After learning a bit of color theory, I was no longer satisfied with the existing color pickers.

I wanted a better representation of the color space to start from, like a set of paints that a painter might use.  It would be larger than a single palette, but more limited than the complete RGB space.  A large collection of colors that I could use to create a palette for any particular piece of pixel art.

I took some individual red, green, and blue components of about equal lightness.  Three blues, five reds, seven greens.  They're in the upper left of the picture.  The lower left has the combination of any two of the components, and the center has the combinations of any three.  The colors in the center have the same data sliced three different ways to better visualize the results. 



The idea is that starting from any particular color, one can create a ramp by moving along a constant direction (horizontal, vertical, up/down, and any of the diagonals).  Starting with a few different colors based on the idea for the pixel art piece, I could create ramps as needed and have a palette that works.

The area on the far right is a scratchpad I used to construct some sample ramps. 

The colors are non-linear in RGB space, which means that hue, lightness, and saturation are not independent. Shifting a color lighter, for example, also means shifting the hue in one direction or another. 

This is the fifth version of this I've put together and the first that I'm mostly satisfied with.  Any feedback is welcome.  Do you think this is a worthwhile exercise?  Is there some part of the spectrum that is missing?  A better choice for the red, green, blue, ramps?

Tourist

I took a shot at the eye.



Tourist

I think the timing is wrong on the limbs of the old man.  A person with a cane has three points of support, and generally would not lift two of them at the same time. 

You've got the cane and one foot hitting at the same time.  This would work for a crutch where the purpose is to reduce the weight on a an injured limb, but a cane is for general support and balance.

Here's a video of a real person with a cane: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Lb-ifffIjs

I don't know if you have enough frames to have a third motion in the animation (leg, leg, cane) but three motions with slightly different timing would break things up nicely.  Having  different points of support at different frames can help guide how the hips and shoulders would move too.

Hope this helps.
Tourist

Swapped the orange and blue colors around to make it a white guy instead of an alien.  Is this more interesting or less?



Tourist

Thanks for correcting me, and thanks for the diagram.

Tourist