Posts tagged Color

chaddiecakes:

LMAO OKAY OKAY SO.

AFTER MUCH DELIBERATION WITH MYSELF (what to include, what not) i’ve finally figured out what to put on my colour tutorial! LSKDJSKLDGJ. i’ve split two parts with multiple subparts! the first part will cover a bunch of rules that you’d PROBS find in a OTHER TUTORIALS/artbooks and are THEREFORE pretty important! i’ll call these the *~*CAE…SICS~*~* b/c they are basics which i (CAE) think are NECESSARY to understand the reasoning in the second part of this tutorial (which will be how i personally stylize/apply/bend/break???? these rules)!

 i’ll call this second part APPLI…CAE..TIONS. 

applicaetions are way heavier on actual colour coordination/palette making (AND I MAKE UP MY OWN TERMS OOOO), as opposed to CAESICS which are AGAIN more based on universal terminology. CAESICS can totally be skipped if you know what I mean by… “hue/saturation/luminosity” and “colour relativity (AKA warmer blue/cooler red).” 

DSFKLDJF DISCLAIMER: I AM BY NO MEANS AN EXPERT AT THIS GAME. and really, the only kind of training i have is… lots and lots and lots of practice??? COUGHS MOVING ON

A. part one: CAESICS

1. - hue/saturation/luminosity
2. - colour mixing
3. - colour wheel (kinda)
4. - colour warmth/colour coolness
5. - color relativity

B part two: APPLICAETIONS

1. - colour “weight”
2. - general palette tips
3. - palette breakdown
4. - shading with colour!
5. - last thoughts.

Read More

(via art-resources)

notzilon:

Okay! Finally answering this, because I wanted to talk in-depth and needed some time to get my thoughts together! Hold on to your butts, because this is gonna stretch your dash worse than a traffic cone up a porn star’s vagina. PRESENTING:

Doctored, Strange Colors

or

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Be The Bomb

This isn’t meant to be a coloring tutorial. This isn’t going to teach you color theory. This is simply meant to be an explanation of my techniques and an attempt to explain how I think about things, and it’s probably going to be really, really long. Also, I’d like to add in a disclaimer: my old habits aren’t bad things on their own. Everything I used has a place! The issue is that I stopped using the materials at my disposal as tools, and started using them as crutches and excuses. Style is something that should go over your knowledge and skill of form, not something to disguise or excuse construction mistakes. Think of it like the icing on top of a cake - if the cake was poorly baked, no amount of icing will really save it. In terms of color, instead of actually THINKING, I relied on my icing for far too long.

To start with anon, let me explain how I used to do my coloring, with the aid of my beautiful assistant, Ms. Feferi Peixes With Short Fluffy Hair:

What a cutie! I’m going to be using this sketch to explain most everything here. So, my old technique:

1: Set the sketch to multiply, color in the entire area with a single color. I went ahead and colored in the horns because for whatever reason I make horns these dayglo fluorescent things that never really have shadows.

2: Toss down where your light is on the same layer. Use a soft brush at around ~60-70 opacity. I never use multiple layers in this, it’s just blending and shaping on the same one - think of it like sculpting a three-dimensional figure on a two-dimensional plane.

3. Using the eyedropper tool, use the small gradients of color between your lightsource and base shadow to figure out what your midtones will be. I create my lines this way, by simply leaving the shadow color behind and sculpting around until I get the shapes I want.

4. Slap down some hilights and detail and call it a day. Pop a brewski or something.

And hey, it looks pretty good! It’s pretty passable as long as you keep it on a white background, because using the technique only in this method will cause some problems, mainly:

A. It leaves no room for color depth, midtones, reflected light, or anything else and

B. When using this technique for an entire scene (in which you simply bucketfill an area with your shadow color then go to town) the end results are REALLY DULL.

So, this served as a quandary for me. The following is some ideas and methods that I used to change how I see and use color.

LIMIT YOURSELF.

You’re not going to break out of using nothing but dull colors if you don’t use brighter tones. That doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with neutral colors, or that you can never use darks! Lord, no. This is simply for the purpose of changing how you think and what colors you consider in your mental palette. It’s an exercise, not a rule. Simply put, the more often you work with colors outside of your comfort range, the more likely it is that your comfort range with grow.

Use the tools available to you.

There are a LOT of websites out there about color, and color design. Two of my favorites are Color Scheme Designer and Kuler. Again, these are not crutches, and they are not go-to places to generate palettes. What they are, are ways to gather ideas and inspiration. CSD is a good place to look for what colors might go well with a shade you’re already using, while Kuler has beautiful palettes already made up for you to study.

