post by Pixel »

I know I sound like all Azu, all the time and all that, but my eperience with anime is a little broader than that. The first series I ever watched complete was Marmalade Boy. I found the premise a bit unsettling, but it had it's moments. I particularly enjoyed the voice work on that one. Marmalade Boy was all hand-drawn AFAIK. I see some cels from it floating around auction sites, but I would actually be looking for one of a specific character probably.

I've also seen a few episodes of the original Taiho Shichauzo. That was where I first picked-up the infamous glasses-glare effect. The late 80's-early 90's rock into on that one is particularly sweet.

And yes, I have seen one full episode of Card Captor Sakura. Wasn't really my thing though, I'm not really into "mahoujo" anime.

Switching gears, I was actually hoping to frame my first genga for display, if I ever actually manage to get it. :roll:

Is that a bad thing to do? I was planning to put it behind UV glass or UV plastic and sandwiched between at least one, maybe two layers of acid-free matte.

Thank you for putting together that search on Azu. I'm drawing a blank on the scene it's from. It looks as though they expect Osaka (Ayumu actually, but they call her Osaka almost exclusively) on the left on a different cel layer (B3) from Chiyo on the right (A).

I do understand some Japanese, but not a whole bunch. In ways all the kanji are the hardest part of learning the language.

The kanji used for "episode" [as in 20話] is often read "hanashi", meaning "story" or "speech, talk, etc.". In this case, story is closest. With "su" attached it becomes the plain non-past verb "hanasu" (to speak).

The Japanese prefer a very indirect method of speaking. It makes trying to figure out what is actually being said particularly fun. I bet you know quite a bit yourself. It's really cool to discover liberties taken with English subtitles in order to try to get the feel of what is not being said literally, but is definitely implied. It helps a lot if the voice speaking is generally clear and well pronounced.

When I first heard it spoken and noted it 14 years ago it sounded almost like alien gibberish. I go back and hear the same Japanese spoken, and some of it I can actually make some sense of. The rest of it sounds like something I should be able to understand, even if I actually don't. It no longer sounds unfamiliar to me.

EDIT: The computers of the early 2000's were just starting to get powerful enough to properly handle digital art and animation on a mass-market level. That may have had play in what percentage of a production was done on computer vs by hand.

They say Macs are best for graphic design and media production. I do not have the expertise to argue that point in general. However, I find them way too expensive for the power you get. I remember a cylindrical core i7-based Mac that Apple wanted $4000 for. If I had that $4000 to spend, I could build a Xeon-based workstation that would eat that Mac alive, particularly in parallel computing.
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Re: Need Help Authenticating Genga

Post by jiangdc »

Forgive my ignorance, but I'm not familiar with Mr. Sakurai. Hold on a sec. (pulls up the English credits roll) Oh okay, Animation Director Masaaki Sakurai. That surname sounds familiar- by chance is he related to SSB director Masahiro Sakurai?
To me, they only share a similar name, also there are several different Masaaki Sakurai in anime field, which is interesting.
I am so glad that Sensei covered a lot in tracing animators. It is not really necessary to know who is drew the sketch unless you are really interested in animators. To me, it is additional fun after collecting those arts.
As for "Azu" itself-that's exactly what I call it for short, btw-I'm not exactly sure what happened. I saw this strangely titled show on Anime Network on Demand and thought "what the heck." I think my first impression may have been it was historical fiction like The Ambition of Oda Nobuna, for example. Imagine my surprise when I found out what it really was. I thought the first episode was funny. Said to myself, well it wasn't a total disaster, I'll watch another one. Then I watched another. By Episode 4 I was hooked. I didn't like everything that went on on the show, to be sure. When it was funny though, it was the funniest thing I've seen out of Japan. The comic timing was incredible.
That's an interesting story, I totally get you point. I also get amused by some of the namings (Is This a Zombie?). I started Azu with manga and found the anime interesting as well. I would like to bring up the author Kiyohiko Azuma here, he is really a genius! He really knows how to bring his audience tons of joy while reading. If you haven't read Yotsuba, I would highly recommend it to you.
I tend toward the paranoid side at times. I'm astonished that a piece of paper that once laid on a desk in a Japanese animation studio could end up half way around the world, intact, some 15 odd years later. Being new to the field of collecting, and with the mystique surrounding the adventure such an article must have taken, I couldn't help but be a bit suspect. After all, there are people who will do anything for a buck these days it seems.

Azumanga Daioh is often credited as the founder of a genre. I see it as more of a specialization of existing genres. It reminds me somewhat of the older series Marmalade Boy, and the surprisingly obscure Mizuiro Jidai. Azu focuses more on school and comedy, than life in general and drama.
Yes, exactly, I would describe that genre as "Why do I waste my life watching daily lives of those girls? But they are really funny." Marmalade Boy came from shojo manga. To me, it is more related to love and other emotional things. For Azu, yes, it is comedy :cheers
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Re: Need Help Authenticating Genga

Post by Pixel »

jiangdc wrote:Yes, exactly, I would describe that genre as "Why do I waste my life watching daily lives of those girls? But they are really funny." Marmalade Boy came from shojo manga. To me, it is more related to love and other emotional things. For Azu, yes, it is comedy :cheers
I actually started with the Azu: The Animation, then grabbed an English language "omnibus" copy of the manga later. I noted a few inconsistencies, which made me wonder what influences might have changed the story from manga to TV screen. I have not read it completely, but I got far enough to confirm some of my suspicions about things in the show I didn't expect.

As for Azuma himself, I've read some things about him. Some good, others not so much. I do rather enjoy his drawing style, though at times certain elements of it perplex me. He does seem to have a knack for comedy, though. I've heard of "Yotsuba!" Seems a bit less "everyday life" and "comedy" than Azu.

I note a similarity between Azu and Marmalade Boy in the school situation. A pretty good chunk of MB also takes place at school, where with Azu it's almost entirely at school.

In the process of researching Azu, I came across an interesting, apparently almost forgotten anime named Mizuiro Jidai ("The Blue-Green Years", "Aqua Age", etc. depending on where you look.) It strikes me as somewhere between Marmalade Boy and Azumanga Daioh in it's writing, though it tends more toward Marmalade Boy in overall tone. The drawing style is very strange, but certainly unique. If you get a chance, I recommend checking out the first episode anyway.

It's probably the single most obscure thing I've come across. I don't even know if production materials for that show still exist.

I also found one more that looks almost like a Marmalade Boy-ripoff, I think it's call "Kodoucha", but I don't remember for sure. I haven't seen much of it, but I was amazed at how much it resembled the former at first glance.
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Re: Need Help Authenticating Genga

Post by Pixel »

I studied the Japanese auction site/deputy shipper pages, and boy howdy do they lay on the fees. Reminds me of prepaid debit/gift cards. I know they have to make money, but really. On my own, I don't have the wherewithal to buy enough to make it worth the expense. I did see some things that interest me, though.

I did not post the genga I picked out and finally received here because it seemed to be in order to post it in the Website/Gallery forum. Most users post their new acquisitions there it seems. I've applied for a rubberslug gallery, but there seems to be a technical problem in getting the activation email. I'm already thinking about another one.

It could be worse, at least they're not heavy-I've also collected soda machines.
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