Something you had no idea what it was?

[sensei]

Another little chatter starter: have you ever had something that you'd acquired along the way, but really didn't know what it was. And then later figured it out in a mind-opening way?

I thought a cel I'd gotten in a mixed set earlier this year actually wasn't from The Sea Prince and the Fire Child, like the other cels in the lots I'd gotten from the same seller at the time. It was a pretty image, so I'd put it up as an "unknown" in that gallery, thinking it might be from a deleted scene or trailer or something else. Then last week I finally tracked it down to another Sanrio movie from the same era, Yosei Florence aka A Journey through Fairyland. I'd never ever even heard of this animated film, but among animation historians it seems to be held in high regard as an interesting Japanese tribute to Disney's Fantasia (minimal plot/dialog, lots of dancing and miming to classical music). Cels don't seem to be common, though I found that Baka-Inu has one.

[JWR]

Well early on I picked up a cel I had no clue from what series it was from. What caught my eye was how the cel was constructed. I cel was designed to look like the picture was being viewed thru a window blind. It just struck me so went ahead and got it. After posting it as an unknown on my gallery I was lucky to be contacted by Keropi who filled me in on the show as well as the character and also that it turned out to be an eyecatch cel.
http://ryan.rubberslug.com/gallery/inv_ ... emID=98655

[GuyvarIII]

From my early days of collecting cels, I had always been on the look out to find cels from the 2-volume, action packed, Hentai OVA, “Guy” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMJBWJ8Uick -- Warning: some nudity). Back in 1999, I even posted on Animanga looking for cels (http://www.animanga.com/db/celsarchive/ ... var=tnb=30). After about five years of buying cels, I was able to acquire cels from that show, and now I have a collection of them, http://chriscelsite.rubberslug.com/gall ... esID=10517.


However, during my early search, I bought the following cel from the bargain bins of the Torrance, CA branch of Mandarake:

Because, I thought it looked like Guy.

For years, this cel was an unknown in my collection, until I thought it might actually have some connection to the people who made “Guy”. I checked out the other works of Yorihisa Uchida (“Guy’s” Original Creator, Director, and Character Designer). And, the cel is Silver Jack from “Armored Police: Metal Jack”, a show Mr. Uchida worked on as Character Designer. Despite not being very widely known as a Character Designer, I think his designs were awesome, and had a really great, brightly colored, recognizable style. It’s too bad that I only know of two main stream shows that he did the Character Designs on:
“Jushin Liger” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo8W-kuPuxg) and
“Metal Jack” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYQM8xCt4wc).

Of course, I now have collections of both
“Jushin Liger” (http://chriscelsite.rubberslug.com/gall ... esID=22004) and
“Metal Jack” (http://chriscelsite.rubberslug.com/gall ... esID=27718) cels.

[sensei]

Thanks, JWR and Guyver III. Those are striking cels, and I'm sure they appreciate being both traced to their sources and properly appreciated.

Any other stories? I remember one of the first sketch sets I bought on Yahoo Japan, puzzling over why there were two versions of each key, one on white paper and one on thin light green. It took a clueless post on Animanga (still live on the Web, but, alas, a cold, dark, empty shell of itself) to make me realize that I had a batch of "shuusei" or correction sketches (by overall animation director Kumiko Takahashi no less!) in addition to the "gengas" or key frames.

[Quacker]

Thank-you Sensei, Guyvar & JWR for those stories.
I wish I did have something equally as impressive to share; that would be amazing - owning a Cel you initially had very little idea about but some years later that seemingly innocuous piece of painted celluloid did turn out to be special & unique.
Alas tendencies I thought were mainly work-related have bleed-through into my casual time; basically I would be crucified if at work I purchased into another business/property I knew very little or nothing about and that is now a habit for almost everything else I purchase! When I actually do manage find a cel or artwork that interests me, either via auction or Private sale, I conduct some research on that item so I know what I am getting & reduce the chance of getting a 'fake' fan-made cel.

The best story I can provide that is related to your experiences is back when I first started seriously collecting in 2007/08, a Seller gifted me with an extra item from a batch of "Full Metal Panic" Rilezus I had purchased off them. The item turned out to be an actual Cel used in the production of the series.
FMP is credited in being the 'first' full series to switch from celluloid to use computers & digital animation, or as Gonzo coined their techniques "Digimation". But since this was a wholly new process being utilized for the very first time, some 'test' cels were drawn & produced of the more intensive scenes and used as a comparison between the 'old' celluloid method to their digitally-produced cousins to see which scene looked better! The production staff apparently did this a few times throughout the series & in some instances reverted back to celluloid a handful of times.
The Cel turned out to be not only one of the 'test' cels used as a comparison, but was also used in the short animation sequence it beat!

[jcaliff]

A few years ago I picked up this cel from Yahoo Japan auctions. The seller had no idea what it was from, and neither did I, but I thought it was interesting. I only discovered what it was last summer when I read one of the columns on Cartoon Research. Fred Patten wrote a column about Sanrio films, and devoted quite a bit to Metamorphoses/Winds of Change/Orpheus of the Stars. I saw my cel in a video linked from the blog! I bought the DVD and sure enough, found the scene.

Sensei, you and i can be Sanrio cel buddies.

[sensei]

Congratulations, jcaliff! When I was researching Syrius and Florence I kept running into Metamorphoses, which Sanrio intended as a game-changing fusion of Fantasia with contemporary rock music. It chewed up a huge budget, then was remade twice (once with a disco soundtrack replacing the rock one) and ended up being a devastating financial loss to Sanrio, which essentially gave up trying to be a worldwide force in anime. At least the cels look good! Thanks for sharing this and your story.