Hankens and their quality

Hankens are beautiful and I was wondering what the differences are between HOW these are made compared to regular Key production cels?

Do they look better because the animation director painted it? are the quality of inks/paints superior? Or do they just look better since they're painted on oversized sheets so more detail can fit in?

Ta, Krafty

Hello Krafty,

Most Hankens I have seen as well as those I own are much larger than normal cels so they can fit more detail. Also since Hankens are made for advertisement items such as posters, dvd covers or magazines a lot more time and effort is put into their production. Unlike the production cels which are produced with a production schedule in mind.
A quality Hanken will run $500 - $3000 depending on the piece.

Joe

Well, there is an important difference in how they are made (at least every hanken I have seen is like this). All the linework, instead of just being copied to the back of the cel where it can touch and interact with the cel paint and fade out, is actually painted on the front of the cel with a thick black substance (a bit granular in appearance). If you take a hanken and look across the front of it, you can actually see the raised lines. That makes the linework thick and bold, which helps the presentation.

Hello, Krafty
Hankens are done all by hand and not xeroxed on the front like 99% of all other production cels.
Normal Production cels are done by taking the production drawing and xeroxing the drawing on the front of the cel and hand painting on the back to fill in the colors.
Hankens are drawn free hand some with pen some with a paint brush for the lines on the front and hand painted on the back for the color and are done on a large cel so when it is sized down it shows more detail on the end product and on some so it can wrap around the whole DVD/Video box.
The drawing is done by the head animator at the production houses most of the time and only a few are ever done for each show and this fact is what makes them cost so much.
The same Inks,Paints ect are used to do the hankens but more time is spent on the art to make it look it's best for the ads or covers.
If you look at alot of covers they look a whole lot better than the art in the show.
here is a few to look at.

http://backlotanimation.rubberslug.com/gallery/master_query.asp?SeriesID=17082

I hope this info helps a little.
Roy

Thanks for your help Joe, Gabriel, Roy. I had inklings that they were produced in a particular way but didn't know for sure as I've not yet seen one in the flesh. I've had a few regular cels with highlights painted on the front surface of the acetate but this is pretty rare- I always thought they looked amazing. I can image that a whole piece of art handpainted would be spectacular. Indeed, that would explain why they are always oversized- it's hard to hand-paint such detail on acetate so there needs to be more area to work with.

Heh, I've visited your Hayate page several times Roy, I've just ordered 4 Hayate Hankens too which has led me to research a little more info ^__^