What are "Autographs" in the sense of Production Art?

[Pixel]

I know it seems like a silly question, but sometimes in Yahoo! Japan auctions I'll come across a production genga or sketch/sketch set that includes in the auction title the word 直筆 jikihitsu. While jikihitsu translates to "autograph" according to my dictionaries, I'm not sure what that means in terms of production art.

Are they saying someone involved in drawing those sketches actually wrote their name on them, or is that a way of indicating that the sketch is actual pencil art and not a copy?

[jiangdc]

I know it seems like a silly question, but sometimes in Yahoo! Japan auctions I'll come across a production genga or sketch/sketch set that includes in the auction title the word 直筆 jikihitsu. While jikihitsu translates to "autograph" according to my dictionaries, I'm not sure what that means in terms of production art.

Are they saying someone involved in drawing those sketches actually wrote their name on them, or is that a way of indicating that the sketch is actual pencil art and not a copy?

Unless the cel is signed by the director or voice actor or actress, 直筆 in title only aim to show costumer that "this is something drawn by hand", which indicates that the art is not duplicated.

[sensei]

"Holograph" i.e., "first-hand + drawing" is the best rendering of the kanji. Many gengas were circulated in studios as photocopied packets that gave junior animators a sense of how the animation directors handled the characters, and these often show up for auction. Most are clearly what they appear to be in scans. But photocopy machines got much better in the decade 2000-09, and so good sellers make it clear whether the art they are selling is original pencil-on-paper or a good photocopy.

Many times a good 8x loupe is needed to confirm that a good copy is what it is rather than original art.

[Pixel]

What

"Holograph" i.e., "first-hand + drawing" is the best rendering of the kanji. Many gengas were circulated in studios as photocopied packets that gave junior animators a sense of how the animation directors handled the characters, and these often show up for auction. Most are clearly what they appear to be in scans. But photocopy machines got much better in the decade 2000-09, and so good sellers make it clear whether the art they are selling is original pencil-on-paper or a good photocopy.

Many times a good 8x loupe is needed to confirm that a good copy is what it is rather than original art.

Is there any chance of getting a genga copy of that quality from 1997 or 1998 ?

[sensei]

The only really tricky ones I've seen are from Mushishi (2005-06). See my gallery Facsimile Sketches and the page in my Ep. 24 gallery Real or Ricoh? which notes some other series from that era for which extremely good photocopies exist.

I also own a studio-produced storyboard for Snow White with the Red Hair (Madhouse 2015-16) that likewise shows the use of a high-end copier. It does have some annotations in it by one of the studio artists, but the 8x loupe is needed to distinguish that clearly from the photocopy art.

[cutiebunny]

Unless the cel is signed by the director or voice actor or actress, 直筆 in title only aim to show costumer that "this is something drawn by hand", which indicates that the art is not duplicated.

You'll also see these same characters when it comes to sketches drawn by mangaka, character designers and other known artists.

If it's a copy, you'll see these two characters - 複製

[jiangdc]

Unless the cel is signed by the director or voice actor or actress, 直筆 in title only aim to show costumer that "this is something drawn by hand", which indicates that the art is not duplicated.

You'll also see these same characters when it comes to sketches drawn by mangaka, character designers and other known artists.

If it's a copy, you'll see these two characters - 複製

Yeah, definitely. Sometime they may say 肉筆 instead of 直筆, which is the same thing.

[Keropi]

I'm so nearsighted that I can put sketches near my eye and see what they are.

It's the only good thing about being so nearsighted - I don't need a magnifying glass. I can see the printing dots.

[sensei]

Halftone patterns (the dots used in newspaper and magazine printing of photos) are not hard to see with the naked eye. But in my experience a really good color copier is so "tight" as printers would say that it takes a good-quality loupe to see the dots. Likewise with giclée prints done with a really good inkjet printer.

[Pixel]

I'm so nearsighted that I can put sketches near my eye and see what they are.

It's the only good thing about being so nearsighted - I don't need a magnifying glass. I can see the printing dots.

I'm severely astigmatic myself. I'm not sure taking my glasses off would help very much with such things.

Halftone patterns (the dots used in newspaper and magazine printing of photos) are not hard to see with the naked eye. But in my experience a really good color copier is so "tight" as printers would say that it takes a good-quality loupe to see the dots. Likewise with giclée prints done with a really good inkjet printer.

We used to have this old Canon inkjet printer, the marketing boasted about it being able to print up to 600x600 dpi IIRC. Seems like that was a big deal back in those days. It worked over parallel port. Canon marketed it as a "bubble-jet" printer. Probably just a marketing term for inkjet.

It costed over $400.

Nowadays, you can get a multifunction that will do just as good for less that a quarter of that.

But those ink cartridges is where they really get you.

Here's a document on variable dot-size inkjet printing. Apparently, dpi isn't necessarily even a thing any more for inkjet printers.

http://www.printerevolution.com/wp-cont ... ed-Dot.pdf

[Keropi]

I'd be curious to know how the printing of pencil lines from more recent printers look like up close. How do they look like? What is the printing pattern now?

I can read the "FIVE DOLLARS" printed on the left and right sides of the newer U.S. five dollar bills pretty easily with my eye. If it were a quarter of the size I'd still be able to read it fine. I wonder how age will affect my ability to read up close to my eye.

My dad is farsighted so he can't bring items close to an eye to read them. But if he holds it further out, the writing becomes too small for him to read. All he can do is try to make the lighting as bright as possible (or ask me to read it).

[sensei]

This is part of a scan of a layout shuusei from _Mushishi_. Everything that you see is color copy, including the handwriting, art, and the yellow background. The sheet contains no original art or writing.

Mushishi 14.122 copy1.jpg (108.11 KiB) Viewed 3922 times

This is an enlargement of part of the scan above. Here you can begin to see the dot structure that makes up the handwriting and the yellow background. This is clearer yet in an 8x loupe.

Mushishi 14.122 copy2.jpg (66.72 KiB) Viewed 3922 times

[Keropi]

Thanks. Yeah, I guess it's pretty hard to see because they're so small.

[Pixel]

Is that graininess the actual texture of the paper? (I have yet to hold a piece of this type of yellow studio paper in my hand.)

It looks like the grain of the paper could further complicate telling pencil from photocopier, especially with the naked eye.

It's a coincidence that the Azu copy shuusei showed up on YJ so soon after I started this thread. I had no idea they were going to be put up.

This is a section of a copy BG circa 2001. Not sure of the magnification level though.

azu_e25_p4_zoom.jpg (916.19 KiB) Viewed 3911 times

[sensei]

Is that graininess the actual texture of the paper? (I have yet to hold a piece of this type of yellow studio paper in my hand.)

No, the entire surface is slick, coated with ink from the copier. I'd have to pull the sheet from its storage box, but I believe the backside of the sketch is standard white copy paper, with the yellow color only on the verso. A clever seller could do a low-resolution scan and sell it as a holograph production sketch, but it would be obviously a copy once you had the physical sheet in your hands. (And it's not a very impressive sketch: it's just trying to make some seeds scattered on the ground look like little seeds and not coconuts.)

Your Azu copy sketch has the tiny parallel lines in it at one point, which were the detail that yelled "cheap copier" to me when I looked at the trace lines of my fake CCS cel:



Not that your Azu copy is a fake (why would a forger fake a photocopied sketch?), it was just done on a basic photocopier, as was normal for that studio at that time. But the copiers that laid down trace lines on cels were much more sophisticated machines that didn't break up the image into parallel lines like these. My forger presumably tried to make do with a less advanced photocopier, leaving a damning sign of the cel's fakeness.