In order to get rgba integer value instead of float value, we can do

rgba = cmap(0.5,bytes=True)

So to simplify the code based on answer from Ffisegydd, the code would be like this:

#import colormap
from matplotlib import cm

#normalize item number values to colormap
norm = matplotlib.colors.Normalize(vmin=0, vmax=1000)

#colormap possible values = viridis, jet, spectral
rgba_color = cm.jet(norm(400),bytes=True) 

#400 is one of value between 0 and 1000

There is an illustrative example of how to create custom colormaps here. The docstring is essential for understanding the meaning of cdict. Once you get that under your belt, you might use a cdict like this:

cdict = {'red':   ((0.0, 1.0, 1.0), 
                   (0.1, 1.0, 1.0),  # red 
                   (0.4, 1.0, 1.0),  # violet
                   (1.0, 0.0, 0.0)), # blue

         'green': ((0.0, 0.0, 0.0),
                   (1.0, 0.0, 0.0)),

         'blue':  ((0.0, 0.0, 0.0),
                   (0.1, 0.0, 0.0),  # red
                   (0.4, 1.0, 1.0),  # violet
                   (1.0, 1.0, 0.0))  # blue
          }

Although the cdict format gives you a lot of flexibility, I find for simple gradients its format is rather unintuitive. Here is a utility function to help generate simple LinearSegmentedColormaps:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.colors as mcolors


def make_colormap(seq):
    """Return a LinearSegmentedColormap
    seq: a sequence of floats and RGB-tuples. The floats should be increasing
    and in the interval (0,1).
    """
    seq = [(None,) * 3, 0.0] + list(seq) + [1.0, (None,) * 3]
    cdict = {'red': [], 'green': [], 'blue': []}
    for i, item in enumerate(seq):
        if isinstance(item, float):
            r1, g1, b1 = seq[i - 1]
            r2, g2, b2 = seq[i + 1]
            cdict['red'].append([item, r1, r2])
            cdict['green'].append([item, g1, g2])
            cdict['blue'].append([item, b1, b2])
    return mcolors.LinearSegmentedColormap('CustomMap', cdict)


c = mcolors.ColorConverter().to_rgb
rvb = make_colormap(
    [c('red'), c('violet'), 0.33, c('violet'), c('blue'), 0.66, c('blue')])
N = 1000
array_dg = np.random.uniform(0, 10, size=(N, 2))
colors = np.random.uniform(-2, 2, size=(N,))
plt.scatter(array_dg[:, 0], array_dg[:, 1], c=colors, cmap=rvb)
plt.colorbar()
plt.show()

By the way, the for-loop

for i in range(0, len(array_dg)):
  plt.plot(array_dg[i], markers.next(),alpha=alpha[i], c=colors.next())

plots one point for every call to plt.plot. This will work for a small number of points, but will become extremely slow for many points. plt.plot can only draw in one color, but plt.scatter can assign a different color to each dot. Thus, plt.scatter is the way to go.