Feature 05 - Generic 16 color palette

[Arne]

The same HSV cylinder as above. Rearranged it shows the shape of the RGB spectrum and histogram better.

Angle=Hue
Radius=Saturation
Height=Value (brightness)

The value is calculated with:
Value = (0.299 * Red) + (0.587 * Green) + (0.114 * Blue)

(That's why the shape is skewing/twisting from blue to red to yellow inside the cylinder.)

[Helm]

Hah, I can't say the hard tech was something I had considered when I was thinking about a global 16 color palette. Neither did the people that hardcoded the c64 one, but they seem to have made a very decent one. Anyway, as to the open question of 'how brown should the gray be?' well, grays are usually context-sensitive, so they appear warm against cold colors and cold against warm colors (with perhaps a slight bias towards coldness because they certainly appear cold against BLACK and WHITE) so I would say 'a bit more brown than you'd think would be considered enough'.

[Malor]

A c64 pal comparison. My green is the same, and the blue was just changed a tad.



1/4th of my source was pron... because 1/4th of the internet is. Lots of skin tones here...

hmmmm I actually saw some things in the source..gathering? That looked like porn ...anyways, I don't understand your fancy tables..and color wheels..but the palette loks great!

[Arne]

it's worth to not that my histogram thingamajib merely is an.. what's it called... empirical study. If you needed a general palette for photos and stuff, then it might be a guide. Game graphics often benefit from being clear and easy to read, meaning more saturated cartoony colors. I think I made a thumbnail batch source image from classical and contemporary art and video game graphics as well, but it has disappeared.


Here's what photoshop made of my source image. It prefers to grey colors a bit to get better averages, so I made a few versions from a more saturated version of the source image as well. Then purples appeared for the first time.


(edit: oops,  it seems like Selective and Adaptive produced the same result... (also, no forced colors here))

Maybe one approach is to make 8 greys with subtle hues for bridging (Bitmap Brothers used this didn't they?), then 8 saturated colors. I'll try this approach and see what happens.

[ptoing]

Hm, I never really understood the Perceptive, Adaptive, Selective stuff in PS, like how does it work?

About the Bitmap Brothers thing. Dan Malone did stuff kinda like that. Also Amiga is 12 bit, 4 bit per channel. So when he wanted monochromish pictures done in more than 16 colours (with 4bpc you only ever get 16 pure colours of any shade) he chose colours which are kinda close and interleaved them.

Like so



Mark Coleman, the other artist BMB employed has a massive fetish for supershiney stuff and Orange/Blue complimentary contrast. All the gfx he made for BMB games are either Orange and Blue or Orange and Grey for most of the part. Many people say, ah yeah, Bitmap Brothers style, and kinda throw it all in one bag, but looking closer Dan Malone's and Mark Coleman's stuff are VERY different. I prefer Dan's pixelstuff much over Mark's

[Arne]

Guessing: I think Perceptive picks colors which we can see and differentiate between, whilst Selective would just selects colors based on popularity or something. Adaptive I don't know.


One problem with 16 colors is that a majority of the colors will be allocated to covering the basic ones (RGB,CMY,BW). not much room for the warm-cool gray ramps if you also want Brown and Skin tone in there.


I made a few more experiments:

[Arne]

I think I managed to solve the cold warm dilemma. I took the dark green (which was relatively unused and rather dull as far as ramping goes) and made it a complimentary to the other dark I had (aside from the darkest cold). Now I can dither those to get a dark grey-ish color if I need one.

So:
- Really Dark Cold for vague non-interfering background details on black.
- Dark Cyan which works with the green and blues or as a cold dark gray, and as a dark background tree line color too I suppose (dark green with a blue-grey atmospheric tone).
- Dark Brown which works with the red-browns. Can, along with the colr above, provide interesting temperature variations in the darks.

Most colors can build on those. I might still nudge them around some more, but the theory is sound I think.
I also did some minor changes to other colors. I need to do more mockups to see if I'm really on to something here though.

[ptoing]

This is very solid i would say. I will give something a shot a bit later.

[Conzeit]

HOLY vuck! you are PROM?1???!!1? C_-

now I feel like a total moron for my skintones reply >______<

WOW, sorry for the mandatory asss kissing but I love that tutorial you made on painting, your Megaman redesigns (SPECIALLY Clashgal =D~~~) and I am forever thankful to you for hooking me up with EXILE......(I cant exactly emulate it properly tho =/ )

I am VERY glad to have you here =D
________________________________________________________________
Ok, now with the ass kissing out of the way...
Sorry, couldnt help myself again 

[Xion]

Conceit: Ew?

Nice palette, Arne. Here's a pic I made using the old one:


Then I converted it to the new palette:


Not sure which I like better.