Note: This article is a machine translation from the original Japanese post. If you notice any translation issues, please let us know.
LOPPO Art Supply Store announces this year's business plan!
LOPPO Art Supply Store Business Plan 2024
Late April: Manufacturing Equipment Upgrade (Already Implemented)
We've upgraded the 3D printer used to manufacture animation peg bars to a new model. It can now print at 2-3 times the speed of the old one, dramatically boosting production efficiency.
The limit on simultaneous orders has been relaxed, and we can now produce items in up to 4 colors with multicolor printing. Multicolor peg bars are currently being tested, and we might just quietly start selling them one day.
Late May: Blog Series "Make Cel Paintings with Nothing but Dollar Store Supplies!" Begins
Exactly what it sounds like — we'll be publishing a tips series right here on this blog about how to make cel paintings using only products sold at major dollar stores. Read this, and believe it or not, you can make cel paintings without buying any of LOPPO Art Supply Store's pricey art supplies!
That might sound counterproductive, but LOPPO's goal is to spread knowledge about cel painting, not to push sales. Whether our product sales will drop, or whether the increased visibility will actually boost sales — well, only the gods know.
2024-07-14 update: Sorry, the writing is steadily falling behind schedule. Please hang tight until it's published!
Around Late May: Roll Cel Stock Sales Begin
We've been getting inquiries from people asking if we carry roll cels instead of sheets. We do accept orders, but right now everything is custom-made, and honestly, both the lead time and pricing leave a lot to be desired.
There's still a small but real industrial demand for roll cels, mainly from background art studios. Since inquiries have been picking up, we've decided to take the plunge and carry inventory to bring down prices and lead times. Orders will be available through the LOPPO Art Supply Store direct sales site, and we're aiming for a delivery time of about one week.
Early June: Specification Change for Animation Cels (ARTCEL® Neo)
We're changing the surface treatment of our animation cels to make cel paint apply more smoothly and consistently. The overall feel won't change dramatically, but you should see fewer hand-tracing and painting mishaps.
Around Summer: Announcing "Something" Made with LOPPO's Original Art Supplies
(Stay tuned!)
2024-07-14 update: A brand-new cel anime aired on TV in the Reiwa era!
After Summer: Sales of Cel Painting Starter Kits and Machine-Traced Cels Begin
The cel painting starter kit has been stuck in "we'll do it eventually" limbo for a while, but we're determined to finalize it and start selling this year. This will include machine-traced cels, with plans to sell individual cels as well as downloadable key animation and in-between animation.
Date TBD: Production of New Animation Art Supplies Begins
LOPPO always revives at least one animation art supply product every year, and of course this year is no exception.
The Art Supply Announcement Dragon
announces new art supply production!
Animation Cels <Sales started August 2021>
Cel Paint <Sales started August 2022>
Animation Peg Bar <Sales started June 2023>
A stand for shooting cels over backgrounds <New!>
Anime shooting, huh? That's gotta be a camera stand, right? Love me some shooting!
We quietly tweeted about it on the old Twitter, but a project to build a brand-new animation camera stand has kicked off.
We're not going for a massive multiplane camera — the goal is a compact, desktop-friendly camera stand that you can operate solo with a smartphone mounted on it. That said, even though we're keeping it simple, we want to pull off serious lighting techniques like filters and backlighting effects that were the hallmark of traditional cel photography.
Also, just like the animation peg bar, we plan to release the design blueprints for free as open-source hardware, so everyone can build their own or customize it.
Wrapping Up
We've only written about things that we're pretty sure we'll actually do. There are some other art supply projects in the works behind the scenes that aren't mentioned here. On top of that, the Cel Animation Coloring Digital Archive and game development projects are running in parallel, so yeah — we're crazy busy.
LOPPO Art Supply Store will keep doing its thing in a laid-back and fun way this year too. Thanks as always for your continued support!
