AuthorTopic: Generic 16+16 color palette  (Read 8784 times)

Offline Arne

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Generic 16+16 color palette

on: September 25, 2013, 07:38:41 pm
People have been asking me for a 32 color palette, but I figured I'd make it easier for me by just expanding on the old 16 color palette (not allowing myself to change those). That palette was focused on RGBO and several darks. It was missing CMY hues, a skin tone (sacrificed it for the yellow), some greys and more strong graphical mid-tones usable for text and such. The first step was to just fill in those gaps, so I did that and then started nudging the colors around, but it's hard to tell at this point if the colors are usable.



Comments:
Two grays at the either side of the old one. Note that the darker gray is a bit colder to meet up with the other dark colds. Unsure what this does to its role as a bridge color. I haven't really checked how these gray values ramp into other colors.

A wine red / dried blood red which I figure could be useful. Different from the old-poop brown, but perhaps the dark-pink later gets a bit too close for comfort.

A more bold orange for explosions. Fits into the brown yellow ramp.

My favorite yellow! Maybe even my favorite color.

Now, the requested purples. And three of them! I'm quite unsure about the values for these, but would like them to play well with ramps and maybe even fit into a skintone ramp (or as saturation points to spice up skin tones). Also, I felt that the old palette was very focused on darks and brights so I wanted some mid-tone colors. I'm thinking, Kirby-type creature light and shadow, or something like that. It's sort of hard to tell how well these work without doing some mockups or manual indexing of existing game screens (black BG games will work differently from say, sky BG games like Mario). I'm worried that the dark-pink is too close to the red. I added a colder version too, simply because it was missing.

The promised skin-tone returns! I want this expansion to be Eroge-certified! Unsure how it will handle darker tans though. Or tan lines! I suppose the lighter pink could be put a value notch above the skin-tone rather than below because tan lines are often colder in tone, but... it seems to be more useful as it is.

Cold green to fill in the green ramp. Could be colder.

Two teals. Just added them to fill in the blank slots, unsure about their use.

A purple dark blue, just because the old one was so green (meant to be used for water).

A regular blue to plop into the blue ramp. Could be a tad more saturated perhaps.

Two muddy yellows that I hate, but they fill in a missing part. Maybe usable for burnt grass and such. Maybe the dark one should have a Metal Slug hue?


--- That's it. The tricky part about multipurpose palettes like this is that it's tempting to change a color because it works better on a single test (or because it looks "new" and you forget the use/justification of the old version). I think I'll do some tests manually re-indexing some game screens (Photoshop is kinda crap at indexing). If you want to fiddle around with it, feel free. I don't know which role a lot of these new colors could play, but my hope is that they make non-black BG games more feasible.

Offline ptoing

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Re: Generic 16+16 color palette

Reply #1 on: September 25, 2013, 08:58:56 pm
Good start, I am sure they could be tweaked more.

About the teals, those are good for shallow ocean water and the likes, which looks way more teal/green than blue. And I would not worry too much about the red and dark pink being too close, that is hard to avoid. And you will have a nice pair to dither with, which is worth something too.
There are no ugly colours, only ugly combinations of colours.

Offline DawnBringer

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Re: Generic 16+16 color palette

Reply #2 on: September 25, 2013, 10:36:03 pm
Expanding an existing palette can be quite limiting, but you got a good start here. A few quick observations:

Offline rikfuzz

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Re: Generic 16+16 color palette

Reply #3 on: September 26, 2013, 09:01:10 am
I also used your 16 colour palette (or maybe it was actually dB's) as a starting point for a 32 colour palette for my project (it's probably diverged quite far from the original at this point). 



Produced hundreds of assets already with it, and it's working well for me. I know it's not perfect.. pinks could contrast more which is one thing that might get tweaked at the end if it doesn't hurt any previously drawn bits. 

Offline Arne

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Re: Generic 16+16 color palette

Reply #4 on: September 26, 2013, 01:41:35 pm
rikfuzz> More pastels and grays? I was thinking of taking that route because it makes cross-ramping easier. Is this the palette used for your avatar?

DawnBringer> Interesting, I used ot make programs which plotted palettes like this. Unsure if value gap near darks is a problem when I'm using such saturated colors. if I'm to bridge that gap, I probably need to add a low sat color there. Also unsure if a gap in the purples is a problem...

Been trying out the palette a little and made some minor changes:
-Gave the orange more power (too close to red before as noted by DawnBringer)
-Lightened the pinks and skin-tone a tiny tad (skintone was really close to my new yellow which I saturated a bit more). I feel like the new Kirby pink ramps better with my old more desaturated skin-tone purple shade.
-Dark green is colder. It felt a touch too warm before.
-Tried out the teals for beaches (and saturated one a little to space it from lblue), More blue in plain blue, -Stole some Metal Slug dirty yellows as they seem more usable as they can work with the grays. Unsure if they should be so close in value though. It would be nice if one for them could be used for wet sand. I don't have a good sand color though (desat light yellow). And nothing to make skeletons with (like rikfuzz's light yellow green bone colors).


If I were to sacrifice a color, I'd merge the two darker purples, perhaps. Or maybe dark green and dark teal.
« Last Edit: September 26, 2013, 01:43:20 pm by Arne »

Offline rikfuzz

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Re: Generic 16+16 color palette

Reply #5 on: September 26, 2013, 02:21:55 pm
Yeah it's the same palette used in my avatar..  Wanted to show a full example showing the range, but didn't have anything but individual assets on hand.