ThatChurro asked:
First question for the crew is how did the idea of making colors happen? Like what led to the idea of making the platform? Second is how do you decide on aotw, Is it mainly by recommendation or do you choose most? Third question is how long did it take to release the first Colors! Game from when you first started production on it? Fourth, what was/is the most difficult part about each of your guy's job dealing with colors, like if it be in code or glitches and bugs and whatnot. Thank you for taking the time to read my questions!! You can choose which ever one to answer if you'd like just to do one or a few, I know I asked a LOT TwT
Good questions! I’ll answer them all!
I was unaware about the original Colors, which actually started off as a homebrew app on the Nintendo DS, until many years later. If I’d known about it I’d have definitely been trying to find a way to use it! The first version of
Colors I used was Colors!3D that, ironically, I discovered through reading a Nintendo life or Kotaku article if I remember right, it was just after I had recently saved up for and bought an old used Wacom on ebay many years ago. I was just getting into digital art using Sketchbook pro at the time and the thought of drawing on my 3DS with 3D was instantly appealing to me!
How I find aotw candidates is pretty simple—An easy way to find talent is simply browsing weekly challenge entries( so you better enter if you want a better chance of me noticing you ? *wink*), trending art on the trending page and this week’s best etc.
However, just browsing those would mean a lot of the lesser known artist or artist who don’t post as frequently wouldn’t be as easy to spot so that means I have to have use other means of finding weekly artist candidates otherwise it would just be the most popular artist being featured and hardly anyone else gets noticed. So I spend a considerable amount of time often checking peoples follows and likes, checking the new paintings section for new users who just joined the gallery, and of course checking who post to #heyzyik and tag me which has been incredibly helpful when finding candidates! So shout-out to everyone who post to #heyzyik, you make my job a lot easier. I have a personal list of candidates on my computer I use to keep track of everything. I do the same for weekly contest and other event ideas too!
But you’re probably asking a bit more about my choosing process overall and who I choose to feature. I try to go by a first-response-first-serve method but sometimes I like stockpiling a lot of interviews and mix them around so the weekly artist has variety. Like one week we feature a cartoony artist, next week anime, the week after an abstract artist or realism etc. Variety is the spice of life, afterall.
I try to mix in well-known with not so well-known too so artist of all levels and types can get the spotlight, be noticed, and feel appreciated. One of the biggest motivations for me starting the weekly artist was that during my days of using Colors!3D I was more of a lurker rather than someone who frequently commented. Thinking back on it, I wished I’d gotten to know more the artist I knew of on a more personal level but for a young or inexperienced artist talking with a professional may seem intimidating. So the weekly artist is also a reminder that everyone is a person with a story to tell and that you shouldn’t be overly shy about reaching out to connect with them. There’s a chance they will learn from you just like how you were inspired from and learned from them.
I’m not too familiar with how long the og Colors took to produce since I wasn’t part of the team those many years ago but for Colors Live as a moderator at the time I helped with Kickstarter arrangements, testing early versions of the Nintendo switch app and giving feedback which, if I recall, took many months and prior to me being actively involved I believe the app was in development for over a year.
And hmm the most difficult part of being on the team for me is dealing with moderation. Our moderation tools are a little outdated so they need to be updated so they are more modern. Lucky for us the Colors Live community is small and not nearly as toxic as other communities thankfully but because our current team is small too it does take some time to catch up on every report, so I apologize if you reported something a while ago and we still haven’t been able to get to it yet. We’re working hard to address all reports! Keep in mind we have to take extra time to investigate each report so our actions are fair.
As for glitches, they can be both fun and annoying to deal with in a way. Fun because a few can make for some interesting fun effects in paintings. Not so fun when a user loses a painting they worked hard on. We’re a small team, so catching every bug or trying to recreate a known one so we can reproduce it and fix it takes time.
Tool Experiment by -zyik-
Kersephomy asked: Do you have any pets?
I don’t have any pets currently but I’ve had many over years. I’ve had many cats and dogs, mice, rats, a gerbil once, a turtle, and if I remember right, we had family bird when I was really young. If I count animals that I “adopted” from the wild when I was super young than a praying mantis, toads, a few lizards, caterpillars I raised into butterflies and moths, and also a gold fish from a school fair. I’d like to get another pet in the future sometime. Maybe a cat, a bird, or something a tad exotic?
zoni_lilly asked: when did you start drawing ?
