Completed (Phantom Sunday Strip #136 Full)

Hi friends!

Today I am feeling extremely happy and proud to present the complete Phantom Sunday strip #136, The Return of the Thuggees, in colour, for my esteemed readers and loving friends. It took much more time than I had initially expected, but at least I have able to produce it within this calendar year.

I thank all the visitors and downloaders of previous segments of the strip. Special thanks are due to all those who spared their time not only to write a comment and provided feedback, but also came up with valuable suggestions, which I undertook while moving on to next sections. All these wonderful people have kept the flame of desire burning constantly within me and have encouraged me to produce more, even though it was not easy for a novice like me to enter the field of comics colouring. Considering my (bad) nature of getting bored easily with new experiments and a tendency to leave it unfinished, personally I feel it is not a small achievement to finish a large comic comprising of none less than 65 pages for an amateur like me.

The opportunity has provided me some valuable experience in digital graphics art as I spent a lot of time with Photoshop. Most part of the strip was done with PS 6. It was after I purchased a new PC in October that I switched to PS CS4. Last quarter of the strip is being done with the newer version.

Heading towards completion (next set of pages from phantom #S136)

Click on the above pic to see a much larger view

One of the more challenging tasks in coloring a comic book is to keep the consistency and continuity with the coloring patterns of those characters and places which occur intermittently. If some character reappears into picture after a few pages, then it is important to check what color that character was wearing when it last came along or what is the general presentation routine for some particualr topographical unit.

The process demands its share of patience and becomes time consuming for someone who believes in perfection of the work. That slows down the overall processes a bit. I have tried to device some techniques/tricks to overcome the hurdle by  creating few image files with major characters in them. Everytime some particular character is required, these files are taken for reference. All regular characters are there, Phantom, Diana, Rex, Guran, Mozz and Devil of course. The super stallion Hero has been very supportive by not giving trouble for his coloring, being as white as milk.