AuthorTopic: Coloring question  (Read 2358 times)

Offline Lilja

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Coloring question

on: September 20, 2018, 11:01:46 pm


Which color set do you think looks better, that would be more appealing in a game setting? Mostly the only change between them is that darks got darker, and the outline changed from a very dark saturated reddish to pitch black. I really like the dark saturated reddish, but the pitch black ones seem to pop more. I don't know. I'd really like some advice on this sort of coloring. A lot of my favorite artists never use full on pitch black, but I'm wondering if it has a place in games?

Offline eishiya

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Re: Coloring question

Reply #1 on: September 20, 2018, 11:26:40 pm
I think that depends on the environment art. Out of context, it's hard to tell! I could see both of these being good.
One concern I have is that the shadows look rather grey. That's fine if your environments are largely grey/low-saturation, but if they're colourful, then having an ambient hue worked into the shading might look more lively and help unify the palettes more.

Pure black has its place in games, certainly. Many artists prefer to use a slightly lighter colour simply because such a colour can have some hue and saturation to it, which can contribute to the general atmosphere and colour scheme of a game, and because the less intense contrast can be easier on the eyes. If a saturation-less colour works well with your colour scheme and the contrast isn't an issue, then there's no harm in using black.

(Another reason to avoid pure black is technical - some systems treat pure black as transparent, or display transparency as pure black. To make sure the colour is visible and isn't ambiguous with transparency in any context, artists use a lighter colour for 'black", even if it's just a dark grey (e.g. 8,8,8).)

Offline astraldata

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Re: Coloring question

Reply #2 on: September 21, 2018, 04:25:22 pm


Which color set do you think looks better, that would be more appealing in a game setting? Mostly the only change between them is that darks got darker, and the outline changed from a very dark saturated reddish to pitch black. I really like the dark saturated reddish, but the pitch black ones seem to pop more. I don't know. I'd really like some advice on this sort of coloring. A lot of my favorite artists never use full on pitch black, but I'm wondering if it has a place in games?

I agree with eishiya on much of what was pointed out (especially environmental), but there are some other things to consider as well:

Firstly, back in the SNES days, pure black was only rarely used because even "black" could be made into a "warm" or "cool" color to sell the overall mood of the scene by simply changing its hue to a very dark red/maroon or a very dark blue/indigo. The eye would still read it as "black" but the brain would read it as "cold" or "warm" depending on the color chosen.

Square games did this a lot (FF6 and Chrono Trigger are particular examples -- get any screengrab from the game and color pick to check the color and you'll see).


Another thing to consider is that the eye has less work to do if the contrast between the lightest "light" and the darkest "dark" is not too far way. For example, old-school gameboy games were easy to understand visually because there were only 4 "colors" to sort through. Games such as Kirby's Dreamland looked great on gameboy (arguably better than on the NES in some cases) because it made the games seem a lot more light and airish since they used less colors -- the eye naturally felt less burdened, and by extension, so did the brain because it was not burdened with having to process all the extra color information. It stopped at contrast (which is the first thing, along with silhouette, and before movement, that the eye registers anyway).

To be more clear about how this is applicable to your case -- It is important to ensure that if the environment has a particular "light" and "dark" range (and it should!), the character sprites that sit on top of it should have a separate "light" and "dark" range too (that accounts for the environment's range) that ensures they always stand out. This range, however, from the darkest dark on the environment background to the lightest light of the characters, should probably be as "close" as possible, depending on how strenuous you want to make the processing of contrast to your player.

A game with more "airy" feel to it generally uses lighter (pastel) colors and the darkest darks are as dark as the middle-most shade of most other games sporting more "serious" moods or themes. In those other games, the player NEEDS to think, but in a game like Kirby or Yoshi's epic yarn, the point of the game isn't to make you think -- it's to help you relax -- and lower contrast between blacks and whites will help you accomplish this. This is the reason why pastels work so well -- You'd be hard-pressed to find a black "black" in a palette of pastels. Although the reason for this might seem "obvious" when put that way, it is the contrast of the colors (and not the hues or particular shades of the colors themselves) that make them feel "airy" and "calming" to look at. These same colors could be "gray" -- but as long as the shades of gray remain at the same contrast when used in an "airy" feeling game (again, see the gameboy and various gameboy emulators that let you change the gray palette to various other "colored" grays for proof of this), the "airy" feel will remain. This is the reason why contrast is an often-forgotten key to how your art makes the player feel.

The hue is important for this also (because it describes warm/cool), but it is still secondary to contrast because a game can still retain a certain "mood" or "tone" without any hue whatsoever simply by using either more "light" colors or "dark" colors in the world or environment. :)


Whew.

Sorry for that long post, but I wanted to put this out there because it is an often-overlooked problem of some games that nobody ever really mentions but always somehow "sees" -- even if it's at the back of their mind.


So to answer your question -- the B4 "gold" guy and the after "grey" guy are the better color choices imo. This is because of the contrast of the "gold" guy gives a more "inspirational" or "airy" feel than the dingy "heavy" feel of the gray armor portrays. The mood is optimistic on the B4 "gold" guy, while the mood is meh and dull on the not-so-shiny grey/iron/metal B4 knights. The issue with the B4 grey knights is that the grey sucks the life out of the rest of the sprite (since there is not enough "dark" there in the "color" of the sleeves/cape/helmet-hair-thingy to contrast with the armor itself), whereas in the "after" grey knight, this contrast is increased and the grey metal seems somehow "shinier" than it is thanks to this additional contrast provided by the darker sleeves/cape/etc. -- and as an added advantage -- this new contrast gives them more "volume" and "presence" as well. :)

Sorry for the long read, but I hope it was informative.

