Custom Art Box Project - Ranma ½ It's a Rumic World

[AManOfCharacter]

So here it is, my thread for discussing my Custom Art Box Project for the Ranma ½, It's a Rumic World OVA:



My goal is to make an art box that is virtually identical in appearance to the Viz Media Special Edition boxes:



The purpose of this thread is to share my ideas and progress, but also to invite community suggestions on various design aspects of the box and artwork choices. Every so often you may see the content of this first post change as I refine the text or images. Take a look below at what I've come up with so far, and what specific areas I see as great discussion points:

1 - Main Box Colors

The Vix SE Art Boxes for Sets 1-7 have a nice playful color pattern going on, where the colors line up with the next box when you place them in reverse order, like Japanese sets. Perhaps the biggest question I see with this project is, should a custom box for Rumic World follow this pattern, even attempting to complement it in one way or another?

As we know, the color choice of OVA and Movie collection box messed up the color order. Adding a new box could "correct" this, by inserting Rumic World in between Set 7 and the OVA set. This forces the color choice to Red in front and Black in back. Also, the boxes would not be in "chronological" or even "release" order. This could be concerning.



Alternatively, the Rumic World box could continue the color off of the OVA with no concern for the other sets. It could even be entirely standalone. What do you all think?

2 - Gold Gilded Details

A major factor for whether this project succeeds or fails is whether or not I can pull off the gold gilded detailing that is literally all over these boxes. Yes, I do intend to attempt this design aspect. Basically, I plan to use the toner + gilding sheets + laminator method to add all of the details to the art sheet before wrapping it around the box.

The first step was to scan one of the SE sets and pull the detailing out in GIMP. It was pretty simply, however, I'll need to clean up much of line work to ensure a clean toner print during production:



Note, this image is reduced in size by 50%. It looks very clean overall, and I'm very confident I can make it perfect. By the time the printer puts it out, it should be flawless.

3 - Front Center Art

A very important art choice is the front and center circle art. Two things I would love to accomplish at the same are 1) An art style based on the Manga art, similar to the Viz SEs, and 2) Art that is connected to the work, either the Rumic World OVA or the chapter from the Manga that the OVA is based on. Below, you'll see what I've found so far.



My favorite is the one with all the girls. It meets No. 1, but not No. 2. Either way, it's the best quality and will make the nicest print of all the options so far. Here it is mocked up in GIMP.



Anyone else have any suggestions on high quality images I could use for the front center circle?

4 - Spine Character Art

The character that appears on the spine is a tough choice. I'm not really sure where I'll find an image that works well and matches the style of the characters on the Viz sets. I could really use your help finding an image source to pull from for this piece.

5 - Rear Center Art

Another important choice is the rear art. On this point, I also have no ideas yet. I'd be open to suggestions and would great appreciate the highest quality art anyone can find or recommend.

6 - Width of Box

Given that the Rumic World BD doesn't have any bonus material that comes with it, a concern is how to make it fit snuggly in the Art Box while also keeping the Box the same width as the rest in the Viz sets. I'm mainly interested in creating the Box itself, so creating my own "bonus" material just to take up the few millimeters left in the box feels a bit weird. I'm very open to suggestions. I wonder, should it just be a cardboard buffer?



Note: I've numbered each item so that as replies continue to build, we can try to reference the number for convenience when discussing a specific point. I hope that's helpful.

Note: I'll say this now to make sure that everyone joining this discussion has the opportunity to get my answer to probably the biggest question the community might ask. Will I be making these boxes and selling them to those who would like to buy one? NO. I will not be selling this Art Box, as it will definitely be making use of copyrighted material. The project is primarily for my personal use and I have NO intentions of violating copyright law by attempting to sell copyrighted material.

That being said... If I actually do complete this project (and it doesn't suck), and if I end up having a nice little template for producing more, will I be making the box available in some way to any who may want one? All that I'll say for now is, again, I will not be selling copyrighted material to anyone. I hope the meaning behind that is clear... [emoji6]..... [emoji6][emoji6]

Also, on the above item, please don't PM me right away for more detail or further questions. I'm at the very earliest point in this project, so it'll be some time before those questions will be relevant. Thanks!

