Lightning Updaters, Slow Updaters, and Black Hole Collectors

[Jadeduo]

Hi All!

I don't know how relevant this is to this area, however, this came up in a discussion a while back with some friends of mine.

Some of us are terribly slow at updating, and others are like lightning, and then there is the other category the black hole collector hoards the entire collection and it never figuratively sees the light of day.

What do you think we could do to encourage slow updaters and black hole collectors?

I am guilty myself of being a slow updater, and right now it is really bad, as I went on a spree pre accident and the pile that was big before, is now immensely daunting. My issue right now is scanning, I went on a big scanning spree a few weeks ago, when I went by my house for a day. But I have not been able to make it back to my house since, and some of the stuff I scanned I realized I needed the sketches to put together the write up for my site.

Lightning updaters, my big question is how do you do it? Find the time?

If you are a slow updater, is there is something we could do to help? Encouragement? Cel IDing? Hugs?

Black hole collectors, what causes you to hoard everything? Is there something we could do here to encourage you to show your lovelies to the community at large?

I would love to hear everyone's thought about this... As the day before a long weekend is generally very quiet here!

JD

[bulleta]

I'm probably classified as slow, but since I'm not on Rubberslug maybe black hole as well? My gallery is online for viewing but given how many item views I get - I'm not sure how many people know that.

My big thing is that all my cels are uploaded in the order I bought them in. So if something isn't in and I'd like to update, I can't. I wont use seller scans. But part of that is my fault. I let stuff sit at my deputy forever because I hate to ship when I only have a few things in. Sadly there's nothing that's going to hurry me up in that regard. Then when I do get stuff in I have to have the energy to scan. And if I only have one thing, I don't want to bother. I want to scan a pile at a time. Then I have to crop the scans (I hate seeing shadowy edges on scans - and all my scans must be the exact same size unless they're oddly shaped), fix the brightness & contrast/color balance, save a large file for future use, scale it down for my gallery twice - once for it's page and once for it's thumbnail. Then I have to ID the episode, screencap, write my comments - etc. Especially with my Dragonball cels, I'm anal about sorting them...

So I guess that's why. I've got things I have to do, in a certain order, and I can't stand to break tradition. Both of my site visitors will just have to wait patiently!

[Kaona]

Once upon a time I was super organized, properly recorded dates, prices and sources, scanned, updated, placed everything in their Itoyas as I received them...and then, my toddlers became teenagers.

I thought life would get easier as they got older, but no! It gets a lot busier, and I want to spend as much time as I can with them before they go off to college. So, scanning and updating the gallery waits until times like right now - summer vacation.

So, yeah...I'll be on Rubberslug quite a bit for the next few weeks, trying to organize the cel and sketch chaos in between trips to Disneyworld and Arkansas. And then school will start again...

[KinoLRB]

Well, when it comes to scanning, I'm a lightning updater. I scan the cel as soon as I get it out of the package and update the gallery immediately thereafter. The way I see it, it only takes a few minutes, so why wait? Just think of the process as a few measly minutes out of your day.

Of course, I rarely receive more than one or two items at a time, so this makes things a lot faster. Admittedly, I just really enjoy scanning and updating. I find it therapeutic. The more I have to scan, the more excited I am. But this is a personal joy, and can't be learned, I suppose.

I usually ID the cel before I buy it, but the written descriptions take me a while. Slowly but surely, I'm getting there.

[sensei]

Well, I used to be a lightning updater, but I think that was a factor of audience. Back ten years ago there was a bigger circle who were eagerly awaiting my updates, and they occasioned long threads. As the circle diminished and the reactions to updates no longer became The Big Thing (though I do enjoy the responses that I still get), I saw the task more in terms of presenting the art as a research resource for the long haul, rather than for a brief but intense round of applause.

I'm not as slow as some: when I win something, I create a title and a space for it in my "newcels" document, then begin writing up the descriptions in spare time. I locate the image on one of my DVDs or on a YouTube video and screencap it. When appropriate, I do what it takes to look up and identify animators. So when the box finally comes, I'm already part there.

