Colour 15

Video Games- Katamari, Call of Duty, Team Fortress 2, Kingdom hearts 2

I recently re-played a few games specifically to look at their colour schemes and pallets. This first game i re-played was katamari damacy on ps2. 

The games is quite surreal as you play a race of aliens collecting junk from earth by rolling a ball around, similar to what a dung beetle does. Eventually you'll collect enough junk to make your ball the size of a planet.

As you play the game, you go around different environments, starting at a small area like a bedroom and eventually start wondering cities. Everything is coloured as they are in real life but the colours are very flat and also fairly vibrant. I feel it really reflects off the mood of the game as it's a very cheerful and fun game but also fairly surreal and i think the vector art based style really helps to portray that element of the game.

This a piece of concept from the game. It's very obvious by looking at this concept and the use of it's colour, what type of game or mood this videogame portrays.

Call of duty has a very grungy colour palette, using mostly broken colours and shades rather than pure hues. I find these colours a bit dull and not very exciting but they do an excellent job of portraying war. Without any pure hues or bright colours, your always set in an environment which is dirty and harsh.

The image above is a scene where you get ambushed in a field. The obvious colour of choice is green but again, we dont see any pure hues. the grass itself is a dirty green and so is the moss on the rocks. They all use a variety of shades. The sky is also a shade of blue. Green and blue are both harmonious but the shades of their colours make them less vibrant. It's also an accurate representation of the real world as we rarely see alot of just pure colours.

Team Fortress 2 takes two elements of what i mentioned before and puts them into one game. As you can see from the screenshots above, the game is very bright. Alot of the colours are bright and saturated and most of the levels takes place outside, in the sun. This brightens the entire game and makes the colours you see even brighter. We also see a very obvious distinction between the two teams with their bright red or blue shirts. The art direction and style is also very cartoony.

However the game is a team based shooting game, based around killing the other teams. It's an odd mix to combine a bright and cartoony, almost child like art direction, with a very grim subject.

Another game i played was kingdom hearts 2, which is an adventure game with characters and worlds from the disney universe.

The story line has a fairly serious tone of trying to stop a horde of monsters taking over the disney worlds while at the same time you are trying to find and rescue your friends before they get killed. So the game has a very serious tone but as they include characters from disney, the art direction and also colour takes influence from the cartoons.

The game does a good job of portraying how serious thee scenario is throughout the game. In some sections where your travelling on a spaceship, the colours are very vibrant and undisturbed. The objects also use a variety of colours and are very saturated. Here you get a sense that it's supposed to be fun and energetic, which it is.

As you get nearer to the end where the story unfolds, the world is very dark and uses more shades of colours and also uses sinister combinations of colours like purple and red. However you also see that some parts of the colours are still fairly undisturbed and fits into the whole theme of the game.

Colour 14

Edward Hopper


Edward Hopper is an american fineartist who deals with the subject of isolation. What's particularly interesting is that his use of colour doesn't usually portray this.

You see in these images that the colours we see are very vibrant. The first image deals mostly with primary colours such as red and tints of blues. Before i mentioned that red is often used as a colour to symbolise danger and you can see it used in alot of action sequences in films and games. However it is not seen in that way in this image. The second image has alot more broken colours and deals with some more shades.

This piece is quite interesting. You can see a clear division of light and dark in this image and in turn, a separation between broken colours and purer hues. On the left you can see a film is being played and you get the impression that there's a lot of people there. When you start to move to the right image, you can see a woman standing on the side by herself.

What's interesting is that we often associate isolation with darkness. However this has been turned on it's head in this painting as we see the area which is more saturated is the area where the woman feels isolated. We even see pure hues of the primary colours in these areas, the red curtains, yellow walls and blue dress. However when you look to the left, you see alot more broken reds and oranges, even though that's where alot of people are. I found this an interesting way to narrate the painting by turning what we know upside down.

Colour 13

Pixar


Pixar use colour incredibly well. It's used in a fairly obvious way aswell to help get across the mood of the scene or film altogether.

These storyboards are for Finding Nemo. They showcase a fantastic use of colour in terms of variety and story telling. The first image is  the sequence where nemo is caught. You see near the start it's very bright and also colourful where he's safe and with the other fishes. But as they see the boat, there is only one colour tone and it's a bit unsettling. When you see nemo get captured and his dad starts swimming through the fishes, the bright and pure hue of the blue starts getting murky and it reflects on the situation that they find themselves in.

