Last night I came across an old piece of mine and decided to finish it.  It was made as a palette study.  The goal was to use a full spectrum of highly saturated colors and make it work with the help of a grey.



some areas have yet to be touched (such as the front-most hand, chain, and front foot), and other areas still need more refining (such as the muscle structure in the forearms).  Note: thanks to kon for some critique.  This originally was going to be a collab between me and him, though that fell through.

Its been a blast to work on so far :)

I love the color and light in this image keep it up can't wait to see the finished product.

sure adarias uses this technique in some of his pieces, although this is a concept as old as art itself.  Perhaps the oldest "pixel art" place to find it used extensively is in c64 pieces.

basically gray is a magic color in which it appears cool when next to warm colors and warm when next to cool colors.  This makes it the perfect linking tool in-between saturated ramps of warm and cool.  (check out color relativity)

also note that the gray does not "control" saturation as you say - but it does use saturation to it's advantage.  Research up a bit :)

Thanks guys for the comments/critiques thus far

-Dan


Edited by Indigo - 14 May 2008 at 7:05pm

I agree, nice topic indeed

@Indigo : nice piece, well done.

I don't mind the vibrant red.
I just toned it down in my edit.

Tiny edit to the left peck.
And I darkened the hand/wrist.

slight update.  I'll get around to more of the critique a bit later.  I hope I can finish this soon >_<



looks like i'm going with the bird-suit look rather than a humanoid-bird