Genga/Douga Set Storage....

[Eternal Squall]

.....What's the best or varied ways?

portfolios?

filing cabinets?

shoe boxes?


Stacking em up in various corners has worked so far......but I am running out of corners!!!!

[JWR]

I tend to store select pages (those I have scanned into my RS gallery) in Itoya books.
The rest of the cut pages I store in the plastic cel boxes I recieve cel shipments in. They do a good job protecting them from the cats that like the taste of paper

[iceman57]

Simply don't pile them because over 100 sketches/cels, the pressure will mecanicaly start to make paintings stuck to sketches.
Prefer vertical storage, an office desk equiped with cartons or archive boxes.

Personnal storage illustration :


Each sheet or cel covered with a Melinex 75microns transparent cover that is in use by museum restaurators to protect paintings from acid ($5 per cover). For safety reasons I always remove the plastic bags from Mandarake or collectors as their non acidity can't be confirmed.
Expensive arts (over $500) are double protected with a non transparent anti-alkalin paper sheet ($3 per sheet).

I'm not really a fan of portfolio because they are foldable, and when I've to use crowded suburbs train to bring arts from a place to another, bring such box with me avoids from a lot of stress, like walking with a cute micro-safe
Additionnaly write "acid free" on a portfolio does not mean "lignin free", portfolio are made for sketches but normally not for acrylic paintings.
So I prefer use professional restaurator regular material to protect collected artworks.

Compare to an anime cel cost, this kind of long term protection is really not expensive because you've to split its cost on more than 10 years

[Nene]

I went for the time consuming option of storing my genga/douga sets in Itoyas (each sheet in its own bag too). They're over 20 years old so I wanted to preserve them the best I could. But I only have about 400 sheets. I know others who collect CG anime probably have alot more so it might be impractical to do it this way.

Acid free boxes might do the job and then you can store them upright to take the pressure off if you wish. I currently use a large "wedding dress" box for my oversized cels which is acid free. ^_^

[Keropi]

I still have my sketches stacked off the floor in bags out of the light. Some of them are in boxes. I stacked the same size sketch sets on top of the same size sketch sets. But yeah...it would nice to have a better organizational method than just that.

Then I have to keep the humidity low in my room so the paper doesn't age faster than it should. I was going to scan some silverfish eaten paper that I found in my room this morning, but my scanner drivers don't seem to want to work on my new computer so it's not possible.

Well...not like I've scanned anything recently anyway right?

At some point though, all the accumulated sketch sets end up looking like stacks of newspaper.

[iceman57]

Do the sketches have some burned corners ?

[sensei]

I use a variety of methods, but the bulk of my sketch material is stored in archival Light Impressions TrueCoreâ„¢ Drop-Front Boxes. These are rated archival and acid-free and maintain a buffering atmosphere inside that holds back the intrinsic vice of sketches made from low-quality acidic paper.

As a further precaution, I've separated sketches done on heavy white paper (such as dougas) from roughs and shuuseis done on thin yellow or pink paper, because of the possibility that these will in time discolor the sheet that they're stored next to. However, such is the size of my CGI collection that I have not been able to afford individual bags for each item. Therefore I store individual cuts together all white in one bag, all colored on another.

Periodically I go through individual collection boxes looking for signs of trouble. No, I don't see burned corners, but every so often I spot a sketch with celotape that I missed at its first accession. I always remove celotape, as the adhesive is often highly acidic and very destructive to paper. (Most of us have seen "tape burns" and know this.) Sketches that have been damaged, even slightly, by acidic tape go into individual bags after the tape is removed.

It is a big job, but I try to maintain my collection in at least the condition in which I received it.

[cutiebunny]

For my sketches, I use polypropelene binders that I buy at Daiso. I buy the B4 sized folders and I can generally store 48 sketches per binder if I choose to put two per page. Additionally, I also bag my sketches seperately, so even if they do use the same page, they're not touching each other.

Whenever I receive sketches, I go through them and remove any tape that I find on the paper. Sadly, a good portion of the sketches that I receive have some type of tape damage. All I can do is remove the tape(if there is any on the paper) and bag it up to further prevent its deterioration.

I stack my binders face up. I use the same binders for my shikishi, but there, I only put 12 in each folder, each seperately bagged and the folders are place on their spine.

[kizu]

I do three things depending on how valuable it is 1) polypro+small drawers 2) non-acid portfolio or scrapbook (i personally liked the scrapbook - cheap and does the job but I think the reason that works is I don't look at sketches nearly enough than I do cels so I don't think about it) 3) polypro+rigid sleeves+portfolio attache cases (mostly for cels unless the sketch is really important to me)

[Eternal Squall]

I got what I needed.....thanks beta-ites!!!!

[Keropi]

Do the sketches have some burned corners ?

My sketches are fine, but that notebook paper that was sitting on the bottom of a stack of paper on the floor on the far side of my room is pretty ragged and thin on the edges. They seem to enjoy dark areas that are easily accesible to them.

The silverfish also nibble on the labels of the food cans in my bottom kitchen cabinet.

[Keropi]

My camera is working now so here are pictures of some of my silverfish paper damage. This paper was sitting by itself unbagged and underneath my bed. The paper became a little brown due to excessive humidity back around 1992-1994:


But this paper isn't very brown compared to some of the other old papers that I have.

You can better see how the silverfish messed up the edges of the paper here:


The papers that got the most brown were white papers that were next to the acidic papers like newspaper that got exposed to constant ?70%-?74% humidity during the winter. The acid paper turned brown and the white paper next to it turned brown as well because of the acidity of the paper next to it.

[iceman57]

Such cumulation of little circles ain't humidity, but animal/insect claws.

[Nene]

Wow, those silverfish are little buggers. x.x I remember when I used to find the odd one or two in kitchen cabinets lurking in bowls and what-not. Never seen what they can do to paper before though.