Test paints; what factors decide on production?

I have avoided calling anything an “artist’s edition” unless it has a ton of time consuming air brushing/ and or hand painting on it that would make it impossible to do in production.
With so many test painted pieces getting turned out, I want to be free to use any combination of color on a production piece without risking duplicating a previous color combination that has been limited for some reason.
We painted ourselves into a corner by making some great colors on certain pieces limited editions.
I consider colors for production if:
A. they are fairly easy to paint
B. they are distinct from our existing colors, or can replace a retired color,
C. the color is awesome

I think with most test paints it’s not 100% out of the question – but the likelihood on something like koi becoming production/lp is fairly low. (In no small part right now due to the fact the pieces it looks best on can’t be made in large batches due to the horn issue). 🙂

After that – keep in mind that for production or LP to be possible, the piece would probably need a stencil OR for someone other than Melody to have the ability and the speed to paint them. The Ocelot Griffins are, I think, the most complex piece to make it into LP so far. Melody did the males and I think a production painter did the females/chicks (I think it was Jordan who no longer works there, but I can’t swear to it).

Grab bags are a bit of an exception – Melody has said before why she can do grab bags is because she doesn’t have to paint them any specific way. If a pattern doesn’t come out quite right or she gets tired of one thing and switches to another, that’s fine because they’re all supposed to be different. 🙂

If Brandi does a good job with the grab bag dragons, maybe there’s more of a chance of us seeing some complex LP patterns.

We pretty much have stopped calling things Artists Editions. In the past we would use that for anything that we thought was too complex for production, and for any of Olimpia’s colors, but then we would run into problems when some of these colors turned out to be easier to paint than thought, or we would want to do a simplified version for production and couldn’t because we had already made it off limits by calling it an Artist’s Edition!

Why were all of Olimpia’s pieces considered artist edition, but most pieces by others just called test paints? Just curious how her’s were different than other test paints.

Maybe because she was painting several years ago – before Windstone moved from California and before the whole “Test Paint” vs “Artist’s Edition” thing was worked out.

I think that Olimpia was the first Windstone production painter to also create special paint schemes. (I don’t consider Melody a production painter, though I’m sure she does her share.)

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply!
That does clear it up for me, thank you. I was just getting quite confused! So with all the test paints that are released, there’s nothing to say they won’t become production/limited in the future? Like the koi test paints, for example? ;-P
Thanks again Melody! You’re great XD

We could do simple Koi patterns if we used stencils.
-maybe a gb edition of koi standing kirins.

Koi standing baby Kirens?! That’d be AMAZING! =D

Freehanded would take a lot more work than airbrushing over a stencil. I’m sure they wouldn’t all be exactly the same, with color variation and all that. And who knows how many stencil designs would be used?