Sensei's 2015.04 Update: Just in time for Thanksgiving

[sensei]

My first 2015 upgrade is a few weeks away, due to pressing work with a Jan. deadline. But, in the vein of the recent "Celfies" thread, I thought I'd give a somewhat whimsical "first look" at the contents of the Rinkya box that recently came to rest on my doorstep. While I make the items in my gallery look their best, they sometimes come to my eyes, when the long-awaited box is opened, in quite a different way.

First out was a cel that had been wrapped in a drycleaner's bag and sealed with a chunk of package tape.



That's one of the scarce cels from the groundbreaking 1970 Mushi series Andersen Monogatari. I always wonder what cels like these have been through before they come to me.

Then there was this poor cel who was visibly in distress and begging to be liberated from the most puckered-up cel bag I've ever seen:



The bag was long past opening in any normal way and finally had to be torn away from this desperate magical girl, strip by strip.

Then there was a huge stack of cels and attached sketches, when when sorted out proved to be A133-A144 END in a nice cut of Nils Holgersson flying with his hamster Carrot on the back of his traveling companion Morten Goose. The sketches weren't hard to prise off, but, sadly, in three cases the edges of the paint had stuck to the next cel in the stack, causing permanent damage. Still, it looks to be a nice set to reanimate.



But, this stack has sat -- who knows where? -- since the production of this series in 1981 (it was Studio Pierrot's first project, and its success set the studio up as a major force in anime). It smells of mildew, and the cels, when held against the light, are covered with dust and residue. They will all need to go to the cleaners.



And this doesn't begin to sort out the five sketch sets that came (as usual, all from Asatte no Houkou. Still, it's an auspicious beginning, that I'll cel-ebriate with a new "celfie."

[sensei]

Yesterday was "waterfowl washday" here, in and among other work. I got the last few Nils Holgersson cels unstuck from their dougas (one certain gray paint sticks much more tightly than any of the other colors) and took the whole batch in to give them their baths.



This shot of one cel held up to the light gives a sense of the degree of grimy film that all the cels had collected, mostly on the paint side. The cel, happily, has no strong chemical smell that would signal real problems, but mostly stinks of Japanese mildew.



Simplest is best. I put a little dishwashing soap in a dish of water, just enough so that it feels slippery when you rub your fingers in it.



Then with a moistened paper towel, I dip and gently wash the paint side. Mostly I do the blank cel portions, but toward the end I give the towel a big dip and run over the back of the paint as well. It's not water-soluble, but it does pick up some water, and I can see the colors shift temporarily on the other side. (They go back as the cel dries.) Then rinse quickly under running water and ...



... flip over to the front side and give the whole surface a quick but gentle soapy scrub. (Paper towel underneath wicks up the moisture from the side you just did.) That side is easier to do, but I go gently over any work (like Carrot's whiskers) that is added on the front side.



Then the cel gets put on a dry paper towel and gently blotted (not rubbed) on each side to get off as much of the water as possible.



Then onto a drying rack to dry.



And hung up on a hanger to dry some more.



And finally put on a flat surface (paint side up) in my office to dry for the rest of the day.



The improvement in transparency is dramatic, and I'm sure the removal of the mildew and chemical byproducts also improves the cel's overall health. As I was working, I got a whiff of a familiar scent every so often, and finally got it into focus: "new cel smell," the kind I'd get when I would open a (then) freshly produced item from CCS or TnN. It's nice to be able to get that from these neglected Nils Holgersson cels, even though they are now 35 years old.

[Jadeduo]

Those are some great tips Sensei!

Something I would definitely like to try with my Sailor Moon episode 29 cels, they are covered in the yucky cel dirt. Especially some of the funnier sequences.

JD

[sensei]

Thanks, JD. As someone suggested in another thread, I'm trying to make these a little more interactive and give a sense of the activity that goes on behind the scenes in a gallery update, which is never just "get, scan, and show."