Do color studies, but don’t copy.

Go grab the work of an artist, photographer, or whatever that you really love in terms of color. For this, I’m going to use one of my favorites, Mary Blair:

Grab your eyedropper tool, but wait! We’re not going to be using these colors. We’re going to be looking at the colors used to understand the relationship between them, so we can learn and understand. Let’s look at the purple/blue bird, the orange/black bird, and the white tree.

Look at that! The white and black aren’t white and black at all. The white’s actually a very pale yellow, while the black is a very dark brown. Even in the blue bird, the hue shifts between the body and the tail. When you do this, you’re not looking for simple shades. You’re looking to understand relationships. Generally speaking, pure black/white/grey doesn’t look too good, but can work in the right environment. Shifting the hue of a color when picking a darker shade will often add interest, rather than simply picking a darker shade of the same hue. Which brings me to—

Vary your hues.

I picked four random colors. The top row is using the same hue and saturation, with varying only the shade to create different tones. On the bottom row, I allow myself to change the hue and saturation to get a much different palette - either going in a warmer or cooler direction, depending on what I’m interested in making my palette. I also picked a hilight color in the opposite direction. This is a fine way to pick colors in a vacuum and is a good starting point to start picking your colors, but again, doesn’t allow for picking reflected light/color and the like. That depends on what colors you’re using together.

Use your colors to express form.

More to do with shading than anything, but color is a part of shading as well. Here, let’s use Fef as a model again, but this time something from my private low-effort doodle folder where everyone is apparently a pinup model (coming to an AU near you not really):

On the left, the sketch set to multiply, or where the lines would probably go otherwise. On the right, the coloring on its own. You can still make out what’s going on, as well as the volume of her shapes looking at the colors. That’s a good thing. Even without lines, or without digital painting - you should still give an illusion of depth and presence.

Don’t be afraid.

Go ahead. Say fuck it. Boldness doesn’t come on its own. Mess around with your colors. Throw down everything until something sticks. Play around until something looks good. Give a cyclops chick with dark grey hair a lime green shine.

TL;DR:

Seek to understand. If there’s anything I preach on this blog, I think it’s to attempt to understand before anything else. Don’t simply look at colors, look at how they work. Look at how they relate to one another. Whether you’re using neutrals, darks, brights, or pastels, understanding and studying will help you more than you know.

You’ve made it to the end!! Good luck in your future endeavors, and I hope that I was able to properly convey the methods I used while improving myself. 

(via simonist)

dresdencodak:

I mentioned before some of my favorite character designs in the world of comics and have been meaning to tackle this subject again.  I came to realize, however, that “character design” is itself a fairly massive subject, and that it would be best to break the topic down into separate installments.  Today, true believers, we’re going to talk about outfits and costumes, which are often a pivotal part of a character’s design.

3 Essential Questions

Clothing can convey quite a bit of conscious and unconscious information to the reader, but it should never be doing 100% of the legwork.  Body language, shape and overall behavior all come into play when building a character, and the trick is to figure out what clothing can do that these other elements can’t.  To get started, it’s important to ask some basic questions about your character before jumping into costume design.

1) Costume Hierarchy

How often does this character appear?  Is it a main character or a side one? Primary characters have more complex needs than side characters, which is to say that the more information you have about your character, the more that can be conveyed in their appearance.  Additionally, the more frequent the character appears, the more versatile the design needs to be.

2) Environmental Relationship

If it’s a side character that only ever appears in one setting, for example, you need only design the outfit to fit in that environment.  If they are a main character, though, chances are you’ll need the outfit to mesh with more than one setting.  

3) The Naked Test

Is your character recognizable without any clothes on?  Body types, especially those of the main cast, should be distinctive even without the help of any outfits.  The naked form is the foundation of all character design.  Before you start dressing your body, make sure it’s a body worth dressing.

Once you’ve sufficiently answered these questions, it’s time to jump into the actual design phase!

Shape

Every character, no matter how complex, should be designed around an overal unique visual shape.  This theme should not repeat in any other character.  This shape should be readable enough that if you were to shrink all your characters into a super-simplified cartoony state, they should still be distinguishable.  Character designs follow a hierarchy: you grab the reader’s attention with the most essential information and then invite them to investigate the details.  If important elements of your design are only evident in the details, then it needs to be reworked.  If your character is not completely distinguishable in silhouette, it needs to be reworked.  Detail should always radiate from the core theme.

