Color
Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: The Lounge
Forum Name: Resources and Support
Forum Discription: Help your fellow pixel artists out with links to good tutorials, other forums, software, fonts, etc. Bugs and support issues should go here as well.
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=9471
Printed Date: 13 September 2025 at 12:22pm
Topic: Color
Posted By: Clovvach
Subject: Color
Date Posted: 25 November 2009 at 9:03am
I need help on color. For one, when I have the choice to make the palette myself... how do I know witch colors to use? For two, when I use a already made palette, how do I know witch colors to use? When I see the experts do it they use colors in places that I would have never expected, and it turns out looking great! I am sort of confused. 
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Replies:
Posted By: Pragz
Date Posted: 25 November 2009 at 9:56am
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It takes a lot of practice and knowledge of how colors work. You really have to think of it as colors only really being the combination of 3 things. Red, Yellow, and Blue make up every color. You learn that in your first year of art class in 6th grade. :P According to that, you can base it off this: Let's say you want to make a jumpsuit. Instead of picking a color and just dragging the slider up and down for different levels of light, you could use Red, Orange, and Yellow. Red and Yellow are base colors, and orange is the midcolor. Other possible combos are: Blue, Purple, Red Blue, Green, Yellow And then of course you can add those midcolors into the mix and make even more ramps. Blue, Green, Turquoise, Lime Green, Yellow Then you've also got random combos that just work well when used properly. The only way to really find out is to experiment. And then you have to get into saturation, which... yeah, that'd take too long to write out. XD But yeah, all that's only really theory. Most of the big pixel artists have years of practice behind their belt and can create colors at the flick of the wrist. ------------- Hello - I'm new here. :) |
Posted By: Anoniguy
Date Posted: 25 November 2009 at 10:06am
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I'm pretty horrid at choosing colors myself. So I've been finding a lot of inspiration at sites like colourlovers, and adobe Kuler. Kuler is especially handy for me personally since I can save the palettes it generates and load them in photoshop. There's also a huge library of user-generated palettes to draw inspiration from. In the meantime it might be in your best interest to buy a color wheel from the art store. They don't cost more than a few bucks, and offer quick and easy to follow guidelines for creating good color combinations. (Haha, firefox insists that 'combinations' isn't a word.) ------------- http://tillmyhands.blogspot.com/ - Till My Hands Fall Off: My Daily Sketch Blog |
Posted By: Clovvach
Date Posted: 25 November 2009 at 10:18am
| Thanks guys. I guess it just takes a whooooole lot of practice from here. :) |
Posted By: Clovvach
Date Posted: 25 November 2009 at 10:20am
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Originally posted by Pragz
It takes a lot of practice and knowledge of how colors work.You really have to think of it as colors only really being the combination of 3 things. Red, Yellow, and Blue make up every color. You learn that in your first year of art class in 6th grade. I was very in to colors and art very early... like in preschool, I'm pretty sure didn't have to wait until 6th grade. 
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Posted By: jalonso
Date Posted: 25 November 2009 at 11:22am
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Colors are by far the most challenging aspect in any art style. In pixelart its especially challenging because of the whole 'less is more' aspect of pixelart. Experimentation is the best to learn from and discover. You also have to use a bit of common sense and 'big picture' thinking. Say you have a green monster in front of a cave on a mountain just before nightfall. If the cliff is on the shadow side of things then the shadow colors and ambient color reflected on said monster might be in the blues or purples or even oranges if the sun happens to be setting. Using shades in your palettes in these hues would be the common sense thing to do instead of the 'monster is GREEN so the shadow colors are DARK GREEN and the highlights is LIGHT GREEN. The worst thing I see people in PJ do (including many of the real good ones) is to follow the linear ramp for coloring. Dynamic palettes (see Syosa's feature) that have ambient light, neutralizers and color sharing ramps has proven invaluable to me (but I too am still learning about colors and find it the most challenging aspect of PA). ------------- |
Posted By: Manupix
Date Posted: 27 November 2009 at 2:42am
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Imposed palette challenges are the best possible learning tool for color, even crazy ones. Look for them here and at http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=1353.0 - Pixellation , do them over and over again (I'll have to make me a script for linking that page). The other best possible tool is drawing from life, in situations with light and color (landscapes and cityscapes). Even if you draw with black pencil only, you will look at how color and light interact, and be able to remember and use it in your pixel work. Note that these are very distinct directions, both valid: realistic color vs [insert better word here] un-realistic. Distinct but http://www.blanchet.auction.fr/FR/vente_peintures_arts_graphiques/v13439_blanchet_associes/l2225973_willy_eisenschitz_1889_1974_les_quais_paris.html - not incompatible , too. |
Posted By: meagz
Date Posted: 14 December 2009 at 9:17pm
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Originally posted by Pragz
Red, Yellow, and Blue make up every color. That's only in pigments. Red, green and blue make up colours in light - on tv screens, monitors etc. They're subtractive - add them all together and you get white, take away blue from red and green and you'll get yellow. Take away red from green and blue and you'll get cyan. Take away green from red and blue and you'll get magenta. Take away everything and you're left with black. The additive colour wheel works in reverse... Cyan, magenta and yellow make up colours in print. Cyan+magenta = blue, magenta+yellow=red, cyan+yellow=green. Theoretically, if you add them all together you get black but its not a true black. |
Posted By: jeremy
Date Posted: 14 December 2009 at 10:07pm
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I agree wholeheartedly on the palettes comment!
Preset palettes really help you to learn the different ways that ramps can work (Like using neutralisers such as grey, as jal mentioned), which you can then apply to your own palettes in a less extreme way. C64 Palette is quite good, it doesn't have the blinding saturation most (i.e MS Paint) do. When picking your own palettes a rule of thumb is reduce saturation, use contrast and hue shifting. Try to choose versatile colours instead of compartmentalising, saying "This section is blue *uses blue ramp*, this section is red *uses red ramp*" Search "8cc" in the gallery and see how the 8 colour club members use their colours everywhere :) Dammit Safari stop spellchecking words ending in -ise >:( |
Posted By: neota
Date Posted: 15 December 2009 at 12:45am
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I can understand why you say that meagz, but I disagree, and assert that: RGB is ADDITIVE (more R/G/B -> brighter color) not subtractive. CMYK is SUBTRACTIVE (more C/M/Y/K -> darker color) not additive. RYB is subtractive too. AFAIK, RGB is the more accurate way to think about colors -- the three types of color sensors we have map quite closely to red, green, and blue. ------------- absolutely. |
Posted By: meagz
Date Posted: 15 December 2009 at 12:50am
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Originally posted by neota
I can understand why you say that meagz, but I disagree, and assert that:RGB is ADDITIVE (more R/G/B -> brighter color) not subtractive.CMYK is SUBTRACTIVE (more C/M/Y/K -> darker color) not additive. RYB is subtractive too.AFAIK, RGB is the more accurate way to think about colors -- the three types of color sensors we have map quite closely to red, green, and blue. ah no worries. i totally should've checked that before i posted, thanks for correcting :) |
Posted By: x-death
Date Posted: 20 December 2009 at 12:59am
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look up a good tutorial on color theory. learning about cool colors and warm colors will help you figure out what colors to use as highlights and shadows. plus it also depends whether your going to just darken the tone of an existing color or if your going to shift the hue and use different colors to show highlights and shadows. colors like blue, green and purple and cool colors so you'd expect to see them used as shadows. like i said though, looking up a good tutorial on this color theory is a good idea. the color spectrum is something i beleive will never be mastered. see it doesn't matter how smart you get, you'll always be able to learn more from it. |