Choosing colors and pallettes

[Froli]

Contrast is having large variation in your color ramps.  That is to say, instead of shading a cylinder from a gray slightly above mid-luminosity to a gray slightly below mid-luminosity and using 10 shades to do it, one should shade from almost-white to almost-black (with color included, generally;-)) in the same 10 shades.  Basically, if a piece is said to need more contrast, the artist should make the highlights brighter and the shadows darker.

And again, would somebody sticky this already?

Awesome Robalan! thank you very much.  And before moving on, a question regarding your explaination.. "instead of shading a cylinder from a gray slightly above mid-luminosity to a gray slightly below mid-luminosity and using 10 shades to do it" <--- Does this refer to Pillow shading?

[Pawige]

Negative. Pillow shading is just when you shade something without regards to the actual form--lightening the colors as they get nearer to the center. You can pillow shade with any amount of colors.

Robalan is talking about having a bunch of colors that are very similar to each other. Even if you shade properly with these colors, the lack of any range of brightness will usually make everything appear washed out and flat.

[robalan]

I took the liberty of pinning this, since I've directed others to it twice in the past few days, and it's a good reference in general.  If a mod disagrees, feel free to un-pin it.

[Helm]

I read through my shit and I still agree with it mostly, so it's ok with me. Dhaos and others would do best to say if they have an objection.

[megajosh2]

Darn. I thought my skintone problems could be solved here...

[Dogmeat]

Darn. I thought my skintone problems could be solved here...

Wouldn't it help you better if you asked for help with your skintone problems? Don't be shy now

[megajosh2]

Okay, I'll post it in another thread.

[Bo]

i think he meant you should just ask it right here in this thread.

[Terley]

While we're juggling conversation starters, I'll throw in.. Water. 

Love to hear some useful tips on creating effective water, it's the only real problem I'm having with my semi-serious platform in the making. But non platformer water tips would still help cus im sure you lot are full of many different techniques.

[Ai]

I've just been playing around with GIMP's Retinex plugin, and I recommend it as a color choosing helper/teacher.

"Retinex" improves visual rendering of an image when lighting conditions are not good.
   While our eye can see colors correctly when light is low, cameras and video cams can't
   manage this well. The MSRCR (MultiScale Retinex with Color Restoration) algorithm, which
   is at the root of the "Retinex" filter, is inspired by the eye biological mecanisms to
   adapt itself to these conditions. "Retinex" stands for Retina + cortex.

http://docs.gimp.org/en/plug-in-retinex.html

I personally find it is good for both investigating color perception and developing strange and interesting palettes.

Terley: I came across an (analogue) painting tutorial that covered drawing water. But in short, because of the different reflections and consequent effective 'layering' of the light, I recommend colors that provide a fairly wide range of saturation and some range in hue. The lower 'layers' will be less saturated, the upper more. Direct sunlight == strongest saturation.  I admit to not playing around with this much, as my water tends to work fairly well without much attention needed.