ID for some thingies

I just posted some thingies (as my daughter would call them) in my Divergence Eve listing that I'd sure like some help on. I have a request in my gallery too, but people probably won't notice it.

Last January, I bought what I thought was a large group of original layout gengas for episode 12 of Divergence Eve. When they arrived, it was apparent that they were photocopies. Now I expect copies if I buy a settei, but I was somewhat annoyed to get them in this case - so annoyed that I put them aside until today.

When I took a closer look, there are a lot of annotations on them in red or blue ink, or in pencil. Also, about half of them have registration holes.

So my question is this: can anyone tell me what these things are, and what function do they serve in the production process?

These are not dissimilar to some copies that have come to me with backgrounds.
Start at
http://tag.rubberslug.com/gallery/inv_info.asp?ItemID=163681
in my Samurai Champloo gallery and "next" through the next three, and you'll see two xeroxes and the backgrounds that go with them. They have significant coloring in for some reason, and you can see the registration holes on the second xerox. I've had other xeroxes come with backgrounds, and those xeroxes didn't have the markings or holes.
I don't know if these were essentially notes to the background department, the compositing department, or something else. But since your cels for Divergence Eve ar rilezu, I'm assuming it was a completely digital ink and paint show in terms of cels, like Champloo, which might make them the same kind of material, whatever that may be.

Ted is right,

As with the set of backgrounds I got from Ai Yori Aoshi which is also a CG show I have the "copied" sketches which are blown up from the story boards and are somewhat the rough 1st draft for the background painter to use for scale. since they were used as part of the production that is why you find the hand written notes just like on the genga's.

It's really nice to know that these were actually used for something!

Thanks very much to both of you for your assistance.

A little late to this discussion, perhaps, but I saw your Divergence Eve artwork when you uploaded it, Doug.
Very nice too!
It's very common for contemporary anime to have copied drawings, it's used a lot in the studios. I've been seeing more copied artwork on sale than original drawings but these aren't the seller's own photocopies [unless they explicitly say so].

Usually this is the only way we'll be able to obtain art from the show, so as long as you don't overspend on them, they're worth going for!