Kim and Vonnie stay distinct in a few ways.  

The primary difference in shape between the above two characters is one of curves versus triangles.  Vonnie is very angular, and her clothing’s angles mimic the scaffolding of an art deco building to emphasize her height and posture.  Kim’s outfit makes her look shorter, but jaunty.  There are a lot of soft curves going on there to make her seem younger and more innocent.

Action

What does your character do?  In what way would their clothing reasonably convey how they spend their time?  This is an easy question if it’s a uniformed occupation, but it certainly doesn’t stop there.  A more bookish or socially inept character is often prone to mismatched clothing, while a person of a very high social status is often wearing clothing that is physically less practical than those of the working class.

How does your character move?  What are their default postures and body language?  A good outfit should accentuate the body movements that you deem most important.  If a character stoops and hunches a lot, their clothes can augment that behavior.  For example, Kim is frequently hunched over, so I tend to dress her with a hood that’s shaped to go with poor posture, as well as a repeating “arch” shape to suggest this basic form.

Communication

How much does the character wish to communicate with their clothing?  Not everyone wears their personality on their sleeve, nor is everyone especially fashion-conscious.  Nothing’s worse than having a cast where everyone is immaculately dressed and overdesigned.  A more outgoing character might be more aware of their appearance, while a more introverted one may be less concerned.  To add another layer, a character may dress a certain way to disguise something they don’t want to show to others, just as someone might act overconfidently to hide their insecurities.  You can tell your audience a lot about your character through what that character chooses to display to others.

Repetition

Core shapes and patterns should repeat on the outfit.  The entire design should exhibit some bilateral cohesion, which is to say if you were to cut the character in half horizontally or vertically, each part should look like it belongs to the other.  

As mentioned, Kim has a lot of solid colors and arch shapes which are broken up by fabric and metal seams, with very few sharp edges.  

Vonnie, on the other hand, is structured almost like a building, with vertical lines and triangles that take the shape of supporting beams on the surface of her outfit.  Her triangles and broad horizontal planes repeat throughout her outfit, including her glasses.

This extends to multiple costumes worn by the same character.  Even if a particular character changes clothes, the core shapes should still be evident.  Scott Pilgrim is a good example of this.  Most of the cast change clothes frequently, but in each scene it’s generally easy to recognize the characters by the “type” of clothing they choose.  The details change, but the essential shapes do not.

Color and Contrast

Different colors can imply different moods.  ”Winter” colors like cooler blues and purples can suggest an introspective or reserved personality, while warmer colors like yellow or red can imply a more energetic attitude.  If your character only ever interacts in one type of setting, you only have to worry about how those colors will fit in one environmental color palette.  If, however, your character needs to mesh well with more than one environment (as is usually the case with protagonists), you have to make sure your character’s colors will fit with multiple settings.

Also, don’t be fooled by superhero comics: it’s generally bad form to have two dominant colors in a single costume.  My personal rule of thumb is to have no more than one prime color in an outfit design, followed by a secondary and then supporting colors.  

In the case of Kim’s outfit in Dark Science, the primary color is black, with the secondary being off-white.  These are then supported by the muted blue and silver accents that appear in both her prosthetics and clothing.  Color and value contrast is very important, especially for a main character, which is why Kim’s basic palette can be reduced to black and white without losing any essential information.  

Vonnie’s outfit is more colorful, but less contrasted as a whole.  Green dominates and is blocked in by a secondary, warmer black.  Green is the complementary color of red, and so her clothes naturally bring attention to her hair and reddish skin tone, inherently highlighting more sexual elements than Kim (whose black outfit essentially matches her hair).  White is also present, but it’s only a supporting color here.

Simplicity

Above all else, keep it simple.  Comic characters are not pin-ups or other illustrations; you have to draw them over and over again, from various angles.  If you pile on too much detail, you’ll wear yourself out slogging through all the bits every time you have to draw them.  

If you follow all these rules, good costume design should create this basic pattern when presented to a reader:

1. Read:  Silhouettes and essential shapes should be instantly recognizable
2. Inform:  The costume should then tell the reader essential things about the character
3. Compel:  The costume should then invite the reader to learn more about the character
4. Move:  The costume should never impede the flow of action within the comic

If you stick to these basic guidelines, you’ll never fail.  Next up on character design: bodies and faces!

(via simonist)