AuthorTopic: Your choice of background color  (Read 11895 times)

Offline Helm

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Re: Your choice of background color

Reply #10 on: December 04, 2009, 09:11:07 am
mid-grey with a tint that I cycle through as I work just to be sure it's not punching any holes through the art anywhere.

Offline rikfuzz

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Re: Your choice of background color

Reply #11 on: December 04, 2009, 10:34:23 am
When digi painting I usually use a little-bit darker than 50% low-sat blueish colour, my pixeling process is a bit more random. I'm usually doing game assets, so recently I've been using an average colour from the usual background tile. 

Offline saimo

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Re: Your choice of background color

Reply #12 on: December 04, 2009, 11:59:07 am
As important as an amateur's opinion can be, I'd say that, in general, mid gray is the "best" choice as it's the most neutral color available. And that's in fact what I start with (and usually also end with). However, I guess that the best color in absolute depends on what is being drawn and on the context (if any) it is supposed to be placed in. Ah, and I'm among those who said that working with very saturated and/or bright colors causes a deep pain in the eyes.

Offline LoTekK

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Re: Your choice of background color

Reply #13 on: December 04, 2009, 03:10:20 pm
When painting, I usually start with a mid-value low-sat background roughly complementary to the color of the light source. Since I tend towards yellowish light sources for, say, portraits, I typically start with blueish, using that to influence my shadows.

Pixelling, I typically start with black, simply because that's the default background for a new ProMotion canvas. After I've blocked in/silhouetted, i'll change it to a middish low-sat, usually blue-tinted.

Offline Ryumaru

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Re: Your choice of background color

Reply #14 on: December 04, 2009, 04:25:01 pm

While we're at it, why not use a gradient for your background? Why just a single spot color?

Well, any program that doesn't have layers ( mspaint) would make it difficult to work over with the near infinite amount of colors underneath a piece- also I believe I can recall one of those eye trick things with grey squares on opposite sides of a gradient seeming to affect their values- which may not be something the artist wants.

Your technique of working on top of actual game backgrounds is a nice idea. I usually did more background work than sprites in the first place :p

Offline Jad

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Re: Your choice of background color

Reply #15 on: December 04, 2009, 08:30:42 pm
mid-grey with a tint that I cycle through as I work just to be sure it's not punching any holes through the art anywhere.

This! I love this mode of working, esp with sprites and when I'm trying to choose colours, I just cycle through the color slider and the saturation slider and just try different things, and then I go back to my original near-gray tint thing.

I often end up in the green-blue range of tints though cause my eyes apparently love them!
' _ '

Offline Gil

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Re: Your choice of background color

Reply #16 on: December 04, 2009, 09:23:35 pm
Everyone tends to end up in the green-blue range. The whole warm vs cold thing. Try putting a blue square on a red background, the red will totally overpower the blue. That's why standard backgrounds tend to go to the blue side of the wheel.

Btw, this discussion could be interesting towards the next color scheme for pixelation. At least, I think I read somewhere that it might be something the future will bring us. The current theme is already a midvalue slightly tinted color though.

Offline ptoing

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Re: Your choice of background color

Reply #17 on: December 04, 2009, 10:26:58 pm
Indeed it is, and exactly for the reason of neutrality :P
There are no ugly colours, only ugly combinations of colours.

Offline Gil

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Re: Your choice of background color

Reply #18 on: December 04, 2009, 11:42:17 pm
Yeah, that was a problem the old pixelation used to have and one that I blame the current pixeljoint. The background just doesn't flatter the pixel art and that's a problem on a forum used for showing that art. I remember posts on old pixelation going "I added a background because otherwise it looks really bad on these colors".

I have a problem posting my art on pixeljoint, because the default background is so damn white that it makes all my art look ugly. I realise I can change my user theme, but that's not how 80% of the PixelJoint members are going to see it anyway.

Offline Photocopier

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Re: Your choice of background color

Reply #19 on: December 05, 2009, 12:18:51 pm
Yeah, that was a problem the old pixelation used to have and one that I blame the current pixeljoint. The background just doesn't flatter the pixel art and that's a problem on a forum used for showing that art. I remember posts on old pixelation going "I added a background because otherwise it looks really bad on these colors".

I have a problem posting my art on pixeljoint, because the default background is so damn white that it makes all my art look ugly. I realise I can change my user theme, but that's not how 80% of the PixelJoint members are going to see it anyway.
This is exactly why I have used the pixelation theme on pixel joint for a long time.