A.D. COULTER

A.D. Coulter is the lead 3D artist on the popular book, The Red Star.  Together with artist, writer, and creator Chris Gossett, Allen continues to produce one of the most remarkable pieces of art ever seen in a comic.

Read on below to find out what this talented artist is made of.

Interview Conducted By
Brian Jacks

We're a team.  Chris and I worked together a couple of years ago back and then he approached me about a year and a half ago.  We just teamed up pretty much right then when I saw the rough draft of the book.  It just seemed like such an unusual and interesting idea.  

So we kind of worked together - I have a studio and he has a studio - but we sort of tied our studios together for this.  We both do other stuff as well but we're sort of overlapping on this one.

What did you think when you first heard the whole concept of The Red Star?

Oh, I love it.  It's an awful lot of the reason why we've spent as much time developing the whole piece was because we just immediately - when he showed me the piece it just struck a chord with me.  As all small studios I've got some projects in development and their thematically in the same vain, the same kind of shading and what have you.  Literarily, not graphically.  So I just loved the feel of it and the usual quality of it.  

I loved the idea of taking a look - having all the time when we were growing up beating up on Russia all these years it seemed like it'd be pretty interesting seeing who'd we been beating up on.

View them as individuals.

Well, yeah, who are these guys?  [Laughs]  So that aspect of it, more than anything, just, as I said, struck a chord with me.  So with that, and of course me and Chris having worked together before, I already had arrived at already enjoying his drawing style.  I did the coloring for him on a full-motion video for a game.  We did something like 300 panels.

With Activision?

Yeah.  And he came back and wanted me to do the coloring.  So I said well yeah I can do the coloring but we can actually do a whole lot more if we wanted to.  So we started talking about the possibility of going deep.  Doing the whole 3-D world thing.  We tinkered around with it for about a year and a half, you know little tests and experiments before we hit on the whole right balance that he was looking for and was practical and possible.

He said the inspiration was kind of Asimaya's Dark Angel?

Yeah, well we did - I mean there are little bits and pieces of story that I got from the beginning, which haven't come out yet so I probably shouldn't talk about them.   [Laughs]  But suffice to say that there are some science-fiction concepts and devices in the upcoming story that are just so amazing and unique and original.  I was just looking at those as a visual artist as a really exciting opportunity to create something that people would remember.

Do you think this is going to change the industry in any sort of way?  As going more towards 3-D?

Well, gee.  [Laughs]  That's a toughie.  Certainly whenever - if the book does very well yeah sure everyone else will want to do it.  We're not the first book to try mixing 3-D in with 2-D and we're, if the message board is any indication we're one of the first to succeed at it.

I think you guys are one of the first to combine really, not so much just 3-D, but 3-D cinematic-type art.

Yeah, yeah.  One of the things that I think made that possible was the fact that Chris was willing - he saw my style and basically said that was something that would go really well with what I have in mind.  And he was willing to take the chance of investing, like I said, a year and a half.  We spent a lot of time working this thing out and developing a language, a visual language, and that's why it worked so well.  I don't know how many groups of artists are going to be able to pull that kind of stuff off.  [Laughs]

What other projects have you worked on?

Most of what I do is actually animation.  I do print graphics - I have two or three modelers and an animator and we do print graphics.  We do full-motion videos.  We do promotional and corporate animation.

Once Chris brings you the sketches and everything how long does it take for you to actually create it on the computer and get a finished product?

Well, that's another one of those no-simple-answer type things.  Well first of all, a lot of the first few books we spent a lot of time building models.  The idea is that as we move along we'll have a lot of these models to pull out of stock and use over and over again.  So the first couple of books are by far the most time-consuming.  Once you have the models up and running some of the pages take just a couple of hours.  Some of them, if they're really thick with effects and new elements, some of them can take a day and a half just for a page.

Who came up with the drawing concept of the Skyfurnace.  Did Chris put that on paper and you guys...?

Well Chris had the original concept sketch and he brings the sketch to me.  And generally when a 2-D artist comes to us there's a lot that can be drawn that can't be made.  It's pretty easy to drawn some things that are just physically impossible.  So the first thing that I do is go over it, and review, and revise it.  We sit down and go "Well, I need to change this.  I need to change that to make it possible."  When we kick it back it back and forth, "Wouldn't it be neat if...". 

And then I'll go off and work with a model-maker for a couple of days.  When he's done I'll paint it and send it over to Chris and he'll look it over.  So it's a very collaborative process.

What kind of software do you use?

Most of the modeling and rendering is done in LightWave.  And the coloring in Photoshop.

How many man-hours do you think it took to bring out the first issue of The Red Star?

[Laughs]  I don't even like to think about this.  Hundreds and hundreds.  The first book especially you have to just sort of be philisophical about it and go "Well, it's an investment."  Because there were bits and pieces of the book going back - the first couple of panels were done like back November.  And a lot of that was in the form of testing and trying different techniques and stuff.  And then we kicked into gear a little more than a month before the book came out.  Then the actually process, once we got the machine rolling, takes about three weeks.

I was telling Brad and Chris that the book actually sold out at my local comic store.

I've been to one signing and it's...  When you put something out like that you just don't know what's going to happen.  And the look of this book, I think it's a little unusual.  And it's very much something that Chris and I worked very hard to create this very unique look and you put it out and the response has just been great.  When you go to any of the sites that have chats about it it's just grinning from ear to ear time.  [Laughs]  It's just really gratifying.  

The Slush Factory thanks Allen Coulter for his time in this interview.  Good luck with the title.  If you're in the need for a famous, amazing creative studio you can contact Coulter Studios at cstudio@pacbell.net.