On September 8th, a Digital Archive Lecture Experience opened at the Keihanna Open Innovation Center (KICK) in Seika, Kyoto. The event was hosted as a collaboration with Onebilling Inc., Kyoto Computer Gakuin (KCG), The Kyoto College of Graduate Studies for Informatics (KCGI), and the Cyber Kyoto Laboratory (CKL) based n KICK. The course was designed for learning about the scanning techniques required to convert keyframes from an anime into data, and to introduce the KICK as a base for archiving animation, manga, and games. The lecture was given by Mr. Kenji Fujita, president of KICK who is working to turn KICK into an archiving center for anime, manga, and games, while utilizing a specialized anime archive e-book called E-SAKUGA on AppleBooks. Students from KCG and KCGI with a particular interest in anime and games took part in the lecture experience.
In the lecture, the students learned about the basic procedures of animation production and the importance of scanning original drawings in the archiving process before actually scanning keyframes for practice. When keyframes are scanned, crinkles and shadows from the paper are also visible in the data and color tones are shifted. Therefore, it becomes necessary to correct the edit the scans using Adobe Photoshop, a photo editing software. With guidance, the students did their best to remove the crinkles and shadows, and adjusted the overall position of the keyframe. After the hands-on experience, the students listened attentively as Mr. Fujita told stories about past animation masterpieces and behind-the-scenes stories within the industry.
