Gamertell

Colorists are some of the most unused, overlooked and ignored artists in both the videogame and the comic book industries.

When I have looked on art web sites for colorists, I find a lot of pros making statements that colorists are a dime a dozen and the least important for production. Frankly, that statement would be true for just about any artistic position as there are thousands of character and comic artists out there.

I have tried many times to learn to color my own works. Most artists, at least many concept artists, tend to color or paint their own pieces instead of having someone else do them. In fact, even in the comic industry, colorists have been turned into some kind of overlooked assembly line worker, given one piece after another to work on with barely enough time to get his or her name credited.

As I said, I don’t color my own work. While I ink it, I have never had that pallet for color, as most of my characters tend to stick to black, blue and red. I’ve never learned how to just stop, as I tend to play around with the skin too much, until it looks like some mad pallet of mud.

For a time, I had no interest in looking for a colorist to help us with the artwork for Burning Man Studios. Since most of the artists we had either didn’t need much color since they had very heavy shading styles or simply colored their own stuff, I finally broke down and sought out a colorist when I decided to take over most of the general concept art myself. Frankly, I was tried of looking at all my black and white images.

Digitalwebbing.com has to be the best place to find comic book artist, inkers, writers and of course, colorists. As I have said earlier in past articles, part of starting your own independent game company is having a lot of faith and a lot of luck. For the luck side of things, we would find our colorist with the first person to reply to our job add.

The day we found Jesse Heagy was a good day. We’ve have had in the past a lot of trouble finding talented artist that were both dedicated and efficient. Jesse thankfully fit into both categories. Whether it is his Air Force training, or simply the fact that he is a cool guy, Jesse has really managed to bring a lot of smiles to the BMS team with his wonderful coloring of our concept art.

So, for all you guys looking to start your own independent game company, take the time and try to find a great colorist. Give them plenty of work to do and the freedom to play with the tones and shadows, and you’ll probably be surprised how much of a differences they can make to your generally flat and 2D artwork look in the end.

Read all 10 weeks of “Burning Ambition: How to make your mark on the videogame industry:”

• Introduction: An insider’s look into indie game development  (February 26, 2008)
• Part 1: Start burning your dreams into reality (February 27, 2008)
• Part 2-A: The man with the burning dream (March 5, 2008)
• Part 2-B: An interview with founder and CEO Steven Hammans  (March 5, 2008)
• Part 3-A: The origin of an intellectual property (March 12, 2008)
• Part 3-B: An interview with lead designer and writer Christopher Buckner (March 12, 2008)
• Part 4: The nightmare of turning a story into a game (March 19, 2008)
• Part 5: The bigger nightmare of finding a concept artist  (March 26, 2008)
• Part 6: From paper to screen (April 2, 2008)
• Part 7-A: Colorists, the unsung heroes (April 9, 2008)
• Part 7-B: An interview with colorist Jesse Heagy (April 9, 2008)
• Part 8-A: The sound of beautiful music (April 16, 2008)
• part 8-B: An interview with composers Allen Pinard and Eike Steffen (April 16, 2008)
• Part 9-A: Managers, programmers and modellers, oh my (April 23, 2008)
• Part 9-B: An interview with Project Manager Andrea Wieslander  (April 23, 2008)
• Part 10: The dream becomes a bit more real with a working demo (April 30, 2008)

Site [Burning Man Studios] Site [DigitalWebbing]