(no subject)

[malymin]

I wish, honest to god, that I had a proper source for these pieces of official art. The first of the two been reposted online a billion times, never with a source. Tracing the image to its first posting online from via a link in the Tumblr repost I found it on, it was originally uploaded as part of the image gallery of a fansite that now only exists on Wayback. That source states it's a scan of some official material, but not of exactly what. I keep running into dead ends in terms of where, exactly, official artwork of this show was scanned from. It's really annoying!

Comments

[lb_lee]

They look like trading cards to me, with that aspect ratio and border.

[stardust_rifle]

A quick look through MFC shows that this art piece was being sold as the design on a pencil pad in 2002 (https://myfigurecollection.net/item/573243), but of course the artwork could have been preexisting and they just slapped it onto a piece of merch. The barcode on the second piece is hella interesting, though.

[malymin]

2002 is the year the anime came out, so that very well could be where this specific version of the image came from. (The art of the characters themselves shows up with different backgrounds in other official capacities, like DVD covers).

What do you think the barcode implies?

[stardust_rifle]

To me, the barcode implies that this specific version of the image was created to be sold, and not like from a magazine or an advertisement. It's just that I've never seen a piece of art specifically created for a piece of merch that has a barcode directly on it, though I don't collect pencil pads. Gonna have to check to see if any of my clear files have barcodes printed on them...