OK, now all the grungy geese have been laundered, dried, and installed in new bags (and their dougas also interleaved with microchamber paper and bagged separately). Now it's time to scan them and work on the descriptions. In many cases, I know the exact scene where the cel/sketch comes in, and so while they are still Japanside I've been writing the description, getting the screen cap, etc. For a series like Nils Holgersson, which was dubbed and distributed in all the major European languages plus Israeli, Arabic, and Farsi, but NOT in English, that's a problem.

Take this set of four related cels (A6-A9 END):



A big bluish-gray goose lands and takes two steps over to the right, seemingly happy to be there. But who the heck is he/she/it? And what is there to say about this set?

OK, to begin with, I bought the set because (a) it was cheap and (b) because it shows one of the secondary characters in this series. For folks on the outside, the gist is that in 1902 the Swedish Board of Education asked the eminent author Selma Lagerlöf (later first female recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature) to write a geography textbook. She figured kids would read it with more interest if she wrote it in the form of a fairy tale, so she created a bratty child who needed to be taught a lesson and had a gnome shrink him and give him the ability to talk to animals. Then she sent him off with a flock of wild geese who migrate from the southernmost province of Sweden to Lapland, its farthest north, and back, commenting on the properties of each part of the country from above. (Notoriously, they get over one province, Sweden's equivalent of New Jersey, and the geese say, "Oh, hell, there's nothing important about this place, let's go on.")

He arrives with Mårten, one of his family's white barn geese, who had always had dreams of visiting Lapland, and gets permission to stay from Akka, the flock's leader and matriarch. But each one of the geese in the flock gets a distinctive personality and a turn in the spotlight during Pierrot's 52-episode adaptation of this work.

So this goose isn't Mårten and not Akka either (she's mostly black and brown, like Canada geese in this country). And while ANN gives basic info and a cast list, there's no way to identify characters from that. Ah, but in a previous trawl, I found an old Angelfire fansite (remember those?) that was put up in English by an admirer of the Israeli dub. That gives a list of the geese, with screengrabs and basic info, and that tells me that this is Dunfin, the pretty gray wild goose Mårten meets on the way to Lapland and falls in love with. And that lets me go to the children's book (it's out of copyright and available in digital editions) and look her up there. Lagerlöf actually gets very romantic in describing her:

As soon as Nils said who he was, she lowered her neck and head very charmingly before him, and [spoke to him] in a voice so sweet that he couldn't believe it was a goose [. . . ] The boy grew really embarrassed. "This surely can't be any bird," thought he. "It is certainly some bewitched princess."

Well, she's not, she's just a wild goose, but she becomes the vagabond's Mårten's sweet baboo and so a significant character in the journey. [ANN tells me that she was voiced by Kumiko Takizawa, who also had important roles in Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (Grandis) and Nabari no Ou (Grandmother).] While I still don't have the episode/scene for this little set of cels, I can still infer that she's coming down from a flight with some good news (or at least happy words) for Mårten.

[teggacat]

as always, great work Sensei!
the whole step by step process you went through was quite interesting,
and such results!
….visions of snow geese by the hundreds [maybe more] in the field next to my home……..

[sensei]

Thanks, tegga. And the work isn't nearly done yet (two more cuts from Nils, plus one from Andersen and the SD MKR, plus the five sketch sets from Asatte no Houkou). Groundhog Day may be over-optimistic.

But I like my perky little 4-cel animation of Dunfin, the more so because she's just a goose and not a bewitched princess. (I saw two snow goose today who have somehow attached themselves to our overwintering horde of Canadas and thought of her).

[sensei]

Providing some context for "golden age" cels can be a real challenge, particularly when the series is not actually available in any English-language form. But sometimes you get a helpful hint from the studio.

One of the new items is a cel from Mushi's 1970 Andersen Monogatari (The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen), the first 52-episode adaptation of a Western children's classic and the first to show that there was a larger market for Japanese-produced animation.



OK, it's a guy holding a mug and eating a piece of bread. Like all Andersen cels, it's remarkable for its condition: while irretrievably stuck to its douga, it shows no signs of deterioration and looks remarkably sharp. Though this is because Mushi did cels the old way, with the trace lines hand drawn in India ink or some other kind of indelible marker. While the douga is foxed and browned with age, the cel is remarkably young-looking for its forty-five years of age.