[AManOfCharacter]

Reserved

[AManOfCharacter]

Reserved for later information

[Nostalgic Twilight]

RE: Box Colors/Order

Personally, I feel that the box should be displayed at the end since it is the final piece of Ranma animation to be released. I'm not sure what color would look best, though. Orange hasn't been used, but I'm afraid placing it right next to the black box would look too Halloween-ish.

EDIT: Now that I can see your images, I take back what I said regarding the orange looking Halloween-ish next to the black. I actually think it looks very nice.

RE: Cover Art

I'm not able to see your images, but I did find a couple the other night that I thought looked nice. These do not satisfy your preference regarding a connection to the Rumic World event or the manga chapter, though.





EDIT: I just realized the one on the bottom was actually already used as the BD cover for Set 6, though.

Also, concerning the spine image, I may be able to find you a few more full body shots, but the problem is I wouldn't know which character to choose, though I do feel that a third image of male Ranma would feel like overkill.

[AManOfCharacter]

Excellent images! Would you know if those are the highest quality versions of those shots? I'll try a google image search later. Oh, and I fixed my missing image.

[Nostalgic Twilight]

My phone actually scaled those images down when I cut them into a circle. Truth be told, I actually started looking for some manga art as soon as you said that you were going to begin this thread, lol. Here are the uncropped images I used:

[Show spoiler]

[AManOfCharacter]

Originally Posted by Nostalgic Twilight

Truth be told, I actually started looking for some manga art as soon as you said that you were going to begin this thread, lol.

Ha, I figured when you said you were looking around the other night. Yeah the top pic is incredible. Just the kinda thing I was looking for but didn't find. I'm definitely saving it. I think it would make a great front cover, and maybe I'll put the girls on the back.

[KillaCam]

Definitely should use the one with the panda on it. Good luck on the project.

[neoz]

I wish I could use GIMP lol. Then again I wish I could draw. I mean I can draw but only by seeing it. I can't ever do freehand from my mind stuff. I have some patches I want to do but need to find someone to commission them.

Also if you are able to get this done, I can't wait to see the finished product. Not sure how to the to gold foil effect. I'm glad it isn't holofoil on the slipbox cause that would be even worse. Well actually probably the sun burst effect might be worse then that haha.

[Imaginarion]

Definitely go with orange for the front of the box, and black for the back. I know it won't flow with the rest of the sets, but that flow is already messed up with the way they did the OVA set so, it doesn't matter really at this point. Keep in mind that each set has had its own color for the front, so when you see them side-by-side next to each other with the front covers showing, it would look weird if this set had the same front color as another one.

[AManOfCharacter]

Excellent point about the front covers being different. I didn’t even think of that, lol

[zrdb]

What a project to pull off-as to the width of the case to put in the box you might try a multidisc case and put the 1 disc in it or you use a trick NIS used in a couple of their single disc releases, use a piece of dense styrofoam to fill in the gap.

[AManOfCharacter]

Evening! For those who are following my project, I was hoping to have a bit more substance to post when I got around to updating the status of the project, but Nostalgic Twilight asked me about it, and I figured I'd post a few things I've completed.

Line Art

So the line art from my initial scan was quite rough. After eliminating the color and cranking the contrast to create a straight black/white image, there were many spots and garbled edges that needed to be touched up manually. The rear cover line art was especially rough, and I had to really dig in and attack it head on. It was incredibly meticulous, but I've got it cleaned up enough now that I'm confident the print, when scaled down, will be very clean. Overall, the samples below only scratch the surface of the kind of touch ups that were necessary:



Rear Circle Art

This issue took a turn when it suddenly dawned on me that the Viz LE sets don't have the same type of character on the back as they do on the front. They all have Panda Genma in a specific pose, in a very specific art style, a style that’s also different from the Manga art style. Somehow I didn't notice this at first. This was a bit disappointing, in that I was suddenly sure that I needed to follow this pattern, rather than using two of narrowed down character choices for front and back. With the (obsessive) determination to put a similar Genma on the rear cover, I'd now be forced to choose 1 favorite for the front (more on that). I also had to grab the swirly color pattern that is behind Genma, since he doesn't sit over a white background. This pattern was hard to get, since on each set, Genma covers various portions of the pattern, due to his poses. I had to reconstitute much of pattern through implication, getting as close to the center as possible, then the Genma I use will cover up the negative white space in the very center. I chose a piece of Genma art that copies the Manga, as I couldn't find one in the cartoony Chinese style on the Viz sets. It satisfied my desire of art consistency, while the pose seemed extremely fitting, like a beloved Character’s last look back at the audience, with this being the "final" Ranma Animated work. The mockup looks a bit weird below, since the swirly part will not be black, it will be colored, based on the overall box color:



