Thank you. I had to hold on that thought for a while, to understand what you see I might not be aware off, but I got it. There is no secret ability behind it actually :)
I was using the same palette in all of them starting from the original Into The Rabbit Hole This what you describe is a natural consequence of having cute, candy coloured characters in dark woods. The colours from dark wood background automaticly went to to following backgrounds (not without slight struggles). Realism was added to make things getting more and more horrorish while descending.
It is very interesting to see someone explaining what you did not fully realising it, especially when I usually was on the other side of that. You do stuff with your guts not brain, but Leibniz would say that the soul is doing all the math XD
I love this whole series, but it really grabs me from this image onwards. I love the contrast between the bright palette and cute animation used for Alice compared to the realistic rendering and sickly palette for the dolls. I love how it's still so cohesive!
Haha, I know exactly what you mean! We definitely rationalize things after the fact. In some ways, I find commenting a bit like that (but without requiring the skill to produce such nice art)–I saw this and was struck by it, but wanted to say a bit more than 'this looks cool!' even though that's basically what my gut was telling me. He just doesn't understand why things are cool