Once the shipment is in hand, the processing of it becomes a slow, slightly irritating incentive to do Something every day. The stack of new sketches and cels sits on my desk, reminding me that it needs attention. That means remove tape, scan a few items, find the last few screen caps, give a fuller account of the contents of sketch packs, and of course organize the sketches, cut backing boards, interleave the sketches with microchamber paper, and get them ready to put into their archival boxes.

It can take more than a month. Some of you recall my detailing how I had to fill a basin with soapy water and scrub batches of cels from Nils Holgersson that were grimy on both sides. Then scan, Photoshop the scans (every third one was damaged), and reanimate them. But once I winnow down to the last difficult uploads (and these days these stragglers are always from Asatte no Houkou), I find that the job builds momentum. My wife starts to stop by my office more often to ask "What the HECK are you DOING?"

And then it's all over. I clean up all the temporary files, delete the duplicate images and empty the recycle bin, move all the descriptions from "newscels" to their proper files, update my inventory records so I know which box or cel book the new items went to. There comes a sad, deserted empty feeling. Which gets relieved when I visit the new files (as I do often during the first month, spotting and correcting the inevitable typos as I do) and think "Job well done." Whether or not it draws comments in my AB "update" thread.

And somehow that "Coming Later" folder, where I save the dealers' scans, starts to fatten, and I know that in another month or so I'm going to subject myself to another round of this sweet torment...

[zerospace]

I'm sure I'd be classified as slow now, though I used to update quickly, too -- like a few of you. I also buy a lot fewer cels these days, too, so that might have something to do with it. I frequently allow artwork to pile up on my scanner (a pile now is more like a handful of cels, if even that much) for months before I finally scan and update my gallery. Like bulleta, my gallery is not on Rubberslug -- it is also a joint gallery belonging to myself and my husband. Those who know me or my hubby know what we collect and probably visit our gallery periodically to see if we have actually updated anything. Otherwise, I think bots crawl my gallery more than real visitors do. As I type this, I have 3 or 4 cels sitting on my scanner, waiting to be scanned. They've been there for at least a couple of months now, too.

There's nothing anyone can do to make me update faster. My online gallery is as much for me as it is to share what I have with anyone else who wants to see it. I wrote my own gallery software for the web because I wanted to better organize my stuff AND also keep track of purchase prices, sources and dates. I'm not in this hobby for bragging rights anymore -- I buy what I do because I like it, and since there isn't much out there now that I haven't seen 100 times over, I don't buy a lot.

I'm still waiting for another chance at my #1 wishlist cel, and I really don't want to miss it again. Maybe one day...

Random side note: sensei -- LOVE your sig image!

[Moop]

Hum. I must admit that I was a black hole collector for a long time (still am, really, since a large portion of my collection has never been scanned, much less posted on the web). I got into the hobby because I loved animation artwork, and wanted to own a physical piece of the stories that gave me so many hours of enjoyment. That was it. I didn't even know that people showed off their collections until I joined AB. I never thought of myself as a hoarder or a curator, just a collector.

Having said all that, the only thing that got me to build a gallery at all was about two or three years' worth of endless, but good natured pestering from some cel buddies. I'm glad that I did it, even to the small extent that I did; I enjoy the feedback, and my cels still get lots of views...so obviously they're pleasing someone besides just me. Better still is the side effect of being able to see a particular piece at a moment's notice without having to dig through my books. But to be brutally honest with myself, probably nothing short of friendship could have gotten me to do even that much. It's not that I'm selfish - it's that I am, in short, a lazy lump who hates scanning...so I'm disinclined to spend hours doing it. I am in awe of the people who are quick and dedicated to the task, but speaking for myself and anyone else who shares my own shamefaced perspective, what can be done to encourage speed and/or sharing? Probably not a lot.

[Jadeduo]

So many interesting responses, I saw them come in throughout the day! I might have been stalking this post all day. ^_~ It is very interesting to hear about everyone's processes and what drives them to update.

