Ikuko Itoh's shuusei?

[heavenskyking]

Hi guys *waves* I'm a new member. I have been reading around and this place is very helpful and informative. I plan on browsing more, but meanwhile, I have a question I hope you can help me with

I just very recently bought a bundle of genga sheets from Sailor Moon S episode 125, one of Ikuko Itoh episodes. I haven’t actually received the items, but I have been staring non-stop at the preview photos because they just look so beautiful.

However, I do have some concerns. There are a couple previews of the yellow sheets, which I was told is usually the animation director’s correction. Now, these shuusei, they look so gorgeous they are the ones I have been staring at everyday lmao.

Here's one set of the genga and correction-





That correction... The expression in Uranus’ eyes... I’m still not over it

Okay now you probably can guess what my concern is: there is no sequence number or anything on it. From my research, I did find scans of yellow sheets with no marks on them so I guess it’s not unheard of, however I’ve been reading this forum, and found out Itoh had a pretty distinctive signature. Well, these papers have nothing.

Are there still any chance that this was done by her? It is still a gorgeous art regardless but it would be triple awesome if that’s really her correction. It’s already made me happy that she was the animation director for this episode. Or perhaps there's no way to tell

I don’t know what the other sheets look like for now or even if they're from the same scene, so I can’t say if perhaps there are other pieces with her siggy on it. (And say there are other corrections with no signatures too, isn’t that a bit odd that the shuusei are all blank?)

The seller is a reputable one with 99.8% positive ratings, and the other previews also look legit/similar with other SM gengas I’ve seen before. I’m fairly confident these are genuine.

Thanks!

[JWR]

It is hard to pin down who actually made the correction sheet unless you find specific written instructions on them like this one of mine
http://ryan.rubberslug.com/gallery/inv_ ... mID=344907
In which the writing I have been told translates into an instruction that the director will handle drawing this scene himself in this case Masami Shimoda
Correction layers normally don't have scene/cut numbers on them

[heavenskyking]

I see. I assumed correction sheets would normally have numbers on them cos I saw many yellow sheets with corresponding numbers like in the genga, e.g. A1, A2 and circled. Or is that a different type of correction sheet?

I guess it is pretty hard to know for sure who drew this one, but since usually yellow sheets = animation director’s, could I pretend it really is her work? Lol

[jiangdc]

Glad you are aiming for Itoh sensei.
It is most likely to be her work if you figured out the correct episode and saw her name at the correct place in the ending of that episode. If you are not confident about the correction itself, I would say it looks pretty normal to me.
Many time during animation production, time is very limited and the director may have too many works to do. So the drawing could be more streamlined and she may forget to put A2 on it. Also, the situation might be: she made a correction but not satisfy, then she made another one. If this is the case, you may get another yellow paper.
To me, this is a big correction since the position of eyes was greately changed.
Just be confident and don't hesitate to tell everyone that you got a correction form the animator you love.

[heavenskyking]

Uhhh jiangdc, you have made me really excited that it is really likely hers!

I went to check the episode again, and interestingly the eyes on the show look like a hybrid between the genga and the correction. So perhaps you were right and there was a finalized version. The other elements are the same as Itoh's correction though.



Thanks again guys, I really appreciate your input

[Rekka Alexiel]

The yellow sheet might actually be a "practice" sheet rather than a shuusei. They generally don't have production numbers on them. You can tell that the yellow sheet looks more like a rough sketch (not completely clean or complete lines) than a shuusei, which would have complete line strokes in much darker pencil lead.

[jiangdc]

Uhhh jiangdc, you have made me really excited that it is really likely hers!

I went to check the episode again, and interestingly the eyes on the show look like a hybrid between the genga and the correction. So perhaps you were right and there was a finalized version. The other elements are the same as Itoh's correction though.



Thanks again guys, I really appreciate your input

When you get your set, you are likely to get a douga page witch is on a white paper similar to the genga page, but only a combination of colorul lines(no shade and no indication). This page should be the finalized version and used directly for painting. You will find the douga page can overlap very well with the actual anime picture.
Enjoy your wonderful collection

[heavenskyking]

The yellow sheet might actually be a "practice" sheet rather than a shuusei. They generally don't have production numbers on them. You can tell that the yellow sheet looks more like a rough sketch (not completely clean or complete lines) than a shuusei, which would have complete line strokes in much darker pencil lead.

Man, it looks so good and it's "only" the "practice" drawing! Itoh-sensei is really amazing indeed. I'm sorry for fangirling. I just. Realllly love her work. This genga set was actually a bit out of my regular budget, but I knew if I missed them I would have regretted it every night.