I started drawing when I was very young. If I could guess, probably when I was a toddler or slightly older. My twin brother and I would draw together, filling up entire notebooks! It actually got us into trouble once while we stayed at our Grandma’s place. We drew in all of the notebooks and got grounded for a bit.
So I’ve drawing for most of my life.
borderjumper590 asked: DO U GUYS LIKE KENDRICK LAMAR.??????????
Not familiar with them. So neutral.
Bloodbell asked:
1.What is your modding process like, do you think moderation can be improved? if yes, why havent you improved it?
2. Since the colors team picks who is WA or not do people the colors team doesnt personally like have a chance of being WA?
3. What is the colors teams favorite paintings on colors live?
4. Will we ever be able to do animation on colors?
First answer. Moderation is pretty straightforward. If a user, their comment or their painting is reported we investigate it and act based on the gallery rules as well as based on how many times a user has been reported and for what. Example, harassing and getting into fights with other users will get you banned for a few days and if the fights continue after that than you’ll get banned longer. As for improvement, getting better blocking tools is the current priority. Unfortunately some users have a hard time letting go of disputes, ignoring them and moving on so we hope that once better blocking is implemented this will greatly fix that issue.
Second answer. Anyone and everyone can featured! I usually wait until a user has a least 5 different paintings uploaded before I ask them if they’d like to be featured so their gallery has a variety of art to feature in their interview and by then they tend to have a grasp on using Colors Live.
Third answer. You see some of my favorites above! There’s more I could add but if I kept adding every art that blows me away on the Colors Gallery than this interview would go on indefinitely! I can’t speak for the others favorites but they all have good taste!
Fourth answer. I’d personally love to see it someday. I can’t say for sure if it will happen or not but if we did have animation in Colors I have feeling we’d see some really awesome stuff from the community! We already have plenty of users that having charming cartoony art styles that I could definitely imagine seeing as an animated short or cartoon. The playback animations I’ve seen people make are super impressive and show that even with limitations and Colors not being built for animation people will always find a way to push past limitations. It’s really inspiring!
Kurumiiii asked:
- how long did it take to fully develop and program colors? (for the 3Ds + switch)
- any goals with colors for the future?
- any favourite switch games?
- traditional or digital art, and why?
- do you think you'll develop a new colors for the switch 2?
- how did the colors team get together?
First answer. I believe for a small app for Colors on average it takes a few months to a few years. I wasn’t part of the team when the apps development was in the very beginning stages so that’s just an estimate.
Second answer. Jens has the current priorities featured in the #build-status which you can find in Colors news so those will have priority most likely. However, with switch 2 looking quite awesome maybe some plans may change once he/we get hands on some devkits! My goals for the future on the community management side of things is to find more fun ways to engage with this awesome community!
Third. As someone who takes forever on most pieces… digital is the way it is! I like the flexibility, being able to experiment and also instantly correct any mistakes. Plus there’s the convenience factor of being able to draw in most places easier and not have to worry so much about storage. Though I have a huge respect for traditional drawing too! Digital may be what most people do nowadays but traditional will always have a special place. Plus you can’t replace that tactile feel!
Fourth answer is yes! We’re actively discussing what we can do with a switch 2 edition of colors live or maybe even a colors live 2 behind scenes! Jens is currently trying to get his hands on a devkit so fingers crossed!
Fifth. I met the team on the Colors Live discord back before the Kickstarter. Twarda and madwurmz I’ve been following since I joined Colors!3D
BlueLapis asked:
- How did you meet?
- Who first proposed the idea of creating a platform like CL?
- How do you feel about connecting people from all over the world?
- How long did it take to you to design and create CL?
- Favorite artists of all time on CL
- What's your favorite feature on CL?
First. Answered above. I met the Colors Team through discord but have been part of the community since Colors!3D came out on the 3DS.
Second. Jens created Colors because a professional art friend of his showed him his method of creating detailed art effortlessly. I recommend checking out Jens interview for additional clarity on that!
Third. It’s awesome meeting people from all walks of life. It helps to broaden your horizons. Most of the other Colors Team members live in Europe so time zones can be little bit of a challenge at times.
Fourth. I wasn’t part of the team when the app was at the very beginning of development but my estimate for a small app like colors live is a few months to a few years.
Fifth. Favorite artist of all time is a very difficult question. Maybe I’m not cultured enough to have a definitive favorite as of yet haha. But a few notable ones to me from my days on deviant art are Robaato art and xa-xa-xa. A more modern favorite of mines is garrethanna because of crazy cool and dynamic their art is.