I hope this helps identify some things you might want to think about in the future! :)
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Offline Lilja

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Re: Coloring question

Reply #3 on: October 01, 2018, 03:24:07 am
Thank you for the responses! Coloring still hurts my head, I feel like I have such a long way to go... Anyways, for now I will have to practice in traditional art and take a break from pixel art, lol. I live in NC and my computer got fried by the rolling blackouts from the hurricane. (I am writing this on my phone) Everything is gone except what I posted on here ; -; But I will remember the advice even if I can't put it into practice right away.

Offline astraldata

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Re: Coloring question

Reply #4 on: October 04, 2018, 06:07:23 pm
Thank you for the responses! Coloring still hurts my head, I feel like I have such a long way to go... Anyways, for now I will have to practice in traditional art and take a break from pixel art, lol. I live in NC and my computer got fried by the rolling blackouts from the hurricane. (I am writing this on my phone) Everything is gone except what I posted on here ; -; But I will remember the advice even if I can't put it into practice right away.

I'm sorry that happened to you. :(

Not sure if this is the case for you but, chances are, unless your computer was actually submerged _in_ the water, your art might actually still be salvageable on the hard drive. Usually when something fries from a power surge, it's either the power supply itself, network gear, or some small artifacts on the motherboard that fries (things that are closer to the power source). Your hard drive might actually still be fine. If you have it, I'd remove it and hang onto it (just in case) -- It's never a bad idea to revisit your old art, and for future reference, if you can find yourself a method to back it up that works for your personality and habits, you'll be set. I use imgur myself, but I used photobucket at one time too. I still have most of my pixel art across both services because of those various backups online. The working files for them... those might have fallen away to time... but as long as I have the pixels, I can still rebuild those if I need to.

Also, regarding taking a break from pixel art and learning coloring... I won't suggest not trying other mediums, but I do think it's important to point out that pixel art has some unique learning experiences you will not find in any other medium. Every medium teaches a unique skill. Even pencil and paper teaches one how to "be messy" with your art.
If you're struggling with coloring in pixel art, it might be important to mention that pixel art is actually the reason I (personally) learned how to "color" well. Had I gone to any other medium first to learn coloring, I probably would still be learning "how to color" my art.
Clearly, I struggled with coloring too. I was no prodigy. I just wanted to make art that looked presentable.
Many skilled artists might suggest the most important part of coloring is remembering that everything is made out of some kind of material, and that material gets its color-gradient properties (and texture/dithering) based on the surface roughness (or smoothness), the hue, and the ambient (environmental) lighting that happens upon it.
However, if that's hard to wrap your mind around all at once -- I totally get that.
In more practical terms -- "coloring" mainly takes place when hue-shifting your individual colors (as you pick them) to make them match better with the overall look of your image (as you go) -- which is the most important aspect of "color" that there is. If the colors don't match the image, the image fails as a whole and it doesn't matter _what_ colors are used anymore.
A pixel artist rarely has a full palette from the get-go, but they usually do have a small number of colors they stray toward (which really could be considered the "style" aspect of their coloring.) And in pixel art, when you limit yourself to a small number of colors (as pixel artists tend to train themselves to do), you start to "get" what colors will work in one place, and in what places those colors won't -- and the "magic moment" is when you get the "why" those colors will/wont work in those particular pixel placements. Once you understand this "why" aspect, you will totally (at some point) "get" the thing that broke it open for me.
Had I not done pixel art, I wouldn't have realized that the key thing I was missing was that value and hue/saturation only exist to emphasize (or de-emphasize) a color's presence to the viewer's eye/brain on a subconscious level. This key lesson in understanding color in visual design as a whole was probably the moment that broke me into a new level of art understanding.
And I wouldn't have gotten there (quickly or probably ever) without struggling with the colors of pixels that were too fat or too "something" and always wondering exactly "why" they weren't working no matter where I tried placing them to make them look "correct" to me.

I write this because you show a LOT of promise in pixel art -- and because of this, I suspect the same is true of art as a whole for you. Pixels are definitely one thing I think you should not step away from before you've learned all you can from them. It may be just my opinion, but I assure you it isn't biased -- Color selection is one of those things that pixel art is just great at teaching.
The "lessons" work better when you're either reducing the size of detailed things or creating larger things with a (very!) small number of colors that (mostly) vary only slightly (such as in an NES game mockup of an entire screen). By the time you're able to do these "lessons" well, you'll be a master of color in no time. :)

This, again, was pretty long, but I really hope you'll reconsider pixel art if you're seriously wanting to learn color.
You're on the right path to that -- I just think that you may be stepping away a bit too early -- and right before you've cracked it open for yourself. :)

PS:
Doing pixel art on the phone is terrible (I've been in your shoes, being without a computer to pixel on), but studying others' pixels posted on this forum when I couldn't pixel -- and taking and memorizing the advice and feedback given about others' pixels over a long period of time helped me to hit the ground running when I finally got a computer to try my hand at it again. The bits and pieces I picked up along the way really paid off when I sat down to actually do it. I found I had actually internalized much of it by that point, and my art improved by leaps and bounds since the last time I put a pixel on the screen. -- I've found no better forum or place to gain experience with art like that than Pixelation.

Just some food for thought. :)
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