Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Here's a few good explanations. Click on either of these links below:

http://www.fukushuu.org/cels/faqsubsection.php?g=y&si=1
http://www.cartoon-factory.com/types.html#draw

You want to own and preserve a piece of animation history. You appreciate art as context. You like overhead transparancies. When you purchase a cel, you’re purchasing the original and unique article that went under the camera in the animation studio. Fire up your DVD player and find that cel in your favorite episode. It’s magic looking down at your original knowing that millions of people the world over have seen that piece. As an added bonus, purchasing sketches or other production materials like storyboards and layouts give you an inside look at the creative process of your favorite works, shot by shot. The special features on your DVD don’t come close.

Every cel has a story. Sure, other kinds of art have stories as well, but those stories are usually buried under mounds of snooze-worthy academia. What’s it going to be, a portrait of a dead Grand Duke of some European country, or a love triangle against the backdrop of a submerged alien technology that humans reverse engineer to create transforming giant robots? I thought so.

There are many ways to get started, but before you do so we would suggest reading and studying about this very exciting and addicting hobby. Look on our "Resources" page for "Anime cel and Production art links" for all of the information you might need before you get started. After this you can ask one of the site moderators or any gallery owner for more information.

Yes to both questions! RS moderators are here to help, so please ask! Spinizuey is our "Welcome Aboard" moderator. Please contact her for a personal touch, on matters that you new collectors might have. If you'd like to read up on this wonderful hobby, then go to the RS forum and search for the "Sticky" thread "Information for New Cel Collectors". You could also go to our RS "Resources" link and find a ton of information to help make your collecting experience more understandable. There you will find a valuable source of technical information to help you out with the details your new hobby.

If you’re asking this question, congratulations, you are officially an anime cel collector. It’s time to gloat by creating a gallery on Rubberslug. It’s also time to blend up your next round of high protein shakes.

In the bottom left hand box of your My Account page, there's a "General Gallery Info" link. Go there, and you should be able to change both the link to your gallery and the full name of your gallery.

Your site can be linked to via the link displayed on your My Account page. The link is in this format: "http://yourgallery.rubberslug.com/" where "yourgallery" is the short gallery name you specified when creating your gallery. You can always change either the full name or short name of your gallery via the Edit General Info section on your My Account page.

This is most likely because you gallery is listed as closed. Ensure that your gallery is "open" in the gallery listing. Rubberslug allows you to close your gallery to unroll a large update all at once. You can open your gallery by clicking on Open Gallery on the bottom right of your My Account page.

This site is tested primarily using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6. However, Internet Explorer is not the same across all platforms (Mac, Windows, and others). Because of this, we also test using Mozilla Firefox, which behaves identically on all platforms. If you have trouble getting something to work on a non-Windows machine, try using Firefox. You can download Firefox at the Mozilla Firefox home page. You can download Microsoft Internet Explorer at the Microsoft Internet Explorer home page.

Although we do some light testing using Netscape Navigator 7, we do not recommend using Netscape Navigator. If you must use a browser other than Internet Explorer, please use Mozilla Firefox

It's your lucky day! There are several wonderful people here that will help you create a great gallery with your input or theme that you may want to have. Look for the "creative services requested" link under "sticky notes" on the forum. There you can take a pick from a number of volunteer web page designers that are here to help you.

If you've created a gallery with no original anime art, then you risk having your gallery banned immediately. Artbook scans, banners, logo's, etc. do not count. You preferable should have at least one production cel, genga, or douga uploaded on your gallery before you open. The whole idea of opening an anime gallery is to have anime art to display. Soon it will be a default and mandatory setting to have artwork uploaded, before you can open a gallery site.

Stick to JPG. GIF is a supported, but not a recommended choice. Anything else like Photoshop files, Word documents, HTML files, and other nonsense have no place in the image upload box.

You can upload images of an size and have Rubberslug resize your images automatically by activating the Automatically Scale Images setting to "Yes" and selecting the desired size in Scaled Image Size under the Edit Gallery Settings option on your My Account page. We made a decision not to prohibit uploading of larger images so that people who like extra large scans can make them.

There are currently no size restrictions on individual images, although this may change in the near future. A good suggestion for designing for all visitors would ensure that even your largest zoomed in images are less than 100k.

Yes, we encourage all types of animation production artwork. Writing the phrase "original animation production artwork" becomes tiresome after awhile, so we use the term "anime cels" in place of that. We like all kinds of animation, regardless of country of origin. The site admin, for one, is a huge Transformers and Animaniacs fan.

Sure, if you mark them explicitly as fancels. We'd prefer that you have at least some original animation production art along with your fancels.

The short and sweet answer is no. Why not? The long answer is here: The Reason for No Sales. We appreciate your patience as we work towards a compromise that can benefit both us as site maintainers and you as a collector.

