I'm taking a break from coloring.
I've been coloring full time for Marvel for over 7 years now and I just sort of realized that it's time for me to take a step back and try out some new stuff. I have a few personal things I'm working on, and I'm not fully quitting coloring, but I'm really essentially planning on going back to school starting next spring.
3D, man. I'm going back to Gnomon and getting back into 3D. I seriously look at the future of commercial art in general and I really feel like it's something I need to dive into now rather than later. I've been thinking about doing it for a few years now and finally I'm going to quit talking and start doing.
I love comics, I really do, I doubt anything will be as beautiful to me as a finished trade or graphic novel, but the truth is that I really don't know what more else I can do. SURE, I can hone my craft, get better, there's always more to learn, etc., but the point is that I feel like that I've sort of done almost everything I've set out to do in comics. I'm proud of my babies (Runaways especially, you'll always be my first love) but I'm missing that sort of THIRST for knowledge I had when I first started coloring and I feel like that means it's time for me to go level up another skill set.
And let's face it, Maya and other 3D programs are the Photoshop of the future. Right now, kindergarten children all use Photoshop so I expect that 5 years from now, annoying ass 14 year olds are ALL going to be playing around in Maya and DA'll be full of nothing but amazing renders of complex character models and I want to know how to do that before those bastards.
So yeah, next year, I'm turning 30, and sort of starting all over.
:* Love you guys!








Good luck in all your future endeavors, seriously. And I think it's extremely brave of you to get up and decide to stop what you're doing and choose to do something else! Even if you love it, if it's not quite as fulfilling as it was before, you deserve the chance to pursue something that is. Just, most people never have the guts to try. You do, so that's pretty damn awesome in my book.
I hope we get to see what kind of new stuff you come up with! I'll always be a fan of your artwork.
I learned about 3-D max at the start of the year and it really helped my coloring and found the same skill sets that make me good at coloring apply to the 3d world. It's my back up plan to go after 3d should coloring fail me, if that fails maybe the circus... But not one of those fancy circus's I couldn't do that stuff.
Best of luck converting your skills to the 3d world!
Best of luck in the future, Christina.
Richard Friend/
Gotta say though, while 3-D stuff looks good if it's crafted properly, 2-D animation and colouring that's done well still gets high regards from me.
Good luck, all in all!
But seriously, good luck in your 3D endeavors. I know it will work out well for you!
Just learn it on your own. don't go spending a lot on lessons unless you are buying the DVDs.
Concept art work is quite rewarding and studios don't say it so much but they tend to love hiring concept artists that have 3D knowledge.