From Ron:
Ever since November 2007 I have been working as a color flat artist for the comic "The Uniques" by Adam Withers and Comfort Love, and have been enjoying every moment of it. With my 2.5 years of doing work for them, they referred me to another artist Jon Alderink to work on some pages for the IDW Publishing graphic novel "After The Fire", which is available for pre-order now. I am about to start a new project, but until it's officially announced, I have to keep quiet, but it will be a blast!
As for being a flat artist, my job is to take the inks done for the pages and apply the base colors to each page before they get the toning done. For the most part there are solid colors chosen for the main characters, but I also choose appropriate colors for the rest of the surrounding areas, along with making sure the right objects are colored properly, and not as part of a different object. Different techniques are used depending on the style of the page and comic, and sometimes multiple techniques must be used even on the same page, depending on the situation. Judgment is a very important part of the process, along with being able to not only complete a page accurately, but in a timely manner as well, making for the most efficiency, which in turn leads to more work in a shorter time.
It's a fun process, and pages can range from incredibly simple to multiple hours of detail oriented coloring. Through my experience I have created color tools to increase the efficiency of not only myself but to help fellow colorists. It's been a valuable experience and am happy to be getting paid for something I love doing, especially with the challenge of constantly trying to improve my speed and accuracy making for more impressive comics.
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