Real deal or...

[nekotan]

Hello dear Anime-Beta-Senpais ^_^/

I'm rather new to cel-collecting and brand new in this forum and since I tried searching for an anwer to my question but couldn't really find one I thought I should try asking here, since my search did bring up loooots of statements about the enormous experience gathered here, that should and could be asked for help - so I want to try my luck

Due to my lack of experience I'm greatly afraid of fakes and wanted to ask, how to differentiate between the real and not so real deals when it comes to cels (in general, even though I understand that there are great difference between the various production studios).
I'm particularly interested in Evangelion cels, but those seem to be especially difficult (there didn't seem to be that many on the market some time ago, but now...) and any help (maybe even from a fellow Evanagelion collector) would be very appreciated.
So far I have heard that having a matching douga with the cel gives some reassurance (and other voices that don't think that this helps that much... )and matching the cel to the exact screen shot does a great deal in giving some "safety" as well. It may seem awkwardly stupid to ask (please don't laugh at me... ) but couldn't the fake have been made from an exact screen shot and thus fit quite well too?
As you can see, I'm pretty lost and any help from the gathered fund of knowledge would be very much appreciated.

nekotan

[cutiebunny]

Welcome to Beta!

I don't think you have much to worry about if you buy from reputable dealers, like Mandarake or those with solid positive feedback on Yahoo Japan.

I would not take the absence of a matching douga to mean that the cel is fake. I would look for a sequence number, usually in the upper right hand corner. You can also compare it to screenshots, but be aware that there will usually be a portion of the cel that will not be shown in the anime as it fell outside where the camera filmed. And that's exactly what you want to see - a portion of the cel will not be in that animated frame.

Eva cels are rare and the good ones are usually expensive when they pop up. There's a side profile cel of Rei on Mandarake now for 81,000 yen. There might be one or two more on Mandarake's Big Web Auction in a couple weeks as well.

[KinoLRB]

Hi Nekotan!

I'm a fellow Evangelion collector and a somewhat newbie collector myself. A very good way to authenticate a cel is matching it to its screenshot. I go over every detail. Most fakes, even the good ones, are off in some way. If even the slightest detail looks wrong, then I pass on it.

As for your concern about creating a cel from a screenshot, I don't think it's possible (if somebody knows otherwise, then please let us know). A cel is created when the drawing is xeroxed onto a sheet of plastic and painted from the back. It's more plausible that a counterfeiter would make a fake cel from a real douga, but they would need access to a xerox machine.

Beware the too-perfect pose. The more valuable the image, the more likely it is to be faked. And if the too-perfect pose is in too-perfect condition for a suspiciously low price, run like heck lol.

Sellers. Who the seller/dealer is plays a big part in my buying decision. A reputable dealer isn't about to risk their reputation by selling a phony item.

This is my criteria for buying. Unfortunately, there are no 100% guarantees, but if everything appears legitimate, then you're probably fine. Just be diligent, do your research, and when in doubt, err on the side of caution and pass.

BTW have you made an RS gallery? We would love to see your collection.

[nekotan]

Wow, such quick answers

Thank you very much for your detailed explanations (and the shopping hint for mandarake ).
I have already heard that Mandarake is quite reliable and bought from there once before. I really don't want to sound rude, but what about other rubberslug collectors? Would you be concerned (I would not think so, but I don't want to be too naive...) when buying from there?
And when it comes to comparing dougas and cels with screen shots, how much of a difference would still be normal (I suppose it is kind of reaaaally difficult to find the exact frame for a given cel) - what about, let's say a millimeter at one side of the pictures, if you try to line them up? I have been told that some differences could also happen to be there because the light of the scanner fell dfferently - is that right?

Thank you again for your help (and I will make sure to share my cels as soon as I have enough of them )

nekotan

[cutiebunny]

There's really no hard or fast rule when it comes to how much the TV image will be cropped off. Sometimes they choose to zoom in instead of focusing on the larger images, or the image will focus more on the top of the cel instead of the lower portion. Or vice versa.

Most people who make fan cels from screenshots solely draw the portion that appears on the screenshot. So if there is an additional portion of the image, whether that be on the lower portion or elsewhere, that would give some credibility to the cel being authentic. Both sellers and collectors crop their images, sometimes because of their scanner size, but, in the case of a collector, because, by cropping the image to what was filmed, it allows them to protect the cel's authenticity. Mandarake is one of the few sellers that rarely crops the image because it has a larger scanner and because they're in the business of selling authentic stuff.

As for asking private collectors - You probably won't encounter a fake cel buying from them since they're collectors as well. Fake shikishi, that's another story and there are several of them on RS.

[Drac of the Sharp Smiles]

It's really a combination of a lot of different things. I think one of the best ways that I use to combat fakes is knowledge of the art from the series. Some things I consider:

-- What studio animated it? Does that studio release (or not release) sketches or trim backgrounds or otherwise have something they do to the cels or a way that they store the cels that is consistent enough to recognize the studio had it at one time? Personal example: Although they didn't do it from the beginning, AIC started to stamp their cels as they released them from the studio, so I make sure I know what that stamp looks like.