Some of my thoughts when authoring this post had to do a lot with motivation, and we have maybe gotten a little more lazy when Rubberslug 2.0 came out we started using it exclusively to watch for other collectors updates, who's new? what's going on?, instead of using our best google-fu to find the best new collector sites. I've got to admit, and I hate to say it, but if you don't post here zerospace I completely miss your updates, I have it bookmarked, I just don't think to check it! ^_^;; AND I MIGHT STALK YOUR GW collection... *coughs* *looks shifty*

It also became harder to find a good free website hoster that wasn't going to spam you with pop-ups that could get super frustrating, and paying for your own site and doing all the work on it is an insane amount of work. I applaud you Zero and bulleta for keeping up with it! I used to run my own from scratch gallery, and once RS got better from it's original run, I pulled it, I still have the framework but getting it all back together with all the new pieces I have bought since 2005/6 is daunting to say the least, and the look is VERY dated LOL.

Also when I spend some time in the black hole, the most recent time period being 2009-2011, it is not just one thing it is usually multiple. It was out of not just lack of funds, but complete lack of motivation. My love for my collection was still there, but it just seemed exhausting to DO anything about it. Let me say that from right before I dove into the black hole, I just finished all that backlog late last year. What dragged me out was friends, someone sent me an e-mail, it was as simple as that we got to talking and I was back in! Like bulleta I wasn't hording I was just not interested in doing anything with the gallery.

My motivation has always been, the drive to share with everyone, as everyone knows dealer scans never really tell the whole story about what you have acquired, this is also true about auction sites as well. Especially when one goes and buys a stack of sketches from Mandarake and YJ, and I find that sifting through these stacks is a reward in itself. The problem I find in updating is not usually scanning I can usually do that pretty easy, it's the finding the time to put together detailed write ups and screenshot-ting and I want to actually go through some of my older writeups and redo them, but finding the motivation for that is exhausting!

So now that I have been spending the last year or so barring the last three months basically cheerleading... (Also it is great to see so many participants in the Open House, a few more peeps are participating than last year, so YAY!) I was hoping we could start a dialogue about what motivates us and maybe see if we can get back that, excitement when someone puts up large and small updates. I know I always look forward to both Sensei and Star-phoenix's updates due to the care and attention to detail they put together in their write ups. But I also look forward to looking at any new pieces, from new and old collectors, whether the uploader put anything in the comment box at all. Because it means the work we are doing here is not in vain and there is still some hope about keeping this community going! It also gives me a list of new anime to watch, if anything, and that is never bad thing!

So after listening to some responses, there seems to be not much we can do here, except to continue to keep our pompoms raised and cheer on the community! *raises pom poms and shakes* Goooooooooooooooooooo BETA!

JD

[jcaliff]

I used to update pretty regularly, but the past ten years or so I've just been busy. It doesn't help any that I am also trying to redo my entire gallery and rescan my entire collection. Add to that the fact that my last couple of scanners don't want to scan certain pinks and reds properly - stupid CIS scanners all seem to be crap at that, wish I could afford a large format CCD. I can't stand how terrible the colors look, so whenever I run into one of those I end up spending two hours in gimp trying to fix the colors. I don't have a good solution, unless I can afford to pay someone to do this all for me.

[eyes0nme19]

Used to be lightning updater...can't say the same anymore haha. In the beginning, I would scan and update immediately after receiving my package due to anticipation and excitement. Scanning always took me forever to do, but I would go through with it anyway because I had the energy and time. And now I DON'T HAVE THE TIME! My gallery hasn't been updated since Christmas...which is really sad. There is a small pile of artwork thats collecting dust in my bedroom that I see every day...but don't do anything about hehe. I've been so busy with finishing school, I don't have any energy left to spare for my artwork oh well, it is what it is. Looking forward to finishing school once and for all. And then after a well deserved break I'll go right back into this lovely hobby and whip my gallery back into shape!

[lunacels]

What a great thread! Generally I post new cels the day I get them in the mail unless I'm traveling for work (or working 16 hours, which also happens sometimes...er, a lot). It's important to me to do, since I feel some responsibility to 1) keep them in pristine order, and 2) share with others. There are a few things I do to ease the process though, because I usually don't have big chunks of time--which is another reason why I try to do it right away. I will always ID a cel and get the screencap before buying it. I've found this is a handy rule to keep myself in line, but then it's also a problem if I get into a bidding war because I have to get it since I went to all that trouble, right? (I can rationalize with the best of 'em!) I'll keep a word file handy with my cel description and details so it's ready to go once it arrives. Then all that's left is scanning, photoshop editing, and posting.

