2017 Year in Review & 2018 Cel/Sketch Resolutions

[cutiebunny]

It's time for my favorite thread of the year, the YoR/Resolution thread! Sensei began this traditional post back in 2006, with both us of keeping it alive now in its 12th year. With the holidays wrapping up, it's time to look back on this year and what your plans are for 2018.



1. What was the best thing that's happened to your gallery/collection in 2017?

2. What was the most surprising thing that happened to your gallery/collection this year?

3. Which piece were you most proud of acquiring in 2017?

4. What's something that concerns you about your collecting experience?

5. What cel/sketch-related resolution do you want to make for 2018?

6. If you posted a cel/sketch-related resolution for 2017, how true did you stay to it?

[jiangdc]

1. What was the best thing that's happened to your gallery/collection in 2017?
I started to use cel book to store cels. OMG, that's amazing. Everytime I open it, it's like a journey.

2. What was the most surprising thing that happened to your gallery/collection this year?

https://dcjiang.weebly.com/air
GAO, Misuzu is holding her favorite peach drink! I never expect her to show up on YJ. It's only 5 pieces of sketches and I felt I got married.

3. Which pieces were you most proud of acquiring in 2017?


https://dcjiang.weebly.com/perfect-blue.html
Perfect blue rape scene. This is one of the most recognizable scenes throughout the movie. It's a turning point of the story. Everything goes toward disorder after Mima Kirigoe participates in this filmmaking. Interesting story about this cel is that I once chatted with a cel collecting friend about this movie and he said that if I were to collect a cel from perfect blue, I would probably aim for the rape scene. Then I was like, cool, let me show you this one


This is a really famous scene from SD and there is a period when "Sensei I really want to do xxxx" became a trend in Chinese internet culture. I got one from yj and one from mandarake. Both came with douga. The price was acceptable and the marker for sequence number is the same "Thanks god" .

4. What's something that concerns you about your collecting experience?
I am currently running a chat group of Chinese cel fans, my concern is to advertise cel collecting to the general society of anime fan and to gather more people with similar collecting hobby.

5. What cel/sketch-related resolution do you want to make for 2018?
I would like to stick more to cels with better quality (match background, recognizable scene, keyframe....) start from 18. Hopefully, by the end of 2018 I would get less in quantity but more in quality. Also, I hope Chinese cel collecting community can gather more people in the next year.

6. If you posted a cel/sketch-related resolution for 2017, how true did you stay to it?
N/A

[cutiebunny]

Much sympathy goes to those, who, along with myself, are working on Christmas. Most people don't realize the amount of professionals that work on holidays. So...bah humbug!


1. What was the best thing that's happened to your gallery/collection in 2017?

Collection/Experience - Pissing off SakuraCon to the point that they would ban me. The convention trolled my website, looking for anything that I obtained at their convention, and then they accused me of selling them (despite the gallery saying that nothing is for sale and no prices have ever been listed). They also accused me of cutting in line despite having a disabilities pass and helping friends who not only had the same pass, but had legitimate mobility issues. All of this stemmed over their anger after I happened to notice that a sketch that a convention guest donated to SakuraCon for charity in 2016 disappeared and, despite SakuraCon staff telling me otherwise, the sketch did not reappear for sale at their charity auction in 2017. I guess the best way to cover up for a corporate theft is to ban the person that noticed it.

Thanks to a couple of good friends, I was able to get stuff out of SakuraCon this year (so if SakuraCon staff are reading this, a big Uf Da to you). I really appreciated what they did for me, including grabbing me a couple of sketches from the guests and helping me to acquire one of the anniversary sketches. I know that sketch collectors, including myself, have their moments of greed, so I was really blown away by their kindness.

2. What was the most surprising thing that happened to your gallery/collection this year?

Collection - I purchased less stuff overall this year. I usually buy the majority of the artwork I do for the year at conventions. But between guests that I wasn't interested in meeting and idiotic convention policies, it made me not want to buy anything. I purchased a total of 4 sketches at conventions this year, and 2 of these were 'freebies' for buying a stupid amount of manga that my friend and I subsequently gave away. There's only so many copies one can have of "Twittering Birds Never Fly".

