Can someone help me.

[VictorR]

Ok, I've gone through countless pixels of really good pixelers and I don't seem to understand the concept of hue's and mixing colors. For example :

Amazing piece by Indigo, how did he know which colors to use that make it blend so well? I know he's a very well expirienced pixeler but could someone tell me or redirect me to some color tutorials that show how to blend colors like these? 

Thanks

EDIT:

Another great pixeler is Tremulant, I think his work is amazing. The color scheme's are just simply beautiful.

[Sherman Gill]

The best way to learn (and do) is to be able to tweak your colors (indivually) afterwards, and play with it 'till it looks like you want it to. This however, is difficult in most programs, so which are you using?
Tremulant's is actually very straight forward. From point A to point D with B and C inbetween. For that type of thing, just set the hue so it's a little more like the shadow or highlight as it gets darker or lighter.

[tocky]

I had this faint memory of some graphs goat made for the chaos engine critique ( http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=1025.0 ) - that post is a pretty decent primer on hue shifting on its own. Anyway, I wanted to map out the hue and saturation of all the colours in the Indigo piece, here's what I came up with:


This is what I know about hue shifting:
Use warmer colours (reds, yellows) for highlights and cooler colours (blues, greens) for shadows. If you're colouring something green, use a yellower green for the highlight and a bluer green for the shadow. This is only really true for natural light or similar, though - if your light is green, you can use warm colours in the shadows and it'd still look right.

You can pull off larger jumps in hue whe you're using less saturated colours - grey goes with everything. With Indigo's piece, his most saturated colours (the highlights) don't shift around much - the shift to blues happens in the midtones where his colours are less saturated.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful. Generally there's not a lot of procedure to it, you just go with your gut and then fix it until it looks good.

[ndchristie]

remember too that there are different ways of doing things.  a dynamic piece that wants to feel more about surface than substance will peak saturations in the shadows (reflected light) and highlights (direct light).  a piece which is more about solidity or substance will peak in the mid-tones, to give a sense of a more penetrating light.  Translucence is also conveyed through saturated midtones.

[VictorR]

Thanks to all who replied to this, alot. I think Tocky covered what I asked in a way, also, is there a website that shows the color scheme im talking about. For example the Pixelation logo, the yellow to peach, to dark red then navy blue blends well. Whats that called? Or From light blue to red to purple. And im using MS paint.

[sharprm]

Hey tocky - did you plot that by hand or which program did that for you?

I think the shadows here on skin jump to being saturated.

[ndchristie]

yeah, bitmap bros had a different way of doing things where it's mostly about value, but the saturated shadows again give it a sense of light and vibrance.  also check out the equiluminent transition of hues where they wanted to remove the edge of the face.

[ptoing]

If you look at a photo of a person and check the colours, the shadows usually are more saturated. Not all materials behave the same.

[tocky]

I plotted it in photoshop, took maybe an hour. But now that you say it, I think I really should make a program for it. It's roughly within my abilities, and it'd be useful. I'll see what I got.