Shikishi and Original Artwork

[Frysende]

This might not be the best place for it, so I apologize in advance. I was wondering about shikishi and pieces of original artwork and where most of you acquire them. I've seen some on Mandarake, but in many people's rubberslug galleries, they have acquired things from anime conventions through the auctions they often hold. When it comes to those auctions, is there a service (or very nice individual) who acts as a proxy? And do cons post lists of what will be up for offer?

I'm particularly looking for Kanno Hiroki artwork from Yu Yu Hakusho and Fullmetal Alchemist, (but I imagine I'm far from alone in that ) so any info at all about this area of collecting that I hadn't thought much about would be enlightening.

[grEenLeaFx]

Unfortunately you missed the boat on a lot of that. Original artwork from Kanno was prevalent in the early to mid 2000s. I still see pieces here and there, but they are few and far between (and more expensive). It is different for each collector on an ultimate piece to have, but I consider his illustrations as one of the best things you can get. But kind of like the hobby in general they pretty much started to fizzle out after that time.

There are several members here that still collect shikishi which can provide you with the current status of the market. As far as conventions go is it not as easy and it is all about the money! Up until 5 years ago I used to get them in line at conventions. As you mentioned they have started to monetize them such as putting them up on auction during the convention and prohibiting fans from asking for them during the autograph sessions. After that I pretty much bowed out. People can still get them at certain ones, but it takes a lot of research on the guests, reviewing the rules, attendance factors, money, travel, and a lot of chance which I don't have time for anymore. It really is just a frustrating endeavor anymore from my experience.

[FourD]

All of the shikishi I own/owned came from Mandarake. I'm not a big fan of conventions so I can't help you there.

I thought Kanno was basically a doujin artist? Was he involved in the production of those shows?

[GuyvarIII]

If you have the money, Madoka seems to still have a Yu Yu Hakusho and a Fullmetal Alchemist-

http://www.madokajapan.com/index.php?pa ... t&id=41761
http://www.madokajapan.com/index.php?pa ... t&id=41952

[Frysende]

I appreciate those Madoka Japan links, as I stumbled upon the YYH piece a few nights ago and have started saving money for it. The goal is to buy it as a birthday gift to myself when May rolls around, assuming it's still available.

As for Kanno's involvement with YYH and FMA, he was an animator on YYH and provided character designs in the Poltergeist Report movie if I'm not mistaken. He was much more heavily involved in both versions of FMA, with FMA:B being the series he's probably left the biggest fingerprint on, aside from RahXephon.

[cutiebunny]

Yeah, I've often thought that galleries like mine are doing a serious disservice to already active collectors. Can't tell you how many attendees who asked for sketches (and received none) at CrunchyCon this year.

When it comes to those auctions, is there a service (or very nice individual) who acts as a proxy? And do cons post lists of what will be up for offer?

To my knowledge, there are no companies that act as a proxy at anime convention auctions. There was one man that was bidding for someone in Hong Kong when I last attended the auction at Anime Expo in 2015, but other than that, it's just a small group of us that are friends and that bid for each other either because said other friend is not in attendance. It's usually just the same 10-20 people, but they bid very high. With one of my friends, I made a game of it; Whoever spent the least amount of money at auction bought the other a pity pastry.

It's pretty rare that a convention will post what they'll be offering at their auction, but if it happens, it's usually the morning of the auction. The sketches are generally drawn while the guest is in the US. Conventions are usually very disorganized and the auction is generally an afterthought. You obviously have a higher chance of getting artwork from a particular artist if they are in actual attendance at the event. Rarely do you find artwork from other artists that are not guests at that convention. I think most of the Kanno sketches come from the year that Anime Expo collaborated with GoFA to host an exhibit at the con where you could buy the artwork. I was not in attendance at AX then, but I was during the Izumi Matsumoto collaboration in 2011 and that's how it worked then.

As grEenLeaFx mentioned, conventions are ever evolving and it's generally at the expense of the art collector. It used to be that you could wait for a guest for hours, be within the first 10 or so people and walk out with a fairly decent sketch for free. Most conventions prohibit you from lining up more than 15-30 minutes prior to an autograph session now. Many require additional tickets for autographs which, while free, mean you'll be waiting in hours in a line just to get them. For example, in order to have a shot at certain guests at Anime Expo, you need to start lining up at 11pm the night before the autograph session. Your pricey hotel room that you're shelling out $1.2K for a 5 night AX stay becomes glorified luggage storage, and all this for a chance at getting a sketch. All this happens if you're lucky enough to have a convention that hands out autograph tickets. If you don't and they land a very popular guest, prepare for rioting, threats, possible bodily injury, police presence and hostage walks.

Oh, and the best part is, should you talk about how much you loathed that convention experience on your gallery, prepare to have the convention ban you.

When anime fans see galleries or posts on social media, what they're seeing is the end result when it pays off. What they're not seeing because it's either not posted or because no one scrolls down to read captions is the nightmare it has become to get autographs. They're not seeing the hours spent waiting in line for the autograph ticket and the subsequent hours spent lining up only to get cut off right in front of the guest. They're not seeing the frustration of being told that the person in front of you will be the last person to receive a sketch. They're not seeing the clueless staff members whose directions, if followed, will ensure you don't get an autograph. Nor will they understand the frustration when you follow the rules only to have the guest decide not to show up to the autograph session for a whole slew of reasons. When you take into account how much you're paying to attend these events for the remote possibility of owning artwork from this guest, it rarely is worth the time/money/effort spent.

TL;DR - Unless you've got some cash to drop and are masochistic, anime conventions are not good places to acquire shikishi.

[Jadeduo]

I second everything Cutiebunny said, the biggest problem for both of us is that we book our vacation in Oct/Nov the year before for con season. So we still do a couple cons every year but we are at the mercy of the cons we choose and what guests they bring.

This year we did two cons, neither had super exciting art guests, but we went anyways to hang out and eat good food!

Our first con had a second year of meh guests, and repeat guests. They really need to step up their game, but because it's in the south and there is good barbecue we still had fun waiting in the few autograph lines over and over while staff freaked out about time and about how 'greedy' we were for showing up at every autograph session... Seriously?

Our second con we dubbed Nap-con 2018, because in between all three autograph sessions for the Japanese guests the programming was sort of lackluster. They usually do a sketch relay at panel because they bring in between 5-7 artists normally, this year I think there were two? So what was an event I looked forward to at the last con did not happen. However we did end up going to see a movie, ate good food, and took naps... so many naps.

If you notice no cons were named because if the cons do a search and find my post they might arbitrarily decide to ban me because they petty like that.