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Tezuka's Company to Digitize, Colorize All His Manga
posted on by Egan Loo
Tezuka Productions, the multimedia company founded by the late industry pioneer Osamu Tezuka, has started to digitize and colorize all of the creator's manga this month. The full-color mastering will eventually cover all 150,000 pages of Tezuka's manga. Currently, the company is coloring about one thousand pages a month.
The animation staff of Tezuka Productions' Beijing studio is handling the actual coloring. The staff is using computer systems normally dedicated to coloring 2D animation. Staffers who were once Tezuka's personal assistants have reproduced the color charts that they used for the occasional all-color piece when Tezuka was alive. These staffers are supervising the process to ensure that the current coloring process matches the colors originally used during Tezuka's time.
The company plans to use the finished full-color masters for various business purposes. The first completed product that uses them is Manga no Mushi Deluxe (Manga Insect Deluxe), the comic distribution website for Japanese mobile phones that Tezuka Productions opened for business in September.
Manga no Mushi Deluxe is currently offering six colorized titles: Mighty Atom (Astro Boy), Black Jack, Ribbon Knight, Dororo, Phoenix, and Fushigi na Merumo. Starting in October, it will add Umi no Triton (Triton of the Sea), The Three-eyed One, and Buddha, and the lineup will continue to expand in the future.
Source: Translated from animeanime.jp with permission
Images © Tezuka Productions