Sixth. My favorite feature on Colors Live without a doubt is easily the Select & Fill brush. It’s one of if not the versatile brush in the app! Need to quickly create shapes? Check. Need to create some highlights or some shadow maps? Check. Need to create intricate tiny details? Check! Lacking inspiration and just want to doodle until you manage to half haphazardly create something? It’s my go-to! It’s been a life saver in a lot of the most recent paintings I’ve worked on. Especially in my sci-fi paintings full of many tiny details.
Outside of brushes, there’s layer mods that are a really cool, clever yet simple way to give Colors Live more advanced features without complicating things. And remixing is fun too!
PumpkinCloud asked:
1.How long does it take to pick the winner of the weekly challenge?
2, Are you all working on a way so artists can make animations?
3, When will we get more brushes?
4, How long does it take to update the Colors News?
5, How do you pick the winner for the weekly challenge?
First. Not too long actually.. We usually pick out the weekly challenge paintings towards the end of the day on Sundays. Though we do try to give people extra time to submit art sometimes because we’re aware that some people have different time zones and may be few hours ahead or behind.
Second. Development has been slow of late, so we hadn’t working on much of anything for a bit. Last year Jens was mostly busy working on Indiana Jones and the Great Circle at Machine games and we were also eagerly awaiting details on the Nintendo Switch 2 to decide how we want to go forward with Colors Live development. Now that we have details on the Nintendo Switch 2 and the many awesome new features it has we’re excited to get our hands on devkits! Expect some exciting announcements in the future.
Third. Jens eventually wants to improve how the brush engine works so brushes can be more “organic” or natural feeling. I expect once that’s underway we’ll be able to produce some fancy new brushes for you all to try out! We also have some experimental brushes that we mess with behind the scenes but none of those are ready for use as of yet.
Fourth. Not that long. We have templates that we use to make creating new articles easier. The longest part of it is the planning phase which takes doing some research, browsing the gallery for ideas, and brainstorming.
Fifth. We try to pick the winner based on a few factors. How well it fits the theme, creativity, and technical skill, in no specific order.
Next week check out the mad lad known as @madwurmz!
First question for the crew is how did the idea of making colors happen? Like what led to the idea of making the platform? Second is how do you decide on aotw, Is it mainly by recommendation or do you choose most? Third question is how long did it take to release the first Colors! Game from when you first started production on it? Fourth, what was/is the most difficult part about each of your guy's job dealing with colors, like if it be in code or glitches and bugs and whatnot. Thank you for taking the time to read my questions!! You can choose which ever one to answer if you'd like just to do one or a few, I know I asked a LOT TwT
Good questions! I’ll answer them all!
I was unaware about the original Colors, which actually started off as a homebrew app on the Nintendo DS, until many years later. If I’d known about it I’d have definitely been trying to find a way to use it! The first version of
Colors I used was Colors!3D that, ironically, I discovered through reading a Nintendo life or Kotaku article if I remember right, it was just after I had recently saved up for and bought an old used Wacom on ebay many years ago. I was just getting into digital art using Sketchbook pro at the time and the thought of drawing on my 3DS with 3D was instantly appealing to me!
How I find aotw candidates is pretty simple—An easy way to find talent is simply browsing weekly challenge entries( so you better enter if you want a better chance of me noticing you ? *wink*), trending art on the trending page and this week’s best etc.
However, just browsing those would mean a lot of the lesser known artist or artist who don’t post as frequently wouldn’t be as easy to spot so that means I have to have use other means of finding weekly artist candidates otherwise it would just be the most popular artist being featured and hardly anyone else gets noticed. So I spend a considerable amount of time often checking peoples follows and likes, checking the new paintings section for new users who just joined the gallery, and of course checking who post to #heyzyik and tag me which has been incredibly helpful when finding candidates! So shout-out to everyone who post to #heyzyik, you make my job a lot easier. I have a personal list of candidates on my computer I use to keep track of everything. I do the same for weekly contest and other event ideas too!
But you’re probably asking a bit more about my choosing process overall and who I choose to feature. I try to go by a first-response-first-serve method but sometimes I like stockpiling a lot of interviews and mix them around so the weekly artist has variety. Like one week we feature a cartoony artist, next week anime, the week after an abstract artist or realism etc. Variety is the spice of life, afterall.