The second image shows the scene where Marlin and Dory are getting chased by the angler fish. Obviously it's a very dark scene and the blues almost become grey.
Next you see nemo in the fishtank. The colour scheme here gradually turns red and you start to get the feeling of discomfort as red symbolises danger and also we have been very accustomed by the overall blue colour scheme. This is kind of a false direction in which they lead us into because as we know, there was nothing dangerous or threatening about what was happening inside the tank.

Up is also another film which takes colour as a tool of story telling. We see it throughout the opening sequence of the film.

This is a very obvious example in the scene where the two characters get married. Ellies family is very energetic and you see this through their actions but also the colours in their clothes contain some very bright hues and quite dynamic colours. Whereas when you look at Carl's family, they where nothing but grey white and black. Even in the hair colours you see this difference. There's much more browns and blondes in Ellie's family whereas in Carl's, most area a darker brown/black or bald.

 Here we see a massive difference in colour, though lighting also helps with this effect. The first image is where the house is just re-done and Carl and Ellie start their new life. So we feel a sense of happiness and prosperity  from this setting due to the richness of colour and the purity of it.
At the end of the sequence, we see that all the colours are broken and the whole feel and tone is very dark. We still see the colours pushing through the darkness but it's not at all as prominent as it was before.

We also see this kind of dynamic difference near the middle of the sequence. We see Carl and Ellie painting and preparing a room for the baby that they are planning to have. Again all the colours are vibrant we see pure colours and the more dominant colours in this scene (blue, yellow) are primary colours so it's a very innocent sort of setting.

In literally the next scene, we realise that Ellie is unable to bear a child and this is shown through the lighting but also the lack of any colour. The colour on her dress is drowned out by the dominant shades. The fact that these scenes are next to each other makes them twice as dramatic.

Also it's important to note that there is no dialogue throughout this scene. So the scene is literally communicating through the use of colour as well as other elements such as lighting and music.

I think this progression and story telling through colour is important as i want to do something similar for my game concept.

My game is based during the plague of London . Through my game the character goes through different environments and eventually ends in a battle during the Great Fire. I think i will have a similar build up in my colour concept, with the main colour scheme being red,orange and yellow at the end sequence.

Colour 12

In all three of these images, there is an obvious and dominant colour scheme which is obviously green or of some sort of variant.

The first image has a turquoise colour pallette which covers the entire image with different tints and shades. The whole feel of the image is quite cold and harsh. You then get the red orangey glow coming from the eyes and jetpack of the character which jumps out from the green. You also get the sharp blue jumping out because of its contrast and saturation.

The second has a more dirty tone. The greeen is alot more broken here and you also get tints and shades of these broken colours, which gives a great depiction of war or post apocalyptic setting. here you dont get as much complimentary colours, only the subtle flames to the side and a light coming from the spaceships. It's the blue lights that really stand out in these due to the contrast and sharpness of it.

In the third image, you just get blasted by all sorts of tints, shades and levels of saturation of green.

All three of these images use the colour green but they portray different moods and feelings altogether. The first has a very cold and industrial feel to it and the second has the feeling of war and has the right kind of greens to make a rundown sort of environment. Both these images use green to represent an environment which isn't very welcoming. i find this interesting as i always associate green with nature, simialr to the third image.

Colour 11

Nick Knight - Susan smoking

First of i really like the composition of this photo. I think the pose of Susan is very unusual but interesting. It sort of suggests a very sophisticated and elegant sort of class in a way and this also reflected in her colours. Her jacket is a very saturated and dark purple which symbolises wealth and her overall appearance in this piece is very crisp and makes her clearly the focus.

However she divides the photo diagonally in half with her posture and also guides the eye up the top of the image. you see the saturation of her colours and also the contrast of the silhouette and the background near her feet. As you guide your way up, you see the explosion of yellows and green in the background. It's strange because the yellows take up slightly more space than the purple does but because it's so blurred and dispersed, it becomes alot more subtle and submissive.

Steven Miesel - unititled

In this photo, i found that all the colours were fairly balanced but the overall feel of the photo was fairly cool due to the slightly dominant blues and whites.