No. Objects that are not original studio-produced originals are expressly forbidden on the site. This is the one really big rule here. Rubberslug doesn't make enough money to handle a lawsuit from a copyright holder who "just doesn't get it". You can provide all the disclaimers you want, but at the end of the day, it's ALL sites that will get shuttered, not just yours.

When adding new artwork, there's a small checkbox that's marked as "password protect". Checking this option means that the item will only be visible to someone who enters the correct password. Alternatively, this password can be set from the Manage Artwork section on your member page. To set the gallery password, click on Change Gallery Password on your member page.

This essentially makes an item invisible to all visitors to the site. The only way to view an item marked as hidden is while logged in as the gallery owner through the Manage Artwork section. You can unhide a cel from the same menu in the Manage Artwork section.

A possible reason for this is because only new additions are shown in the update thing now due to popular demand. Updates to cels no longer trigger a gallery update to be listed.

Make sure that you are uploading files that have a " jpg or jpeg " file extension. If you are trying to upload "bitmap", or something else, it might be the reason for your images not coming out.(If Win pc) Use your mouse and right-click on the image file, choose "properties" and you can see what the images file extension (jpeg, tiff, bitmap, etc.)

On Windows:

If you want to change a "bitmap" to jpeg/jpg file : right-click your mouse button,>clck-- "open with",> then click, "choose program",> click on -"Microsoft Paint", and with this program after it opens up, if it is a bitmap image you can, "Save As" and look for jpeg in the chooser window box, select jpg/jpeg, and now your bitmap will be saved into jpeg format. A format that you can upload.

Well, technically if you've bought, paid for, or have a cel on hold with someone then the cels are pretty much in your possession. But, if it is just an imaginary dream situation, that is what the "Wishlist" page is for. There are many collectors with coming soon sections, and it doesn't hurt anyone, unless the cels/images are of someone else's artwork. It's basically okay to post cels of whatever disposition (coming soon, in transit, or on hold) as long as there is no conflict with the original seller. If you have people asking to see what you have on the way, you can send them an email (with the cel scan). Regarding watermarked cels, It might help your cause if you can get a scan of the cel without the watermark from the previous, or soon to be previous, owner.

Here's how it works: technically, you're not allowed to have copyrighted art on your site. If you're using one or two illustrations in a banner graphic on a non-commercial site, it's unlikely you'll get in trouble. If you post a scanned collection of every artbook you own, it's far more likely you'll get in trouble. (And not only from us.)

Sure. Click on Edit Color Scheme on your member page and set Fringe Color to the same color as the background color. This will essentially make the border black on black -- invisible. Do the same thing to the inner background color to make the entire page one color.

This is most likely due to some faulty HTML code that you inserted into one of the text fields. Our system allows HTML tags for added flexibility but sometimes this leads to unexpected layout problems. Ensure that all your tags are closed and spelled correctly. Another reason why this can happen is if the dimensions of an image you uploaded are too large. Use the Scale Item Images feature in Edit Gallery Info to automatically restrict your images to a certain dimension.

You must manually add margins to site graphics if you wish to space them out. For instance, if you uploaded a banner to use on your home page and you want it spaced away from the sides, add 20 pixels of space on each side of the banner. The reason for this is so that if someone wanted to upload a banner that "bleeds" to the edge of their page, they could do so without having to find a way to remove the margins.

This feature can be located under the Edit Site Text option on the My Account page. You will have to set the drop-down box to "Gallery Listing". Edit your Gallery Listing text and press "Upload New Text" to save your changes.

This feature can be located under the Edit Site Graphics option on the My Account page. You will have to set the drop-down box to "Gallery Listing". Click on "Browse..." to select an image from your hard drive and press "Upload New Images" to save your changes.

Go to the section called "edit site graphics" and there will be a dropdown menu on the upper left. Click it and you will see the different pages that you can upload graphics to (about, home, wishlist.. etc). Then click on "global". Here is were you will see where you can upload the background graphic. Hope that helps.

You can arrange series, although it's rather crude. You can edit a series and select the option that says "display near top". It's located in each individual series under "Manage Cels".

Yes, but this is untested and is subject to a number of weird database bugs. Use at your own risk. One of our goals is to make this site capable of both Japanese and Western- European character entry. It's not quite there yet.

Click on the Update News Section link on the Member page. (It's in the bottom right corner.) From there, you can create a news item that will be timestamped with today's date or you can edit an old news item. By default, the latest three news items are featured on your home page.

The shared background gallery is provided by fellow members to give others things they can download and print to display with their cels. Suggested printing resolution for these backgrounds is 200dpi. You can either print backgrounds on matte photo paper using your printer or using a professional office center like Kinko's.

It is basically a points system showing site interaction and participation. The more you participate and interact with the site and the members here, the more positive karma you'll receive!

