@
drood Xeroxing the pencil art for further work was a standard process back in the day, that's how Akira was made, that's how they made first GITS movie. Industry standard, that's how it was done back in the day. You know that when you're into collecting cels or get deeper into animation creation process. There are small pieces of knowledge in the interviews, blog entries of people who actually worked in the studios and in the art books / albums. For instance Making of Akira document at youtube is quite informative if you pay attention to what they're saying and what you see in the footage (there's a number of cuts showing the actual process of painting the backgrounds and working on animation, which is super cool- I recommend watching it).
@der richter
Thanks for taking your time to anwser. My only reference when judging the color would be, well, the source - stuff actually created for the animation and maybe the first released DVD. I am no color processing historian but I wouldn't assume the backgrounds were painted with color processing in post production in mind. I would assume they were created with intention of later being transferred as faithfully as possible to the master film - stuff like digital post production / color correction was still crawling back then. I own "Proto Anime Cut" album with very nice scans of GITS backgrounds created by Hiromasa Ogura, the album was accompanying an exhibition showing original artwork from Ghost in the shell - google it, and more importantly - google Hiromasa Ogura to see the actual artwork. Obviously, these are images / scans and - in case of the album - scan prints so the color gets shifted a bit, however not much - the guache colors with which GITS backgrounds were created were muddy, desaturated to begin with so there's not much a good print wouldn't handle. Obviously, this shouldn't be reference material - the reference should be the artworks themselves, not on print, but clearly even the hundreds of the images taken from the exhibition show there's no red tint, if anything, the colors are blueish, grayish, greenish.. That's the common color palette. And I think DVD release reflects that (the one from your link).
I think the red tint I'm mentioning shows well at the image number 42 from your link. TS WOWOW version obviously suffers from it the most, but V3 version is also bit shifted toward reds vs the DVD. DVD version, although inferior in quality of course in terms of sharpness, is greenish tinted, all the other versions in comparison have a red tint - I just don't see it other way. You're saying you've toned down the reds when you created your versions - but vs what, the DVD version? If so I don't think that's the case or maybe I'm just not understanding the process. Process aside, you have to agree that the V1, V2 and V3 releases have a red tint while the DVD is more shifted towards greens?
I don't think I'm seeing things. I've been graphic designer for last 12 years and one of major european Fine Arts Academy graduate, my eyes are quite sensitive
PS
This is of course a subject to a separate discussion - what where the authors intentions and what were the compromises they had to make with the technology they had at hand back when they made the anime film, considering the money at stake I'd say everything they did at every step was a conscious decision. While DVD version sucks in terms of fidelity, it's blurred and low-res, I think the colors actually represent the tonality of cels / painted backgrounds well. I should mention I've seen the og backgrounds and original cels in person. And they are nowhere "as red" as the V1/V2/V3. That's why the whole red tint thing struck me.
