Editor-in-Chief at GameDeveloper.com, Berklee College of Music game design lecturer, BJJ Purple Belt πŸ€Όβ€β™€οΈ, hobbyist game dev, beginner pixel artist, sometimes screenwriter, fitness dork, volunteer EMT. She/her.


jesncin
@jesncin

Welcome to the workshop πŸ‘¨β€πŸ«! Come take a seat if you'd like to learn a quick thing or two about color.


Color theory can be really intimidating when you're starting out. So I've simplified it to being about 3 things:

Let's elaborate on each of these points.

Starting with "Mixing Colors"

If you get overwhelmed when thinking about secondary and tertiary colors just think of them as "what happens when colors mix" and don't over think it from there! πŸ˜€

When opposite colors (colors that are on opposite sides of the color wheel) mix, the color loses its intensity/saturation. It's like mixing black and white together to make grey, the color's not super bright or super dark anymore.

Now onto "Color Combos"

(this presentation was for comics so you'll mostly be seeing comics examples)

Color Harmony is not to be confused with "harmonious colors" which is another name for analogous color schemes (colors that are close together on the color wheel). Yeah, annoying.

Oh but wait, there's more-! Let's talk about ✨simultaneous contrast✨

I categorized this under color combos because the concept isn't always about color schemes. When you simplify it, it's really just about what happens when different colors are placed together.

Simultaneous contrast is very important to think about when making your characters look like they're occupying the environments and lighting they're in.

I have my own personal ways of figuring this out for my art, but that's a whole other tutorial. Let's just keep this concept in mind for now!

And last but not least, let's talk about the properties of color

The properties of color are the ways we can talk about a single color.

Let's say you colored a drawing of Spiderman for me.

  • If I say I want you to add more saturation to that spidey, you'd make the red more intense and less grey.
  • If I tell you I want more shade added to spidey, you'd make it darker
  • If I suggest that you make spidey warmer, you'd take that red and nudge it away from the purple-ish side of red and closer to the orange side. I call these colors "neighboring colors" because they live next to each other on the color wheel 🏘️

And that's it!

That's your intro to color theory! I hope that was helpful. πŸ‘¨β€πŸ«

Class dismissed, have a nice weekend πŸ‘‹


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