Big AKIRA color guide drop coming soon! Including color pieces by KATSUHIRO OTOMO!

Published on April 18, 2018

In 2016, we began selling color guides for the legendary manga, AKIRA, from famed colorist Steve Oliff. Over the course of two sales, we listed 600+ pieces...and sold every single one.

Now, in 2018, we're back with more! 200+ guides from Steve will be available soon. Even better, this time we'll also be offering select color pieces from the master himself, Katsuhiro Otomo!

As anyone who has attempted to acquire any manga art knows, it's a near-impossibility. It simply isn't available. Let alone anything from something as significant as AKIRA. These will be simple color pieces that Otomo provided to Steve as color samples. But they come from the hand of Otomo himself.

In Steve's own words:

Even before I was chosen to work on the book, Otomo had worked out some rough color schemes and concept ideas about how he wanted the coloring on AKIRA to look. So he began coloring the black and white printed edition by hand to get an idea. But the colors bled on the newsprint, and he was unable to be as precise with the colors as he wanted. Also, he was unable to make any notes. So he then printed out large copies to color with marker. And those were given to me.

We are very proud to be able to offer these original color pieces from Katsuhiro Otomo. Thanks to Steve for making them available!

About Steve's own color guides:

Steve Oliff is a comic book colorist who has worked in the industry since 1978. His company, Olyoptics, was the first to use computers to do color separation. In 1989, Steve was personally selected by AKIRA creator Katsuhiro Otomo to color the seminal work. Steve and Otomo-san worked side-by-side at Steve's studio in Point Arena, CA to develop the color scheme that would be used throughout the series. The guides were printed at Otomo-san's studio in Japan on 10"X14" heavy-stock artist's paper and then sent to Steve, where he hand-painted them using some combination of airbrush, felt pens, gouache, cel animation paint, colored pencil, Pantone film and more! These are not your typical color guides; each piece presents beautifully as its own work of art and is suitable for framing (although as with all colored art, best to keep out of direct light). Felix Comic Art is excited to present this rare opportunity for fans to own an original piece from this legendary work.

For more information, do check out this short we shot with Steve on our YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO-Wo3jFJes

And here's an interview with Steve by manga expert Deb Aoki about AKIRA color guides:

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interview/2016-03-17/akira-in-color-with-steve-oliff/.99830