Our Artists Showcase is a platform to shine a spotlight on emerging trendsetters in the comics community, and colorist Rich Seetoo definitely fits the bill!
Comics Unboxed became aware of Rich’s work on several Facebook comics forums and quickly became fans of his vibrant and intricate color style over the artwork of industry greats such as Bob Layton and Paul Smith.
We reached out to Rich to get the scoop on his journey into the realm of color art.
"I started out wanting to be an inker. After I got married, I inked several small press projects for the Azure Press, Crusade Comics, Blackout Comics and Dagger Comics mostly in the 1990s while working for Steve Geppi's Geppi's Comic World as a manager. I left Geppi's and got another non-artistic job. My wife and I started a family and for years I really did not do any artwork. I picked up the inking brush again in 2012 and started to ink over blue line images for fun. This lasted for a few years, but alas, inking eventually fell to the wayside.”
That all changed in September of 2021 when Rich’s daughter introduced him to the popular iPad app “Procreate”
“She showed me some of her work and I asked her if I could color comic book art with it. She said yes. I scanned a piece of black and white art, imported it into Procreate and started practice coloring. I found that I could digitally color much faster than I could manually ink. From that point forward, I wanted to find artwork from my childhood and put my color spin on it.”
“Friends shared their original artwork collection with me and I found images online so I was coloring a lot. All for fun and done after the regular work day was over.”
Rich started to post regularly on Facebook and soon realized that he did not have a dedicated space where his color work could be seen. In December of 2022, he created the Facebook group “The Color Art and Design of Rich Seetoo”, containing over 30 albums of color work holding over 1000 pieces of art. In addition to his color art on traditional comic book pages and covers, Rich has created imaginary DC Archive covers, Slurpee cups, TV Guide covers and more.
“Coloring has reopened the door for me professionally. I had met Bob Layton on Facebook and he shared a lot of artwork with me to color for fun. He liked my work enough to request that I color several variant covers he illustrated for Dynamite (Jonny Quest, Space Ghost and the Terminator). In addition to Bob, I have been very fortunate to have many collectors commission me to color pieces from their collection. I thank them for their trust and continued patronage.”
Rich’s influences include longtime X-Men colorist Glynis Wein and DC mainstay Tom Ziuko, whom Rich became friends with after following his color work on titles such as “Man of Steel”, “Superman” and the “Legends” mini series from the 80’s.
Anyone interested in a commission can email Rich at rseetoo@verizon.net or send a DM on Facebook.
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