Hey guys,

FINAL VERSION DISPLAY HERE

I wanted to give the palette challenge a proper try!
As a big fan of strong and saturated colors I based my palette on this circus image I made two years ago.

The first version is here.



This image was generated by dawnbringers script, I have no clue what it displays but it looks cool:



So yeah, the purpose of the palette? The possibility to create high saturated sprites with few colors and the possibility to create interesting highly rendered images by using interesting color combinations...
I found many interesting combinations (see the cubes in the first image) and quite like the result so far.

I tried and remap some images from the PJ gallery and started to miss a light grey. I am considering removing the pink and replacing it with a grey.

Some of my favorite remaps:























Thank you artists of PJ for not suing me for abusing your images.


So yeah, I will probably remove the pink and add a grey. Also, so far I only selected these colors and checked their possibilities, tweaking them only roughly. From on here I want to take a closer look at the images that I generated (and make some myself) and see if I can improve the values and usability of the palette.

Also, I of course would like to hear your opinion on it! What do you guys think of these colors?



Edited by Hapiel - 20 August 2013 at 1:20pm

See in the middle-right Brightness/Hue-diagram how the bright-green and cyan lines up horizontally...that's because they have almost identical brightness (and they're close in hue & saturation to begin with)... you can't afford to waste shades in a small palette.

Also, you have an almost black and a very dark blue. This dark blue is way way too close to black, and in this bright colorful palette it drowns.

The red-orange register looks pretty good.

Remember, brightness is always key! A good image and palette will also look good in grayscale. Convert the palette to grayscale for easier study of the available shades. Pay extra attention to the bottom-left grayscale diagram.

The human eye is most sensitive to green and least sensitive to blue. That's why full blue in addition to full green makes so little difference to the percieved brightness (just about +5% or so).

The Green & Cyan are still pretty close. You could make Cyan a bit brighter, though you have the less than optimal scenario with two close greens and two greatly separated blues (blue and cyan) with no proper interpolation. But it would require a big reorganization to effectively address that issue.

I posted a link to the Toolbox doc in the Palette Contest, but here's the image:


Edited by DawnBringer - 17 August 2013 at 10:28pm

Thanks for the tut DB!
We should put that in the noobtorial thread!

And Friend, thanks for the encouraging words! I agree I should not keep on tweaking forever but I have yet made many many improvements.
Getting closer now. The brightness of dark green/blue has been switched, green is now the darker one. Saturation has been increased where possible, especially in the orange. This by raising the main subpixel/lowering the third subpixel enormously

Of course it is hard to see the difference, would you guys be interested in animations of some of the remapped artworks that I used cycling trough the different versions of the palette?

Also, DB: How does brightness work? Brightness when translating to greyscale is something different than luminosity or just in general the value of all subpixels added to each other... What is it and how do I measure it myself?







Edited by Hapiel - 19 August 2013 at 11:54am

So I am already at version 7. Probably a final version unless I find a good reason to change something.



The palette is very suitable for colorfull and cartoony images and sprites:


All colors are super highly saturated without the burning eye effect. They all remain pleasant to watch as shown below:


Wip image of the palette progress:




I'd love to hear what you guys think of this collection of colors!


Edited by Hapiel - 20 August 2013 at 1:21pm

To be extra clear:
Please use these colors! I don't think I can copyright colors but I'd like to uncopyright them anyway, public domain!

Yes, there is indeed a lack of a skincolor. As shown in the circus mockup many colors can be used for it, yellow/orange/grey but they all look crap.
I'll have another look to see if I can add that... But the change would likely be drastic indeed!

As for the dark blue, I don't get it. The dark blue seems so much brighter to me than the black! Is my screen just badly calibrated?
For example in the werewolf piece the difference is very well visible.
When 1px thick lines are used the difference becomes less important, which indeed is how most of the examples I used make use of the dark color.. I'll have another look but it feels so weird since they are so different already!

Pff, it seems ineed to be a callibration thing.... I don't have internet at home and have been carrying my laptop around to internet cafe's all week but now at a school computer it looks totally different. Indeed here also the dark blue looks too black...