Taylor G

Thanks for the tip. I looked at relative sizes of BU's sleeves and boards. It looks like they leave 5/8" clearance (total) on the side and 5/16" clearance at the top, e.g.

People interested in this topic may be interested in these comparisons of backing boards: Are "acid-free" backing boards truly acid-free? Time to pH test & find out! Are "acid-free" boards truly acid-free? Part 2

Thanks, that's very helpful.

Thanks. E Gerber tells me I need to size the boards myself, so appreciate the sizing advice.

I did a search and found a grand total of four posts on the board that mentioned backer board, so apologies if this has already been discussed using a different terminology. What do people recommend for backer boards for original art? I am considering purchasing several such boards, though they will have to be custom cut since they are much larger than your typical comic or magazine BB, so I expect $$$. I have the impression that some backer boards are more acid free than others. Any advice on what I should be looking for, or even a seller that you recommend (I'm planning to buy from one of the usual suspects)? I've sometimes received art that was backed by foam board. I guess this doesn't have the acid issues of cardboard, but it doesn't seem as strong. Any opinions on foam board vs cardboard backing board? Last question: If I'm putting these into 4mil mylar sleeves, how much clearance will I need on the sides? It looks like typically these are sold with 1/4" clearance for comics, but for large sleeves (which is what we're talking about) I'm seeing 1/2" clearance. I guess there's still potential for the art slipping over the side of the board and rubbing against the sleeve. Any advice on preventing this from happening? I obviously don't want to use glue or tape. Thanks for any advice or opinions you can share. If this has been exhaustively discussed elsewhere, I'd appreciate a pointer.

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We're not in disagreement. The "machine learning" would come from human feedback to the robot about whether or not it was correct in categorizing something as fake. I'm not thinking of Deep Thought adjudicating what is or is not a fake on Ebay. I'm thinking of a browser plugin that someone points at an Ebay image, and it tells the user whether or not it thinks it's a fake. If the user asks for an explanation, they get directed to a Web page with matching images from its database of images. The user can give their feedback there. This requires that all the images be publicly available, so there's that. And how to stop the bad guys from misdirecting the software with their feedback? Voting won't help if the bad guys can rent time on botnets to rig the voting. But maybe all you need to do is change the economics of the game for the fakers.

What I'm suggesting is not searching based on metadata, that sounds pretty useless, it's using image recognition and AI to have a program (rather than a human) say, I've seen that before. It would be the same kind of technology that is used for facial recognition and categorization of people's holiday photographs. Another thing one could try, is to use ML to recognize when a piece of art for sale on Ebay is a fake copy, because someone other than the seller has it in their possession. You could find this out by what's on CAF. Since not everyone wants their stuff up for public display, this would be done best if people could make their art available for ML without making it available for public display. Of course, this now provides a compelling reason for someone to take their stuff off CAF once they no longer own it. Before everyone gets their hopes up that recognition of fakes can be completely automated, it should be recognized that image recognition can be fooled if you know what you're doing, by messing with the image pixels in ways that are not detectable to the human eye. But: The fakers that have been exposed are not very sophisticated. Perhaps image recognition will get better (we don't really understand what it does now). The ML stuff is maybe a bit ambitious. It would be nice to at least have a central repository of images of fakes, indexed by artist, this is not technically hard, it just requires some resources (maybe a Kickstarter?). I don't know how widespread fakes are, but it is possible it is much more prevalent than people think, and only the amateur hour fakes are being exposed. What really worries me are Artists Editions, all those high resolution scans of valuable art....

Since Ebay doesn't appear to have any interest in doing anything about it, perhaps we could take a "community policing" approach. For example, this could take the form of a central repository on the Web of these fakes. It would be indexed by artist. Going to an artist's page, one could see a collection of fake images recorded for that artist. The image itself would have to be uploaded by someone, since Ebay auction listings eventually disappear, along with a short description of where it was seen and why it was suspected to be fake. A logical way to do this would be to extend ComicArtFans. Allow people to upload these images and not have them show up in their regular CAF galleries, and have these "virtual" galleries of fake images for an artist be filled with images contributed by CAF members. Use the rating system for images to allow CAF members to provide feedback on images recorded as fake (so a high rating would be "bad"). Surely a better use of disk space than all the garbage crayon GGA out there. This could be raw input for machine learning systems that can sort out fake auction listings on Ebay, so eventually potential buyers could just use a browser plugin to detect the fakes. This would have to be kept open, because ML is going to make mistakes, so honest sellers would need to know why their stuff is labelled fake so they can defend themselves. Having invested some money in this hobby, I am concerned about its long term viability in the digital age. It shouldn't be that hard to police these kinds of half-assed fakes, but as these fakes make good money, the hobby will attract better fakes. Who knows to what extent it's already happening, they're just smart enough that the marks don't know they've been conned. I'd expect to see a lot of this in the shallow end of the pool, kept under the radar where organizations like Ebay can't be bothered policing it.

I assume this only refers to watercolor, since my understanding is that oil-based should be allowed to "breathe." Nevertheless, I'm not sure what the point is of "museum quality". Even with UV glass, light is going to destroy art. There is a reason that museum display rooms are gloomy. I would have thought that best practice would be to only display a good scan of the OA, keeping the original hidden from light, and then spending $$$ on "museum-quality" glass just seems like a waste of resources (where the framing and glass may cost more than the OA). I'm basing a lot of this on Rune's excellent analysis of light levels and their deleterious effects on OA. Perhaps this hobby is sorely in need of a code of best practices for displaying art (Starting with, don't display the original?). Otherwise I worry that generations of OA is going to be lost to the actions of well-meaning amateurs. Happy to be educated further on this.....

It would be nice if there could be some kind of tribute to Ethan Roberts at the Con, since he was a regular attendee. Did he have any charities that he favored? Sad and sobering to see the art he was so proud of up for auction....