About Colors!
Colors! is a simplistic painting application combining ease of use and powerful painting tools. It is based on modern painting techniques originally developed for drawing-tablets using desktop computers. Whether you are looking for doing doodles, sketching or painting Colors! is the perfect digital sketch-book.
Colors! was originally released in June 2007 as a simple painting application for homebrew Nintendo DS. It was developed by Jens Anderson, a programmer and designer who was on sabbathical from the games-industry and wanted to experiment with the potential of the new handheld platforms. Shortly after, Rafał Piasek created this gallery where users could upload their paintings for everyone to see.
Colors! quickly became one of the most known homebrew application on Nintendo DS and has to date more than 250000 downloads world-wide (Nov 2008). In September 2008, Colors! was also released for iPhone and iPod Touch.
Credits
Online gallery by Rafał Piasek
UI graphics by Ernst vd Horst
ColorsDraw applet by Ben Jaques
Cat painting by Mattias Snygg
Gallery design by FrankMjr (x999x)
Star icons by Gibo
Galllery thanks to:
Superania, Fuzone, Gibo, Hamciuszka, Dzozef, AE and others
Colors! iPhone thanks to:
Bill Havlicek and Alberto Ricci
libcurl, libjpeg, pnglib & zlib
Colors! DS thanks to:
forum.gbadev.org & Ida Rödén
libnds, libfat, dswifi, efs_lib, pnglib & zlib
Timeline
September 25, 2008 – iPhone v1.0 released
September 19, 2007 – NDS v1.06 released
August 3, 2007 – NDS v1.05 released
July 24, 2007 - NDS v1.04 released
July 20, 2007 – NDS v1.03 released
June 26, 2007 – NDS v1.02 released
June 25, 2007 – NDS v1.01 released
June 18, 2007 – NDS v1.0 released
June 07, 2007 – First NDS version released
Press
October 2009 - Colors! DS voted as best DS homebrew at www.r4revolutionds.co.uk
February 2009 - 99DS real life exhibition by Christian Pearce and Greg Broadmore
October 2008 - "In depth" article with Tyler West using Colors! in the October issue of ImagineFX magazine
August 2008 - "DS Fanboy Recommends: Homebrew Programs" at dsfanboy.com
June 2008 - Famous illustrator Katuya Terade reviewed Colors! in the May issue of Game Lobo magazine
June 2008 - "DS Colors! Portable Paint for the Nintendo DS" at gamegirl.com
May 2008 - "Hack a Nintendo DS to Make an Awesome Digital Sketchbook" at howto.wired.com
May 2008 - Colors! forum-thread at imaginefx.com
January 2008 - "Paint By DS With Colors!" at kotaku.com
January 2008 - "The DS great hidden secret: Pressure Sensitivity!" at evilavatar.com
December 2007 - "Colors (DS paint package)" at sweatdrop.com
November 2007 - Colors! forum-thread at cgpad.org
November 2007 - "Colors! and Inchworm: digital painting applications for Nintendo DS" at linesandcolors.com
October 2007 - "Nintendo DS / Colors! – Setup Tutorial" at conceptart.org
September 2007 - Colors! for Nintendo DS release forum-thread at forum.gbadev.org
July 2007 – an interview about Colors! in Radio Ninty 4 podcast