And -- yes -- I've seen this lad before. A cel I got in 2013 shows the same character, with the same red vest and surprising deep blue eyes. I couldn't immediately place that cel, but this one offers a bit more information on the top edge of the cel.



"AM" is obviously "Andersen Monogatari," and the two numbers that follow -- "38 - 114" are crucial to figuring out where it appears. That means "Episode 38, Cut 114," or about a third of the way in. ANN gives a complete episode list, so I learn that this is from the first part of a 3-part adaptation of Andersen's "Ice Maiden." That's a longish tale with a sad ending, not very popular in the West but probably more attractive to a Japanese audience as the supernatural protagonist is a variation on the malicious "Yuki-onna" or "Snow Woman" popular in many legends.

OK, so now I know that the character is Rudy, the poor but intrepid mountain hunter whom the Ice Maiden is determined to get in the end (and does). And as Mushi's adaptation is up on YouTube (in raw Japanese only, alas), it's not hard to get the screen grab.


(Ah, mine has an unmatching mouth layer. Oh, well... And it doesn't take too much longer to look through the other episodes and find my other Rudy cel, which is from Part 3 or Ep. 40.)

Now Nils Holgersson is a much more difficult task, as there are fewer resources to help track down context. But sometimes the celga-no-kami cut you a little slack.

One of my new Nils lots contained four disconnected cels from a cut that shows our hero (and his ditzy sidekick Carrot) riding on gooseback -- but the goose is clearly not Mårten but the leader of the migrating flock, the wizened matriarch Akka.


(Those white eyebrows are Akka's distinguishing trademark.)

And then, somehow, Nils gets drowsy during the flight and finally flops over into a peaceful, seemingly enjoyable nap.



The last of the cels, A78 END, shows that the cut is a long one, and each cel has the cut number on it -- 265 -- which must be toward the end of the adventure. And, happily, the douga for this end key has the last crucial bit written on it.



ANN, again, gives the title of Episode 44 -- "toji komerareta bataki" or "Bataki is trapped." OK, Bataki the Raven is a secondary character in Lagerlöf's original book, but on checking a Japanese site giving brief episode summaries, it does not seem to be a canonical adventure. Briefly, according to the synopsis, the bird gets stuck in a mine hut without any windows, and poor Nils comes to save him but sees no way out but to try to dig through the hut's brick wall. (Hard enough when you're normal sized but a backbreaking task if you're shrunk to the size of a gnome.)

So, as Bataki ("one of the wisest of birds") is a special friend of Akka's, it makes sense that the flock leader would eventually find out what's happened to the raven and come provide needed back-up. And as poor Nils spends most of the episode digging through a brick wall, it's also no wonder that, when they get rescued, practically the first thing he wants to do is take a big nap.

How wise old Bataki gets himself stuck in a shed with no windows is another question. But as he's not in the cel, we can thankfuly leave that to supposition.

Whew. All of this will get much easier when I eventually get to Asatte no Houkou, where all the sets are repeatedly labeled by episode and cut and for which a good commercial subbed version is available.

[theultimatebrucelee]

Awesome clean up job on those cels sensei! I recall seeing quite a few of my more aged cels with fogging looking residues on them, perhaps from being stacked together with other cels or background for long period of time. I sometimes just firmly rub my fingers on the non-paint cel area to wipe some of it off and that seem to work, to some degree. I'd be scared to clean them with substance, probably make a mass and end up destroy part of cel or something. But your method is simple and looks promising, and I can see it doable for current season. How long do you dry the cels for in each drying process?

[sensei]

Thanks, t.u.b.lee. Obviously, you should do one less desirable cel first, just to check to see if there is anything in the cels by that particular studio and batch that could potentially be harmed by washing. But my experience is that while some paints will temporarily pick up some water (and you can see the temporary shift on the front side), washing in plain soap and water has no permanent impact on the paint or trace lines.

Overall, the early stages of drying are no more than a half hour and are just enough to make sure that any remaining moisture on the blank acetate has evaporated. I gave the cels a good twelve hours lying paint side up to be sure that any moisture that had been adsorbed into the paint had all dried off. Overnight should be good.