Experience - The "Great Hostage Walk of 2017" at AnimeFest in Dallas, TX. This convention failed to understand how big of a property that Yuri on Ice is, with one of their head staff members remarking that no one was interested in an anime about a bunch of gay ice skaters. Every day proved to be a new exercise in frustration. I recommend googling "AnimeFest 2017" should you be interested in reading about it. But everything culminated into the Hostage Walk, where those of us who managed to secure a seat at a table were lead to the autograph area by both staff and Dallas Police with our hands on top of our heads.

Honestly, I'm thinking of making this into a shirt to wear to AnimeFest 2018. It was just that much of a joke.

3. Which piece were you most proud of acquiring in 2017?

Cel - Cel of Usagi from the S movie where she's just ticked off (the matching background for the scene has a cow). I used to have a sticker of it from a bootleg sticker sheet back in high school, so it had to pick it up when I saw it. Really wish the background, which looks like it would have been just another piece of acetate as the cow crosses the screen during the sequence, had been included.

Shikishi - Najika from a manga called Kitchen Princess. Nowhere near the priciest thing purchased this year. KP has always been a special manga to me. Maybe it's because Najika is a redhead, so I always bond well with my imaginary kin. But I always loved her personality and how, despite having the decks stacked against her in life, she puts others first and manages to always brighten the lives of those around her. It's always been a personality trait I've admired and one I've tried hard to incorporate. Because the artist for the series had, until this year, been retired, I never thought I would see anything from her.

Nengajo - Figured I'd give this its own category this year. The best one I bought this year was a Ghost in the Shell: Arise sketch by my boy, Kazuchika Kise. I've been a fan of this artist ever since he told Anime Expo staff they were dogs in 2014, so when I see something he drew, I go for it. But this particular nengajo had Batou & the Tachikoma predecessor, so that made it even better.

4. What's something that concerns you about your collecting experience?

The animosity I'm seeing conventions exhibit towards attendees. There's a very "Us vs. Them" mentality, with conventions and their staff treating the event as if it's more of a battle and less of a fun gathering of people with similar interests. My ban notwithstanding, I had a friend not only kicked out of AnimeFest but also the hotel room that he had booked simply for calling the autograph staff out on being so clueless. It's one thing to kick a person out of a convention. It's another to boot them and their roommates (who had nothing to do with it) out of the hotel, and especially over a comment regarding staff performance. I've been attending conventions for almost a decade now, and even at industry heavy conventions like Anime Expo, conventions never felt the need to ban people for dissent. I'm even seeing this sort of toxic behavior with manga publishing companies. Viz Media's Sublime label is notorious for calling out those that disagree and will not stop badgering anyone who disagrees until they ask Sublime to stop (or until Sublime pretends to be 'generous' by calling off the attack). People are entitled to their opinions about events that they've attended, and instead of banning those that might be genuinely concerned about their experience, conventions should focus on those issues and try to improve the experience for everyone.


5. What cel/sketch-related resolution do you want to make for 2018?

I plan to keep collecting. Hopefully conventions will get artists whose artwork I admire, auctions will feature some stuff I'm interested in buying, and maybe I'll receive some of those items through Kickstarter that I've only been waiting two years to receive. It all really depends on what's out there. I think that's the most realistic expectation I can come up with. Scanning, updating, moving the gallery to an off-RS site are all lofty goals. Work and exercise take up a good chunk of my time.

6. If you posted a cel/sketch-related resolution for 2017, how true did you stay to it?

I mentioned that I'd like to continue my usual method of checking on an auction multiple times before I bid on it, and yeah, that's held true. If I don't find myself going back to look at item every few days, it's not one that I bid on.

[Pixel]

1. What was the best thing that's happened to your gallery/collection in 2017?

Finding this forum. I've gotten so much helpful advice here.

2. What was the most surprising thing that happened to your gallery/collection this year?

Acquiring an animation cel so soon after getting into the hobby. Not only that, I actually remembered roughly where it was from almost as soon as I saw it for sale. It's not always easy to tell where a cel comes from in a given series, especially where there is no background cel accompanying.

3. Which piece were you most proud of acquiring in 2017?

Oh wow, that's a loaded question. I know I started so late in 2017, my collection for the year is very tiny. If I were to take them to an anime/cel convention, I can take a guess at which one is more likely to make someone's eyes light up when they see it. Does that make me more proud of it? I can't say.

