The Graphic Arts portion consists of animation cels, backgrounds and posters, as well as materials related to the Akira manga (comic books). Posters are a small subcollection compared to the Production Art subcollection, which consists of animation cels, drawings, backgrounds, and color models for the film. Production Art is further divided into two series: Production files and Manga files.

The production files series is divided into five subseries, A-Part through D-Part and Unidentified files, based on the organizational structure developed by the filmmakers and presented in the two-volume storyboard book set, “The Continuity of Akira.” Rather than using sequences and scenes as narrative units, Katsuhiro Otomo and the animators numbered over 2,200 individual cuts chronologically, then divided those cuts into four parts (A, B, C, and D), which serve as the equivalent of acts in the film and are mirrored in this subseries. The Unidentified files subseries consists of materials that have not been associated with a specific cut or part from the film.

The Manga files include color guides, printing plates, test prints, and finished artwork related to the manga.

Joe Peacock is a writer, web developer, and collector. He began collecting materials related to AKIRA (1988) in the early 1990s, when Streamline Pictures released the film on home video in the United States. Streamline included an original animation cel with each copy of the video they sold. The cel that came with his copy of the VHS tape became the first piece in what eventually became the world's largest private collection of AKIRA animation artworks. As his collection grew, Peacock collaborated with ToonSeum curator, Joe Wos, to mount an exhibition entitled “Art of Akira”. The exhibition opened at ToonSeum in April 2010 and traveled all over the world for most of the next decade. In 2019 Peacock donated his collection to the Margaret Herrick Library to mark the passing in real time of the film's future.