I try to mix in well-known with not so well-known too so artist of all levels and types can get the spotlight, be noticed, and feel appreciated. One of the biggest motivations for me starting the weekly artist was that during my days of using Colors!3D I was more of a lurker rather than someone who frequently commented. Thinking back on it, I wished I’d gotten to know more the artist I knew of on a more personal level but for a young or inexperienced artist talking with a professional may seem intimidating. So the weekly artist is also a reminder that everyone is a person with a story to tell and that you shouldn’t be overly shy about reaching out to connect with them. There’s a chance they will learn from you just like how you were inspired from and learned from them.
I’m not too familiar with how long the og Colors took to produce since I wasn’t part of the team those many years ago but for Colors Live as a moderator at the time I helped with Kickstarter arrangements, testing early versions of the Nintendo switch app and giving feedback which, if I recall, took many months and prior to me being actively involved I believe the app was in development for over a year.
And hmm the most difficult part of being on the team for me is dealing with moderation. Our moderation tools are a little outdated so they need to be updated so they are more modern. Lucky for us the Colors Live community is small and not nearly as toxic as other communities thankfully but because our current team is small too it does take some time to catch up on every report, so I apologize if you reported something a while ago and we still haven’t been able to get to it yet. We’re working hard to address all reports! Keep in mind we have to take extra time to investigate each report so our actions are fair.
As for glitches, they can be both fun and annoying to deal with in a way. Fun because a few can make for some interesting fun effects in paintings. Not so fun when a user loses a painting they worked hard on. We’re a small team, so catching every bug or trying to recreate a known one so we can reproduce it and fix it takes time.
Tool Experiment by -zyik-
Kersephomy asked: Do you have any pets?
I don’t have any pets currently but I’ve had many over years. I’ve had many cats and dogs, mice, rats, a gerbil once, a turtle, and if I remember right, we had family bird when I was really young. If I count animals that I “adopted” from the wild when I was super young than a praying mantis, toads, a few lizards, caterpillars I raised into butterflies and moths, and also a gold fish from a school fair. I’d like to get another pet in the future sometime. Maybe a cat, a bird, or something a tad exotic?
zoni_lilly asked: when did you start drawing ?
I started drawing when I was very young. If I could guess, probably when I was a toddler or slightly older. My twin brother and I would draw together, filling up entire notebooks! It actually got us into trouble once while we stayed at our Grandma’s place. We drew in all of the notebooks and got grounded for a bit.
So I’ve drawing for most of my life.
borderjumper590 asked: DO U GUYS LIKE KENDRICK LAMAR.??????????
Not familiar with them. So neutral.
Bloodbell asked:
1.What is your modding process like, do you think moderation can be improved? if yes, why havent you improved it?
2. Since the colors team picks who is WA or not do people the colors team doesnt personally like have a chance of being WA?
3. What is the colors teams favorite paintings on colors live?
4. Will we ever be able to do animation on colors?
First answer. Moderation is pretty straightforward. If a user, their comment or their painting is reported we investigate it and act based on the gallery rules as well as based on how many times a user has been reported and for what. Example, harassing and getting into fights with other users will get you banned for a few days and if the fights continue after that than you’ll get banned longer. As for improvement, getting better blocking tools is the current priority. Unfortunately some users have a hard time letting go of disputes, ignoring them and moving on so we hope that once better blocking is implemented this will greatly fix that issue.
Second answer. Anyone and everyone can featured! I usually wait until a user has a least 5 different paintings uploaded before I ask them if they’d like to be featured so their gallery has a variety of art to feature in their interview and by then they tend to have a grasp on using Colors Live.
Third answer. You see some of my favorites above! There’s more I could add but if I kept adding every art that blows me away on the Colors Gallery than this interview would go on indefinitely! I can’t speak for the others favorites but they all have good taste!
Fourth answer. I’d personally love to see it someday. I can’t say for sure if it will happen or not but if we did have animation in Colors I have feeling we’d see some really awesome stuff from the community! We already have plenty of users that having charming cartoony art styles that I could definitely imagine seeing as an animated short or cartoon. The playback animations I’ve seen people make are super impressive and show that even with limitations and Colors not being built for animation people will always find a way to push past limitations. It’s really inspiring!
Kurumiiii asked:
- how long did it take to fully develop and program colors? (for the 3Ds + switch)
- any goals with colors for the future?
- any favourite switch games?
- traditional or digital art, and why?