Front Circle Art

As I said, this was tough... Having to choose only one feels dumb, so I'm ultimately preparing my 3 favorites for final versions. Swapping them out will be extremely easy, and if/when I produce various copies of this project, there will be... "choices", I guess you could say. My favorite is still the one with all the girls. They appear below in relative image size, so the Girls pic is actually the highest resolution of the 3, but they're all fully viable by the time they scale down:



Minor notes:

My main concern is still the golden foil. The line work gets so small and pointed, that I still wonder if the black toner gilding method won't fail to produce the detail while also staying stuck to the paper. Once I can buy a high res toner printer, I can run tests to find out...

For the box, I've decided to 3D print it. My brother recently bought a 3D printer and agreed to help out. I've already got the box measurements, and my brother will likely model the box for me. I've built totally viable chipboard boxes before using razors, super glue, and patience, but 3 printing will definitely be the way to go for it's build quality and ease of production.

The main thing I'm working on now is the pixel to real life scale. I have my "pixel ruler" built out, using the largest of the images, the line work scans, so now I just need to measure out the spacing for the main composite page and then start putting the composite together. Interestingly, if I can find a Legal size paper that also feels nice, I can print the whole thing on one page, rather than 2. I'm really anxious about finding this paper, but I haven't searched much yet.

Overall ETA, still unclear. Life is life, but I'm super interested in seeing this project through to the end, so bear with me [emoji4]

[IdeaOfEvil]

Man, if you figure out how to do this successfully for Ranma I will definitely email you and pay you to make me some boxes for other titles I want =)

[AManOfCharacter]

I would eventually like to have a standardized set of procedures to produce boxes for titles that don’t have one, but I’ll need a few more tools.

Ultimately I’d have to be careful not to sell them either, since they’d being using copy righted art. Maybe I’d sell the box only, and art sheet could be printed/pasted by the buyer (that’s just one idea, of many)

[IdeaOfEvil]

That's a moral thing, just like when Paul Champagne made his boxes.

I always figured if I owned the images being used in some fashion then I'm not necessarily bootlegging an image box, especially if one isn't being offered.

[AManOfCharacter]

Didn’t he get cease and desist letters, or threats of legal action? I thought I remember hearing that. I’m not sure how much weight those would have carried.

[IdeaOfEvil]

I don't remember him getting any flak from any official companies, and I think the only people that got on his case were internet trolls who thought they knew the law, lol

If anything, it was only his anime cases that got negative attention. And (was it ADV?) the license holders for Evangelion at the time commissioned him to make the metal Eva box as a limited edition, so it wasn't like he was sen as some evil entity ripping the industry off =)

[Talyn]

Originally Posted by IdeaOfEvil

I don't remember him getting any flak from any official companies, and I think the only people that got on his case were internet trolls who thought they knew the law, lol

If anything, it was only his anime cases that got negative attention. And (was it ADV?) the license holders for Evangelion at the time commissioned him to make the metal Eva box as a limited edition, so it wasn't like he was sen as some evil entity ripping the industry off =)

Adv Films commissioned Evangelion. His cowboy bebop and escaflowne boxes are considered amazing.

[AManOfCharacter]

So I’m stuck at work today, while my brother took the day off (we work together). Last night I sent him the first draft model of the Bluray box. He was going to print the whole thing but it would have taken 11 hours! He trimmed it down to only the first 20 mm as a test. He came today to drop it off. This will allow me to check most of the important measurements before a full production.









For the spine of box, I made 45 degree chamfered angles instead of rounding, but I think rounding will look better. I put a smaller angle on the opening side edges, but it was too small, so it looks non-existent in the print.

It feels amazing to hold this in my hand. While the chipboard slip boxes I’ve made in past we’re pretty impressive, the plastic print is so much more accurate and rigid, with a feeling of quality, durability, and precision that chipboard could never have. I’m really excited about the possibilities of other future projects.