You won't need much soap and water. In the first batch I made a whole tub of soapy mix, which proved to be a waste of good soap. The second one took just a small bowl and a little dribble of Ivory Soap, and it still was more than enough. Just enough so that it feels slick between your fingers and raises some small bubbles when it's used. Be gentle. And keep turning over the towel you're using to clean with, so you don't get a tiny piece of grit in it that might scratch the cel.

[x]

Hi Sensei,
Your information on your cel cleaning was really useful.

I have recently come across one of my cels that appears to have a fair amount of dust on it.

I have always been a bit apprehensive about trying to clean my cels but will probably give it a go based on your example. Thanks

[sensei]

Continuing my trek toward the update, I finish off with the last of my cels in this set, the super-deformed Umi from MKR that was so desperate to get out of the very krinkly bag she'd probably lived in since the late 90s. There's not much to say about it: it's not a significant moment but I enjoy the way each of CLAMP's Knights briefly get animal ears when they are flustered or panicky. And Umi, for some reason, has always appealed to me more than the other two (though in truth I have my Fuu moments too). So I'm prone to impulse buys of this character and delighted with this little white-rabbity image.



It got a good airing-out in my office and, on checking it out, it actually proved to be in good health with minimal line fading and no excessive smell or residue on the surface. So there was not much to do but give her a clean new bag, first slitting it all the way down one side to allow it to vent properly. (In my latest bag changes, I've gotten used to slitting the same side so the cels will all have the open side toward the top of the Profolio pocket.)



This also lets me fip back the whole top flap of the bag and tuck the cel into the corner snugly. It also makes getting it back out much less problematic.



Meantime I''ve tried a couple of sheets of scrapbooking paper behind it (I buy assortments of cardstock on sale) and settled on a bright red as fitting the mood of the image and setting off its colors well. So the cel gets a quick scan in the process, with its new bg.



And finally the new cel (still looking a little panicky for some reason) goes into its new Profolio home.



And at the same time I enter the cel into my digital inventory so I can remember where I put that dratted new cel three months later. Happily, my Profolio devoted to MKR still had an empty page, so that made it easy all around.

Now onto those sketch sets, which are going to be real work, scanning, conserving, and describing.

[sensei]

OK, now into the sketch material, which is always several times the work of getting cel material ready to upload. My process is similar for all sketch sets, but I'll use this one, from Asatte no Houkou, Episode 1, cut 208, as a fairly typical example. The batch comes together in a bag, typically with the layout on top as that IDs where the cut appears.



I know the series well, so I'm familiar with the moment: the little-girl Karada has just been given some cute hairbows by her big-brother Hiro, which she can't wait to show off to her new adult friend, Shouko-san. She doesn't know this, but Hiro and Shouko were once lovers, an affair broken off when he had to come home suddenly and take on the job of caring for the orphaned Karada. Shouko sees how deeply Hiro loves her little sister, and that makes her even more bitter about how their relationship ended. So she's just about to say something nasty that she knows will wound the little girl to the heart, and so for all Karada's childish joy, it's really a tense, scary moment. (With long-range story-arc implications ... but that gets us into spoiler turf, so I'll shut up on this front.)

So let's open the package. As expected, there are two batches of sketches. One is tucked inside the gray timing sheet (plus a studio copy) and consists of the dougas, the final sketches that were scanned and colorized to make the scene. The other is a more complicated mix of preliminary sketches, during which the key frames were worked up, step by step, in preparation for the dougas.



The dougas don't need a lot of attention at this point. I just flip through to make sure that they are all there and look to see how easy/hard it will be to scan and reanimate them. This bunch looks to be mostly complete, though there is a set of mouth layers that go with the last one to fit some dialog. I'll worry about that later.



Now to the messier bunch. I soon find that there are five keys and a "1.5" planned in-betweener. That makes six layouts and six gengas -- and a bunch of intermediate drawings in colored paper. Between the layout and the genga, there are two, one on a pale orange sheet and another one on a pale green sheet. These are corrections (or "shuusei") by the supervising animators.



Then between the genga and the douga there are two more, also pale orange and pale green. So, seven stages in all for each key frame: layout, correction 1, correction 2, genga, correction 3, correction 4, douga.