It's funny that I hate pan cels for the most part though, because scanning them is a PITA and storing them is worse (big cel books are just a pain, and I really don't have a good place to keep them). And they always screw up formatting in RS. I've had several bigger cels in my collection that I need to rescan but have been putting it off, because piecing together small scans is just awful. And no matter how many times I try it, I just cannot get good photos of my cels with my iPhone. I've still bought pan cels so I'm not off them entirely, but it's always a big mitigating factor that I know I'm going to have to figure out how to scan that sucker, so 9 times out of 10 it will steer me away.

Jadeduo, it's funny that you mentioned Sensei and Star-phoenix, because the three of you have really inspired me to get it together in my gallery. I'm attempting to go through and update scans and text descriptions, hopefully before the open house. (We'll see if I'm successful in time!) There are a lot of good pointers on here. I've never thought about a cel directory like Sensei uses, but then my collection isn't nearly so extensive. But it's such a cool idea that I want to do it anyway! I suppose at the very least, I do need to reorganize.

I hope you collectors who have your own non-RS gallery will post your updates here! I love seeing everyone's additions, but I too don't spend much time searching for galleries on the interwebs. I guess after I realized so many had closed I prematurely gave up...may need to get back on that!

[majinuub]

I guess I can label myself as a slow updater mainly because I keep my main collection inventoried offline.

Also, I'm not a fan of RS's latest overhaul. It's become harder for me to create my gallery the way I want it to be(yes I know there's ways around it but that shouldn't be the case either). Instead of complaining and bemoaning how it once was, I'm opting for eventually creating a website of my own(eventually being the key word there ). Problem is I just need the extra time to do so .

As for black hole collectors, well, I understand their need to hide certain items/their collections.

[Drac of the Sharp Smiles]

You can classify me a black hole collector, for certain. For me, it breaks down to not wanting the scans online. I don't miss the additional irritation of unsolicited offers on things in my gallery, but those were very honestly infrequent because I was very direct in telling people I didn't want offers. (I *said* I would ignore offers, even though I never did.)

When I had a gallery a long time ago, but it was victim to people taking the scans for image galleries. (A practice which is one of the surest ways to piss me off.) Even if I wanted to set up something private for fellow collectors (something I considered and looked into just recently) I have no way to set up a password protected gallery. Additionally, even if I *had* a way to set up a password protected gallery, I don't know if that stops the search engine bots from snagging all the images. (If the images turn up in image searches, it defeats the purpose of having a password on the gallery at all.... it's not like I say anything amazingly private in my cel descriptions.) As it stands there are STILL scans of mine that will turn up in Google image searches even though they haven't been online for years and I have no way to delete them from those searches.

The bottom line is that I have no way to stop any of all this other than simply not posting them online. So I don't post them online -- especially the things I have that were bought privately and have NEVER been posted online. I do go every year to Anime Boston and when we still had a cel collector's panel, I attended and brought pieces for people to see in person. Unfortunately, that's really the only way anyone would see my collection anymore. While I did very much enjoy sharing with others, the REAL reason that I collect is to have a sort of "make my own artbook".

[Moop]

Because it means the work we are doing here is not in vain and there is still some hope about keeping this community going! It also gives me a list of new anime to watch, if anything, and that is never bad thing!

So after listening to some responses, there seems to be not much we can do here, except to continue to keep our pompoms raised and cheer on the community! *raises pom poms and shakes* Goooooooooooooooooooo BETA!

You know, this is pretty OT, and it might not even be worth mentioning...but just out of curiosity I tried doing a basic search for 'animation art collectors forum' and a few other wordings of the kind someone might use if they were just browsing the web - and Beta never showed up (at least not before I got bored with changing pages). RS did, and even a Ghostbusters animation art collectors forum was there on page one...but no AB. Maybe this place is just too hard to find.

[sensei]

Perhaps because after one of the crashes it was set up to exclude search engine bots? (Excuse if I'm misremembering this -- this would have been when poor Cloud was also disabled.)