When you get your set, you are likely to get a douga page witch is on a white paper similar to the genga page, but only a combination of colorul lines(no shade and no indication). This page should be the finalized version and used directly for painting. You will find the douga page can overlap very well with the actual anime picture.
Enjoy your wonderful collection

That would be great! But I honestly don't know if the rest of the sheets are also from this scene, and I guess there's a chance the douga is sticking to the cel, which I don't have. Crossing fingers (and toes) tho

[sensei]

Sorry to miss this post also, as I've been an avid Itou-sama collector, though however from series that she did after Sailor Moon. Most of the art that I can reliably attribute to her comes from Asatte no Houkou, with one sketch from Princess Tutu, for both of which she served as Senior Animation Director. However, she regularly supervised the episode animation directors' work for both series, and was prone to polish or even, at times, replace their work with "shuusei no shuusei" (revision of the revision) sketches. The most reliable sign of her presence is a very distinctive way she had of writing the "shuusei" kanji,which looks like “T⅔.” (See this page for examples.) She also had a very distinctive way of writing the common sequence number "A1" that I explain at too great length on this page. (Because I soon after found that the rest of the sketches from this cut were owned by another RS collector, including one with the trademark “T⅔.”)

Sadly, the sketch you're looking at doesn't have a sequence number (at least not in the scan you give) or a “T⅔.” But Itou-sama's practice might have evolved after she wrapped Sailor Moon. And you can look at examples of her sketching practice in the two later series to see if you can spot other distinctive habits. For my money, the sketch in question is a post-genga shuusei, which would have been the basis of the douga and hence for the cel and thus the screen cap. And if Itou-sama was credited as animation director for this particular episode, then the simple explanation is that this sketch is her work. I don't know of any other stage of animation where any other artist (e.g., key animator, episode director, cel checker) would have executed a sketch like this on thin yellow paper.

So I'd raise a modest shout of congratulations, always modified with the wish to find some telltale sign of Itou's hand and no other person's.

(BTW, the "A1" on the genga is the writing of the key animator, not the episode animation director, so it means nothing that it won't match Itou-sama's practice. [She always circled only the "1" and not the "A" beside it.])

[sensei]

You may find these three sketches helpful in assessing your sketches, though they reflect Itou-sama's work some time after her Sailor Moon days. They are three rough sketches for Asatte no Houkou (two character design/settei rough drafts and a hanken rough draft). I picked them up this morning on Mandarake, and the auction service confirms that they are autograph work of Ikuko Itou.

(Third one is a teensy bit moe; Sensei doesn't swing that way. But Karada's need to learn about her newly acquired sexual maturity is an important theme in the series, and it's a significant piece of Itou's rough sketching.)

Edit: for some reason the captions are in the right order but the photos were posted in reverse order. So obviously the first caption goes with the last picture and vice versa.

[jiangdc]

I will also show you some of my itoh sensei related collection


look at this beautiful anime eye drawn by itoh sensei

Some pictures of her setti drawing as reference





This one will be my family heirloom

[heavenskyking]

Ah thank you so much, sensei and jiangdc!! I really appreciate that you dug them up for me - sorry for being a pain.

Sensei - I think it was from one of your posts that I learned about the T⅔ signature. Congrats for the new acquisition from Mandarake! Too bad there aren’t that many Sailor Moon available on there, the ones that aren’t being auctioned I mean. Is it odd that I found myself being more interested in the sketches than the cels? Cels are great and they definitely hold an important place in the anime making (and I first started this hobby with a cel), but there’s just something about seeing sketches that make me super giddy, seeing the pencil lines and all that. However, I’ve always liked seeing sketches in general so there’s that too

jiangdc - beautiful eyes indeed! Even partial they still look expressive. Also, that Princess Tutu, what a nice heirloom! Are those original settei btw? I’m on mobile so I can’t blow them up now but they don’t look like copies.

Thank you again, guys. I hope there will be some hints I can pick up from the rest of the batch, but for now it seems safe to assume that the yellow sheets were Itoh-sensei’s creation. When I get my hands on them I will do more close comparison with your sketches.

OOT, but seeing both of your collections just made me shake my head in awe again at how different her design/drawings could look from series to series. I mean okay I suppose that’s something all good animators are able to do, but it’s still amazing to see

[jiangdc]

Ah thank you so much, sensei and jiangdc!! I really appreciate that you dug them up for me - sorry for being a pain.