What's going on here? Most sketch sets I've gotten for other series have just one correction (often called simply the "rough") between layout and genga and another one (usually an uninteresting partial) between genga and douga. Typically, these correction sketches are the work of the episode's animation director. But AnH lists two animation directors for this episode, Ryoichi Oki (who had previously worked on Utena and Ai Yori Aoshi, but on the lower level as genga artist) and Ikuko Itou, a much more distinguished artist who was chief animation director for Sailor Moon (S and Super S seaons) and for Princess Tutu. Itou is also listed as the supervising animation director for this episode and all the other odd-numbered ones.

I'm moving to controversial turf here, but my comparison of the style of these correction sketches to those in other episodes where the two artists worked strongly suggests that the light orange ones are the work of the junior animator Oki, while the light green ones must be the work of the supervising senior animator Itou.

In any case, "light orange" consistently does complete corrections of both the layouts and the gengas, while "light green" does partials, rather full ones in the first step and only fine details in the second. And these light-green corrections contain details that go forward to the genga and douga stages, so they must have been considered authoritative within the studio hierarchy. Hence, "light green" is the experienced Itou rather than the relative novice Oki (though this artist has since graduated to the role of chief animation director for more recent series.)

OK, now I think I know what this sketch set is telling me about the production process that created this scene. I can move ahead to the next step, which is to look for issues that need curatorial attention and make sure that this material is going to remain healthy after it's scanned and goes into storage. (Next preview...)

[KinoLRB]

Whew, sorry for the late comment, Sensei. I am seriously impressed by the amount of time and research you've put into explaining the scene significance and technical merits that comprise these cels and sets. Great detective work, particularly on the Asatte no Houkou sets and determining the artists involved. It makes me want to dive into my collection and do some additional research.

I also appreciate the instructional photos for Nils' cleaning. That is one lucky waterfowl to have landed in your collection. It's great to know there are collectors who are taking the time to care for their cels, thus preserving them for future generations.

And the additions themselves are lovely. The Asatte no Houko example is a poignant example, especially knowing the darker context behind the seemingly happy image. I can't wait to see more.

[sensei]

Thank you, Kino RLB. Partly I'm responding to some suggestions about how to make this process a little more helpful and interactive. The next step is going to be dealing with some problems, i.e., celotape -- the bane of a sketch-collector's existence. Meantime, this batch has reminded me that I've been out of storage space since the end of last year, and so I'm watching for four new storage boxes today, which will let me deconstruct some messy piles on my desk and get my AnN sketches into a secure, permanent home.

The process JC Staff used for this series is unusual, and I can't say that I fully understand it. In particular, I can't see why there are so many complete corrections of gengas, when the two are so similar that it's hard to tell which came first.

In my last update, I concluded that the second sheet on light orange came before the genga, which would mean that Oki did a rough, then had it corrected by Itou, then did a complete revised rough, which went to the gengaman to be cleaned up. But that's so counterintuitive that I'm looking more closely at this step in the new batch, as I think this second correction has to be post-genga. But why the extra work of a complete correction, if the genga was pretty much on the mark? This process of figuring out what's going on really leads to an evolving set of conclusions. Certainly AnN's team was unusually committed to artistic excellence, and I keep finding surprises.

(Wait until I get to that A1 key in this set, the one where just Karada just is half way into the frame. A lot of dithery work, and in the end it all got tossed out, and in the final version the cut begins with the next key.)

But I need to deal with some nasty sticky tape first...

[Jadeduo]

Sensei, this really is VERY helpful, and lately I have been putting more work into my gallery as well... Your notes and observations on Asatte no Hokou have been very helpful with my Loveless collection which was also done by JC Staff.

I am planning for the month of February to spend A LOT of time in my gallery and figuring out where I am going, it hasn't gotten to the point of unmanageability with the amount of work piling up, but it is almost there. I might be doing a gallery clean up and sale pretty soon, but we shall see I am going to have to do some real soul searching after the Sketch Contest to figure out my next direction. I think your gallery and a few others will be very helpful models on that point.

JD

PS Kudos again on all the hard work you do!