- do you think you'll develop a new colors for the switch 2?
- how did the colors team get together?
First answer. I believe for a small app for Colors on average it takes a few months to a few years. I wasn’t part of the team when the apps development was in the very beginning stages so that’s just an estimate.
Second answer. Jens has the current priorities featured in the #build-status which you can find in Colors news so those will have priority most likely. However, with switch 2 looking quite awesome maybe some plans may change once he/we get hands on some devkits! My goals for the future on the community management side of things is to find more fun ways to engage with this awesome community!
Third. As someone who takes forever on most pieces… digital is the way it is! I like the flexibility, being able to experiment and also instantly correct any mistakes. Plus there’s the convenience factor of being able to draw in most places easier and not have to worry so much about storage. Though I have a huge respect for traditional drawing too! Digital may be what most people do nowadays but traditional will always have a special place. Plus you can’t replace that tactile feel!
Fourth answer is yes! We’re actively discussing what we can do with a switch 2 edition of colors live or maybe even a colors live 2 behind scenes! Jens is currently trying to get his hands on a devkit so fingers crossed!
Fifth. I met the team on the Colors Live discord back before the Kickstarter. Twarda and madwurmz I’ve been following since I joined Colors!3D
BlueLapis asked:
- How did you meet?
- Who first proposed the idea of creating a platform like CL?
- How do you feel about connecting people from all over the world?
- How long did it take to you to design and create CL?
- Favorite artists of all time on CL
- What's your favorite feature on CL?
First. Answered above. I met the Colors Team through discord but have been part of the community since Colors!3D came out on the 3DS.
Second. Jens created Colors because a professional art friend of his showed him his method of creating detailed art effortlessly. I recommend checking out Jens interview for additional clarity on that!
Third. It’s awesome meeting people from all walks of life. It helps to broaden your horizons. Most of the other Colors Team members live in Europe so time zones can be little bit of a challenge at times.
Fourth. I wasn’t part of the team when the app was at the very beginning of development but my estimate for a small app like colors live is a few months to a few years.
Fifth. Favorite artist of all time is a very difficult question. Maybe I’m not cultured enough to have a definitive favorite as of yet haha. But a few notable ones to me from my days on deviant art are Robaato art and xa-xa-xa. A more modern favorite of mines is garrethanna because of crazy cool and dynamic their art is.
Sixth. My favorite feature on Colors Live without a doubt is easily the Select & Fill brush. It’s one of if not the versatile brush in the app! Need to quickly create shapes? Check. Need to create some highlights or some shadow maps? Check. Need to create intricate tiny details? Check! Lacking inspiration and just want to doodle until you manage to half haphazardly create something? It’s my go-to! It’s been a life saver in a lot of the most recent paintings I’ve worked on. Especially in my sci-fi paintings full of many tiny details.
Outside of brushes, there’s layer mods that are a really cool, clever yet simple way to give Colors Live more advanced features without complicating things. And remixing is fun too!
PumpkinCloud asked:
1.How long does it take to pick the winner of the weekly challenge?
2, Are you all working on a way so artists can make animations?
3, When will we get more brushes?
4, How long does it take to update the Colors News?
5, How do you pick the winner for the weekly challenge?
First. Not too long actually.. We usually pick out the weekly challenge paintings towards the end of the day on Sundays. Though we do try to give people extra time to submit art sometimes because we’re aware that some people have different time zones and may be few hours ahead or behind.
Second. Development has been slow of late, so we hadn’t working on much of anything for a bit. Last year Jens was mostly busy working on Indiana Jones and the Great Circle at Machine games and we were also eagerly awaiting details on the Nintendo Switch 2 to decide how we want to go forward with Colors Live development. Now that we have details on the Nintendo Switch 2 and the many awesome new features it has we’re excited to get our hands on devkits! Expect some exciting announcements in the future.
Third. Jens eventually wants to improve how the brush engine works so brushes can be more “organic” or natural feeling. I expect once that’s underway we’ll be able to produce some fancy new brushes for you all to try out! We also have some experimental brushes that we mess with behind the scenes but none of those are ready for use as of yet.
Fourth. Not that long. We have templates that we use to make creating new articles easier. The longest part of it is the planning phase which takes doing some research, browsing the gallery for ideas, and brainstorming.
Fifth. We try to pick the winner based on a few factors. How well it fits the theme, creativity, and technical skill, in no specific order.
Next week check out the mad lad known as @madwurmz!