-- If there's a sketch with studio markings, are they the correct studio? What color pencils did the studio generally use? Does the sketch match the art style you see from them? Personal example: This is especially telling with Saiyuki TV, as the different episodes were farmed out to a number of studios and patterns of pencil colors differed from studio to studio enough that the color of the sketch alone can easily be used as a quick identification guide.

-- Do you know of other collectors with cels from the same sequence/show? If yes, ask them some of the details about their cels regarding how cropped they are on the TV screen, how well do the lines usually hold up, what does the paint usually look like on the back, etc. Talking to other collectors about what they have also seen is unspeakably valuable!!! More so if that collector has a good number of examples from the series in question. It lets you familiarize yourself with what the production pieces DO look like, so that you have more chance to get a "gut feel" about a piece you're looking at on auction.

-- How does the sequence move? Does the sequence number seem to match the movement you see on the screen? For example: If the sequence is very short and someone is trying to sell you a cel marked with a really high sequence number, or if the sequence is backlit and there's no black paint on the back of the cel, or if the character holds still while talking but the cel you're looking at is a single layer with the mouth painted in when it should be it's own layer, etc, then I would raise an eyebrow.

There are always oddities... production pieces that ARE the real deal, there's just something weird about them for some reason. They're not intended to be collected and seen off the screen. In the end, if you're leery about it and feeling unsure, my advice would be to pass it by. The feeling will stick with you when you get the piece and color your enjoyment of it. But don't feel like to be a collector you have to have ONLY production art.

In my case, I have one sketch of demon Goku from Saiyuki that I can't prove isn't fanart. It's a genga sheet with all the correct looking markings and even has a douga with it marked as A25end (the presence of the douga would seem odd for fanart).... but the pencil color combination in the genga doesn't really match anything else from the series that I've seen, the style of the drawing seems slightly "off", and despite knowing the show VERY VERY well, I can't find the scene it's from. Not even when I took out all my DVDs and scoured them from front to back. (Relatively, there aren't that many scenes with Goku in his demon form and if it's 25 frames long, that's decently long.) Lastly, it's a PERFECT PORTRAIT SHOT of the character and was fairly inexpensive. There's a reason several people in this thread raised this combination as a red flag. ^_^

I thought all this out ahead. So why did I buy it? It's gorgeous. I adore the expression. If it's fanart, I wish I knew who drew it so I could commission more from them. If I ever resell it, I won't claim it's production art, simply because I can't even prove to myself that it is production, despite that's how it was listed in it's original auction. Until then, I have a really neat drawing of demon Goku. It looks great right next to all my other production pieces. ^_^

[GuyvarIII]

With film processing, and different re-mastered editions and releases of an anime, I would say there can be a lot of differences between the image of a cel and a matching screen capture. There are differences even between multiple images taken of the same cel, depending on the equipment used i.e., scanner, camera, lighting, slight bending due to scanner size, an image shot at an angle to reduce glare, and the diverse drivers, image programs, or if an image of a large cel is pieced together from multiple scans, etc. While it is interesting to see a cel in its original context, and it could be noticed if something was really mismatching, it's limited as a means of authentication.

As an example, below you can see a setup of a fountain head from Angel's Egg. The first image is from the seller, the next two are a photo I took of the cel and a scan I made of the cel, the two images after that are from two different YouTube videos, and the last two are the same video shown on two different video players.



http://chriscelsite.rubberslug.com/gall ... mID=379940

In this case, when I directly look at the harmony cel and background in person, it has variations of aqua blue and green coloring, not well reproduced in any of the screen caps, the closest color depth and saturation lies somewhere between my photo and scan, and it has much more line work than can be seen in any of the image reproductions.

Though they're not as plentiful as some shows, Evangelion cels aren't impossible to find now. They're still a bit rich for my blood, but I've a couple of EVA-01s. I hope most of the production cels that are sold now are the real production cels. However, it is true that in the late 90s and early 2000s, when Evangelion was newer, and cels from it were impossible to find (and I was told that Gainax Studio was contacting the few who had them, insisting they pull them off their websites!), Gainax made small numbers of "official reproduction cels" that were only sold at events. They were made from the production drawings, and used the exact same materials (likely even the same people) that were used to make the production cels. They were expensive, priced between $300 and $500, and were even advertised as being indistinguishable from the real cels used in production! I know there was an awesome vertical pan one of EVA-01 that I didn't have the money for, when it showed up on the secondary market. I can't even find a picture of it now; and I don't know how many other “official reproduction” cels they made. At about the same time, Cellu-Club also made both handpainted and printed Evangelion reproduction cels, although images of their cels are easily found online.

[nekotan]

Once again a very BIG thank you for sharing all of these important pieces of experience and insight.
I understand that most of this comes from a long long time that one has spent collecting, but I wonder if there are some kind of data collections, where one could find such valuable pieces of information (like such an insane seeming detail as the colour of the pencils used )...? (if not, we - or more you - should probably set such a thing up here)
Furthermore it was really astonishing to see how much differences there can be even if a cel comes from one and the same shot.
It is very clear that I will have to learn a loooooooot of things to really get a good feeling for those kinds of things (but then again I don't want to learn it the hard way by buying a fake-- ).

But I'm really thankful for all your help and now that you set that great precedent I will most likely gladly come back for more help

Nekotan