So, far we haven't figured out a way to reward someone with high karma, maybe you can think of a good idea =)

It would be preferable, but highly unpractical, if you would not use other people's cels in your wishlist section. However, it's really hard to say, "I want something like..." without resorting to the sometimes difficult screen capture method -- especially if you don't have a capture card.

The best thing to do is either ask permission or at least credit the owner of the cel (with a link) when using it. It's more of an editorial use in a wishlist, since by definition if it's in a wishlist the implied claim is that you don't have it as you said above.

The moderators here are exist to help people with the site as much as they can (especially new members), which frees up the admin for more important tasks. Assume that the moderators can access all parts of your site. We need to know sometimes exactly what's on our own servers. We poke around for necessity, not for fun.

For feature images, it must be a normal scan of the cel. Feel free to scan your cel with a background, even a non-matching one, if you find something you like. When you send in a feature image, make sure you send in something reasonably large so that the final image turns out well when reduced.

We opened on August 16, 2001. As of this writing, three years.

It has a lot to do with a UFO Catcher I found on a trip to Tokyo that allowed players a chance to try catching lobsters in a tank. When you see a reference to the "lobster machine", people are talking about this object.

Weasels never reached the popularity that lobsters did. Weasels never win as options in our weekly poll questions. Lobsters almost always win.

I have an e-mail box full of spam and a long history of fighting computer programmers with questionable ethics. We don't like crap keeping me from what we're trying to do online either. If we ever do have any kinds of promotions or advertisements, rest assured they will never show up in your personal galleries.

Yes, the site is housed on on a new state-of-the-art server that makes a different backup copy of the site database every few days as well as having a redundant RAID-5 array. The server room is guarded by a neat little thumbpad that scans your fingerprints, just like in the movies. There's probably invisible lasers somewhere in that room. It's guarded by big guys with shotguns, just like in Sneakers. As long as Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, and River Phoenix steer clear, we're probably safe.

Very.

On Christmas Day, 2003, the server that originally housed this site crashed and left me cold and hungry on the floor of a data center trying to find a screwdriver in downtown on a holiday. It was a very, very ugly thing. The good news now is that we're running on brand-new equipment.

Absolutely. For those of you who either don't collect cels or don't have something to upload every day, we're adding a bunch of new features that will allow you to participate and interact with other collectors without needing actual artwork to upload.

We might seem harsh because it's the only way to allow those that do follow our site policies to thrive. We want to create an active, informed, and civil community of collectors and sometimes the only way to do that is to rule with an iron fist. We encourage conversation, but we don't tolerate "cel collector drama" that plagues otherwise fantastic forums and web sites.

You should contact, by email, the administrator of Rubberslug immediately. Click here for the feedback form.

Only one way, really. We can lock it for you if you *really* don't want anyone linking to it or whatever. Contact us via the feedback form to have this done.

On each gallery owners homepage there is a "feedback" page link. Click on it, and it will take you directly to a page where you can leave a message for that gallery owner.

Tell your cel-collecting friends and neighbors to check it out. The more people we have banging on this, the better. If you found a way to break the site or would like to suggest a new feature, comments and criticism are always welcome at the e-mail below. If you're feeling really generous, you can always send us some loot.

It means that by donating to RS any amount of money from $10, you will be noted as a site sponsor. Of course, this is optional. You do not have to become a sponsor in order to participate with the site, become a member, or set up a gallery here. However, your contributions will help to keep RS free of unwanted pop-up ads or any unwanted advertising that is very distracting and bothersome. You will never get unwanted cookies or spam while you're here! Also by donating you are contributing to a site that you'll have unlimited opportunities and chances to have input, interaction, and insight into future changes and developments within this huge cel collector community that has been created here. You'll also get a front-row seat to participate in art sales, and shopping, and other promotions once they go online, along with other perks/give-a-ways that will be offered only to sponsors along the way. Currently, we have three (3) levels of sponsorship: Silver ($10), Gold ($20), and Platinum ($50). Each sponsor has the option to have a "badge of honor" publicly denoting which level of sponsorship the member has contributed towards.

However, you may wish to stay an anonymous donor. You can at any time change your sponsor status from public to private.

Still no comment.

By all means, e-mail us using the feedback page at http://www.rubberslug.com/info/contact.asp

Sometimes the thumbnail maker will stop working. Log out and log back in. It will fix it.

Uploading cels in two different windows can cause information to be appended to the wrong cel.

Reordering items can sometimes corrupt the priorities of your cels. If you find yourself unable to move your cels around, please contact us.

If you create a cel that crashes the browser during the first screen where you type the name of the item, this can sometimes lead to invisible items and series being created that can't be deleted. Contact us if this happens to you and we'll fix it.

Your valkyrie needs food. Badly.