I want to talk about color today, and what I think I learned from playing with pixels in my short time. Mainly, I'm referring to hue, saturation, and value. It seems that visual art in any form is about how things react to light, which makes sense since anything visible is due to light. And in pixel art, it's your job as an artist to try to depict a three dimensional form in two-dimensions, and in a grid.

From what I understand, warm colors (red, orange, yellow) are where the light hits strongest, and cool colors (violet, blue, green) are where the shadows are. It works as a wheel.



Opposite colors can be formed here. Main ones are Orange-Blue, Red-Green, and yellow-violet. Meaning, those two color-pairs are the furthest distance from each other. Makes sense why traffic lights are red and green. A good piece should distinguish between elements in a composition, and one way to do that is to use colors. Warm colors would pop out more amongst cool colors than among other warm colors. Simple example.



But, the wheel doesn't talk about earth colors (brown) or black and white or grey. Also, I believe the warmest color is yellow, and the coolest is blue. Maybe the warmest color is orange though...I'm not sure.

On saturation, it appears that the more saturation you add, the more "color" you add, and when you remove it, you remove color. Hence, it'll look grayer. I'm not too sure about this, but I believe a saturated color appears when it's closer to light, and becomes unsaturated when it becomes a shadow. Like with warm/cool colors, saturated colors pop more amongst unsaturated colors, and vice versa.



And finally, value. Value is, I think, the most important characteristic of a color. It defines depth more than the other two characteristics, and for this, it's good to start a piece using only value. Darker colors imply shadows, and whiter colors imply closer proximity to light. A light color pops out more against a dark color, and vice versa.



An interesting I've noticed, when value is 0 or 100, adding hue or saturation will not change the colors in any way.

So, am I correct? What else do you guys know about color?

if you're stuck and find it too difficult, you could always try to simply the subject.

The worst/flat part is his hair. Maybe just do a stone head without the beard or the hair?

I wanted to make a mockup with the character too. Check it out.



Still very WIP, but this is my first real time doing something like this.

It looks weird because when you walk, you dont leap in the air when you cross your legs. You leap when your legs push you off the ground. Here, this is a very useful tool.



Btw, that game looks very fun. Kinda reminds me of Portal. Maybe because I was playing it recently