Although blue is a very dominant colour and theres alot of it in the photo, it's pushed back in quite a literal sense. The two figures also block some of the blue walls which makes their apprearence less dominant. On top of that, the red chairs and yellow/green table sit almost undisturbed from the rest. You can see the entire object and  it's colour without much getting the way of it, so their presence becomes more prominent. 

Skoglund - Fox games

I found this image and thought it was quite striking and relates back to the post about sin city and the dominance of colours, although this doesn't involve any other colours. However the use of red portrays a various number of meanings. For one there's a literal resemblance as foxes are a similar colour. Also they give a sense of danger as they're in large numbers and also in a place where they don't usually appear. Lastly the use of red is very dynamic and shows how active they are compared to their dull environment.

Colour 10

Hethe - The Prime ministers witch



I like the use of broken reds in this concept. You can see in the background, the red is very dominant as it fills up a large amount of the painting You can also see the breaking up of it as it gets darker and murkier as it gets closer to the edge and away from the light source.

The red also reaches out from the window and is reflected onto the oldmans clothes and woman, acting as a rim light.

http://hethesrodawa.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2008-03-05T09%3A14%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=15

Here i found an artist who's been using the nintendo 3ds to sketch and do some colour concepts. i was looking at the bottom left concept in particular. This is a really good example of the artist using two complimentary colours (orange blue) and mixing them to create broken colours.

At the light source, you can see the orange and blue being very contrasting. However when we get to the shadows on the wooden floors and shed, you can see hints of the blue in there. Same with the men, we see hints of orange in their shadows. This makes the whole image work together in terms of colour. If black shadows were used, it would seem very out of place and may make certan areas pop out where you wouldnt want it to.

Colour 9

Advanced Beauty is a project which aims to collaborate musicians, artists, programmers and annimators from all over the world. The project is ongoing and was orginally influenced by sound and interpretating this into a visual and digital format.

These use a variety of sharp hues and also broken colours to define shadow and show the shae of the forms.

http://vimeo.com/1197991

These are obviously a representation of sound and colour isn't exactly the main focus of this video. However the use of colour is very clever dynamic and also very busy in most parts.

http://vimeo.com/1198743

This is a piece from the same project. The colours here are alot more primary and the saturation is very high. This makes the whole mood of the video to be very energetic. Even without the movement of the clouds, you can feel the enrgy through the vibrance of the colours.

Colour 8

Above are extreme examples of colour being dominant and standing out from the scene. The above concept is quite hard to tell as the colour palette is quite subtle and the whole scene is quite muted. However on the image below, you see a shot from Sin city which uses colour in a unique way. throughout the film, the whole film is shot in black and white except for ccertain key objects.

This is another example however this is in an all colour piece. We see that the red and yellow stands out as in term of colour, it is at it's purest hues. all the other colours are either a bit more muted or murky. They are also dominant due to the amount of spce they occupy throughout the painting.

Colour 7

Dave Rapoza

http://cghub.com/images/view/159057/

This image shows a strong presence in the red tones and the lighting is very intense in one area so it gives the overall tone of the picture to be dangerous and also quite angry. Without looking at the subject of the concept, we can tell from the reds, oranges and murky greens and blacks that the theme of the image is strong.

The two complementary colours in this image is red and green, but the green has become very murky from the yellow lighting, which dirties out the green but intensifies the red.

This kind of colour scheme is great for concept artwork as alot of artwork for games center around war or a derelict landscape. The mixture of two complementary colours gives us a really muddy and grungy look which suits the pallete of many concept arts well.

http://cghub.com/images/view/73280/

The above artwork is another concept piece by ManiakS. It shows another example of a concept piece using broken tones of green. This time it seems like it's mixed with shades and tones of yellow. But we can see it gives the same effect as before.

The dominant colour is the broken green and gives a very abandoned feel to the image, almost post-apocalyptic.

We can also see see that the red cape catches your attention as its quite saturated and the hue is purest out of all the colours on the image. We can also see that green is used to create shadows and the creases in the cape. I think this makes the colour belong to the image more and makes it look more natural. As the entire image is a green/yellow, it makes sense that the light influences some of the tones on the red, as well as all the other objects in the image.

Colour 6

Twinings advert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdkcsDueSMM
The advert uses a variety of tints and shades throughout. Although the two major colours are not quite complimentary, they still have vast range of tints of shades.