4. What's something that concerns you about your collecting experience?

Preservation versus display, particularly of cels. My understanding is that displaying a cel is often hazardous to its long-term health. On the other hand, purely archival storage makes it more difficult to look at and enjoy them.

Also, the possibility of fakes. Granted, for series I would currently would like to collect, it's likely not an issue. However, as time marches on and technology advances, the fakes that are the exclusive province of massively popular series today may become the fakes of *insert series of any degree of renown here* tomorrow.

5. What cel/sketch-related resolution do you want to make for 2018?

I wouldn't try to make one.

6. If you posted a cel/sketch-related resolution for 2017, how true did you stay to it?

I wasn't even collecting then, so I can't answer this question.

[sensei]

Thanks, Amanda, for starting this. I had to deal with a hugely stressful Christmas this year, and I needed to limit my activity so as not to risk a recurrence of the medical issues that I had last year. It's important to take stock at this time of year, even if resolutions are easy to make and increasingly difficult to fulfill.

1. What was the best thing that's happened to your gallery/collection in 2017?

I'd say, unexpectedly, that my convalescence gave me the home time and down time needed to do a thorough bag change and microchamber papering of my entire cel collection, twenty Itoyas worth. Thankfully, I had to quarantine only four cels for signs of vinegar syndrome, and the vast majority of the cel sheets appeared to be healthy and unchanged from their initial scannings.

2. What was the most surprising thing that happened to your gallery/collection this year?

Being able to add enough cels from the 1984 Madhouse theatrical adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale The Golden Bird to give this its own gallery. I'd gotten two cels from Anime Museum's final sale, not even knowing their real source, and once I'd identified the title of the film, I lurked for nearly ten years before any more art popped up for auction. This film is not well known, even among fans of the formative period of the 80s, though now that it is available on YouTube (under its Japanese name "Kin no Tori") it's possible to appreciate its brash, unique visual texture. This classic moment was a real thrill to obtain, even if it is stuck tight to its unmatching background.

3. Which piece were you most proud of acquiring in 2017?

I'd have to go with my matched set of oversized OP cels from Hyper Police, which appear early on in adjacent cuts: The catgirl Natsuki and the werewolf Batanan. A close second (or third): my first American animation item, a delightful rough of the crow Jeremy fascinated by Mrs. Brisby's "sparkly". (Appropriately enough, I got all of these from the same collector in the same box.)

4. What's something that concerns you about your collecting experience?

The emergence of fakes and misleadingly sold items of anime art. I'm seeing prices start to climb dramatically for classic cel-based art, particularly Ah My Goddess, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Dragonball Z. Ghibli art, which used to be available around the $100 level, is also climbing into the ionosphere. That's generating an opportunity for people taking advantage of newbie collectors and even experts whose eyes and bidding fingers are quicker than their brains. Even I got snuckered this year, which I took as an opportunity to look closely at a fake and explain how I know (and should have known) that it is not genuine. And the lessons go with me as I look at items coming up for sale -- am I sure they are what they purport to be. Shouldn't have to do that. But now I do.

5. What cel/sketch-related resolution do you want to make for 2018?
6. If you posted a cel/sketch-related resolution for 2017, how true did you stay to it?

I was hoping to have a garage sale, but it didn't happen. I should do what some other collectors do and just announce a series as open for offers. But rather than resolve this again, I'm going to make a more practical resolution, one that I've actually been working on. That is to compile a really comprehensive inventory of my holdings, one specific enough that, should I check out for good this year, whoever takes on the task of dealing with this collection can fairly quickly put his or her hands on any individual sketch, cel, background, or etc. that I own.

Golly, not even I can do that now.


I didn't have a formal opening for my last update, because, lazy me I still have a couple of things to scan and annotate -- and the next Rinkya batch is going to be incoming in the next month. The good news is that several galleries that have been neglected will receive long-overdue updates and the accompanying dust-offs and revisions. These include Wata no Kuni Hoshi, Angelic Layer, NieA_7, and Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, And there will be at least one legitimate CCS cel (and some sketches), Gegege no Kitaro gengas, Tennimon backgrounds, Nils Holgersson cels, and -- dang! -- another one of those allegedly scarcer-than-scarce Haibane Renmei rilezus.

The year 2018 still seems a good time to be collecting, fakes and all.