Sensei - I think it was from one of your posts that I learned about the T⅔ signature. Congrats for the new acquisition from Mandarake! Too bad there aren’t that many Sailor Moon available on there, the ones that aren’t being auctioned I mean. Is it odd that I found myself being more interested in the sketches than the cels? Cels are great and they definitely hold an important place in the anime making (and I first started this hobby with a cel), but there’s just something about seeing sketches that make me super giddy, seeing the pencil lines and all that. However, I’ve always liked seeing sketches in general so there’s that too

jiangdc - beautiful eyes indeed! Even partial they still look expressive. Also, that Princess Tutu, what a nice heirloom! Are those original settei btw? I’m on mobile so I can’t blow them up now but they don’t look like copies.

Thank you again, guys. I hope there will be some hints I can pick up from the rest of the batch, but for now it seems safe to assume that the yellow sheets were Itoh-sensei’s creation. When I get my hands on them I will do more close comparison with your sketches.

OOT, but seeing both of your collections just made me shake my head in awe again at how different her design/drawings could look from series to series. I mean okay I suppose that’s something all good animators are able to do, but it’s still amazing to see

Setti are original but I scanned them.

[sensei]

Is it odd that I found myself being more interested in the sketches than the cels? Cels are great and they definitely hold an important place in the anime making (and I first started this hobby with a cel), but there’s just something about seeing sketches that make me super giddy, seeing the pencil lines and all that. However, I’ve always liked seeing sketches in general so there’s that too

Not at all. There were a number of series that I initially collected only sketches from (e.g., Magic Knight Rayearth, Hyper Police) because I enjoyed seeing "the moment of creation" when a given moment was worked up from preliminary sketches and often given that "touch of life" in one of the yellow-paper sketches. I was initially clueless about what, exactly, I was seeing here, but over time I learned more about the animation process and how the different sketches fit together in terms of the key animators, episode directors, animation directors, senior animation directors, etc.

And Itou-sama's role in Asatte no Houkou was initially assigned to another animator by Animation News Network, whose encyclopedia is a well-trodden reference for me. When I first obtained sketches from this series, which I loved at first watching, I could feel that certain shuusei sketches were very, very good. That's a particular tingle in my solar plexus, the chakra between your naval and your genitals ("your gut" in ordinary American slang, "your liver," I think, in Asian cultures). But I actually did not know that they were the work of Ikuko Itou until about 5 years ago, when I came across an blogger's account of Itou-sama presenting at an American con in 2006 and telling her fans to watch for her next project, which, from the description, had to be Asatte. (ANN's listing has since been corrected to credit her as Character Designer and Main Animation Director.)

So "good taste" is what I recommend that anime art collectors acquire first. That's mostly cultivated by looking at a lot of art and paying attention to where they make you tingle. (Some collectors go for the sacral chakra, but prudish Sensei goes for the warm feeling that buzzes about two inches higher.)

Thank you again, guys. I hope there will be some hints I can pick up from the rest of the batch, but for now it seems safe to assume that the yellow sheets were Itoh-sensei’s creation. When I get my hands on them I will do more close comparison with your sketches.

I'm glad our sharing is helpful. I didn't mean to gloat over one of my rare, rare Mandarake wins, but they do give us a rarely-seen glimpse of her rough-draft work. (jiangdc, your more finished settei sketches are pearls of price and well worth gloating over!) Those eyes in the hanken draft really impress me, since Itou-sama was always reworking Karada's eyes in her episode animation directors' work, giving them that final edge of expressiveness.

I'll look forward to more reports when you take delivery.

[heavenskyking]

Sensei - Ah, that must have been such a wonderful feeling when you found out that the sketches you've had for so long created by Itoh-sensei!! I can't imagine how I'd feel if that happened to me. Gobsmacked, very likely I'm excited for you even though it's happened a while back, lol. I know what you mean by 'feeling it in your chakra'. For me it's more about feeling my heart drop to my stomach but in a good way which I hope happens more often instead of the opposite! When I saw those sketches, it was Itoh-sensei's drawing that really punched me good. As you said, the //expressiveness// in the eyes. The eyes just blew me away and I knew come hell and high water I just had to have them. I had no idea they're her work then (I was still figuring out what episode they're from), so imagine my surprise!

And please gloat over! I like seeing people sharing their treasures

Speaking of Mandarake (I know they have their own sub, but since we're on topic may as well ask here than make a new thread), you know their 'payment is due in 5 days' policy? I've shopped from them many times before but I normally always pay the same day the invoice arrived or the next day. However I always wonder if their 5 days starts the day after the invoice came, or should I count the invoice day as day 1? Say I got the invoice on Monday, the latest I must pay is Saturday, correct? Mandi can be pretty difficult so I always try not to get on their bad side.