It starts off with a woman on a boat during a storm. The dominant colour here is a dark green blue as the sea and sky is filled with mostly shades of this colour. It gives a sense of danger and despair as the colour is fairly dark but also quite dull. With the sky and sea being the of the same colour scheme, you get a further sense of isolation, paired with the wide shots.

However the main character stands out from the whole scenery. She is almost dressed in complimentary colours from the scene as her colour scheme is a red/pink whereas the sea is a blue/green.

As the advert progresses, you see the colours of the sky change from the dark blue to a more orangey pink. This in turn reflects off the sea and changes the entire colour scheme of the advert.
The colours now become more harmonic and the subtle tints of pink and orange work very well with the characters dress. She doesn't blend in however as her colours are far more saturated then the background.

Colour 5

Today i played around with the kuler feature in photoshop cs5. i was first introduced to this in one of the colour sessions from another student.

It's a window in cs5 which comes with different colour schemes which consists of 5 colour. they come in presets such as "honeypot" which comes in a set mostly dark yellows/light browny orange or "winter road" which consists of light blues to dark navy.

another option is having the ability to create your own colour schemes. In this, a colour wheel appears with a drop down menu, allowing you to choose complimentary colours, shades, compound and more. After choosing one of the modes, you can use the picker to chose any of the colours on the wheel. the program then automatically chooses colours relevant to the colour mode that you chose.

http://www.techiequest.com/pic/kuler-1.jpg

The image shows one of the things kuler can do.

This would be especialy usefull in finding colour schemes in concept arts or finding colour combinations for other types of projects.

Colour4

The game dark souls uses a very muted colour pallete throughout the game to convey a very gothic and horror type genre.
The majority of the time, you mostly see the dark grungey colours of the stone walls and wooden floorboards. I think it works well as the shades of  these colours make the environment uncomfortable and almost claustrophobic as it makes the surroundings dark and intimidating to the player. I think this
is a very interesting effect as tones and shades have a powerful effect on the space inside a room or setting.


http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/116/1167163/dark-souls-20110510032629626_640w.jpg
http://media1.gameinformer.com/imagefeed/screenshots/DarkSouls/Spell1.jpg
http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/116/1167163/dark-souls-20110510032636391_640w.jpg

As you can tell from the images, the colour pallet is limited to the sort of dark browns and greens but they use a huge range of different hues and shades of those colours. I think it shows that a colour range for a movie or game doesn't require a colour pallet which touches all the colours of the spectrum and that a simple colour scheme can be very effective.

Colour3

I really enjoy the works of Alphonse Mucha and has had a influence on some of the projects ive worked on in the past. As part of art nouveau
he works around nature and has some very interesting colour schemes in some of his works.

http://www.joieart.net/artwork/spotlights/mucha_champagne.jpg
For example here he uses a very warm colour pallete with the orange browns and pinks. It's a good choice of harmonious colours as the orange and browns work very well together and resemble that autumn season. Not forgetting that the colours also work with the tranquillity of the image.
Although the browns and oranges are very vibrant, i feel that they are balanced out with the pink and skin tone colour as they occupy a large space in the image.

http://www.belvedere.at/jart/prj3/belvedere/images/img-db/1211556689000.jpg
Heres an interesting piece using complementary colours. As we can see the dominant colour and tones are blue/green. We see it plastered in the background and around her face, we can see shadows are filled with a subtle blue tint. However the whole image looks faded and the colours are a lot more subtle. This doesn't effect the contrast of the blue and orange though as the orange cloak still jumps out, just not nearly as much as if the colours were more saturated.

Colour2

In design for posters and game covers, there are lots of examples where colour is used to portray a certain mood of the game. There are other factors such as font and composition too. There are many example in video game front covers. For example "Fallout" uses very muted and bland colour and tones such as grey and black
and this reflects on the post-apocalyptic setting it has. Mortal Kombat uses warm tones of yellow and red in it's title and has a contrast of blue and orange on the front cover with the characters. This is a really bold and "in-your-face" use of colours and also reflects on what the game is all about.

Colour1

Nature provides really good examples of both harmonious and complimentry colours. Scenes like sunsets and valleys are very obvious in terms of harmonious colours working together. We also associate these scenes as romantic or calming which is a good indication of what kind of emotions colour can convey or inject into people. Other scenes such as apples/strawberries and flowers up against shrubs or trees is an example of contrasting
colours in nature.