This blog has made it to it's first year anniversary. I wanted to talk a bit about what I plan to do in the future.
Naturally I have been mostly focusing on "Patlabor Ezy" news, related talk events, interviews and other promotional events and merchandise since January. However I still want to post a lot of older material as well as write up a few short articles on some aspects of the franchise.
There is a lot of artwork for the series which I have have in my collection, some of which has been available for decades, but in low resolution, and some of which hasn't been published on the internet previously. As most of the illustration collections/artbooks these images come from are rare or have become insanely expensive in the last couple of decades in the second hand market, and are therefore are out of reach for most fans, I want to post as much of that material as possible.
In addition there is a lot of promotional/press material, flyers, P-Club (Bandai's Patlabor fanclub) booklets and other oddities that I have collected over the last two decades that I'll eventually scan and post.
There are a couple of key areas I want to focus on in terms of artwork. The first is the Super Deformed (aka Chibi) artwork of Koji Yokoi, mostly used for Bandai's Gashapon Warriors eraser series, which also ended up being used in the eyecatches in "Patlabor on Television" and on some model kit packaging. Practically none of his Patlabor work has been scanned or has made it onto the open internet.
My other big focus is illustrations used in anime magazines from the late 1980s and early 1990s that were never republished in illustration collections/artbooks. A lot of these are from magazines like Animedia, B-Club and Out. When I went through all the magazines in my collection to see what Patlabor material was in them, I noticed that a couple of Akemi Takada pieces that were never republished in her Patlabor illustration collections; "Pulsation", "Air" and "Now or Never". So, yet another couple of scans to add to my ever growing pile.
A third focus is the poster inserts with from various anime magazines from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Again, the vast majority of this artwork never made it into illustration collections/artbooks. The problem with these posters is they are very difficult to scan, stich together, digitally repair and colour correct. So far I have only managed to compete one. I have a second one already scanned and stitched together, but I haven't found the time to repair it digitally .
One of the major issues with about half of this material is the quality of the sources. For example, Animedia magazine illustrations are difficult to scan and correct as the paper quality and printing of the magazine in the late 1980s and 1990s was poor, and the images have yellowed over time (which becomes far more noticeable when scanned). It can be quite difficult to make these images look decent. In addition I'm hoping to acquire more magazines for material I don't have in my collection, however old copies of some magazines such as B-Club, and in particular Out, can be quite difficult to find.
The plan at the moment is to continue to post around three to four times a week, usually on the Friday, and try to scan the more difficult rarer material that requires a lot of adjusting and repair work about once a month, depending on if I have time.
