Colour Palettes, Colour Theory and Colour Science.

[Kitchi Ikamura]

Howdy.

Ever had trouble making your character look good but it looks like a vox puked out skittles?

No need to fear! we will be learning about colour palettes!

 

So, What is a colour palette?

Basically, a colour set that goes well together, commonly used by artists to colour their drawings to a certain theme.

 

Why use a colour palette?

Using a colour palette reduces the chance of making a mistake as it provides a base for you to work with.

 

Example of a Colour Palette

 

As you can see, Some colours stand out and some don't, some even make you squint with how bright they are

The trick to making a colour palette good is to make it stand out, but also keep it so it doesn't hurt other peoples eyes, no one likes having to stare at a bright neon green tajaran for too long.

Another good way to make a good colour palette is to use colours that naturally go together well, like Orange and brown.

 

How did colour palettes become a thing?

Well, it is part of a theory known as "Colour Theory", A body of practical guidance on colours, colour mixing and specific colour combinations

 

What do you mean by colour science?

Colour science can be taken in many forms, but the form we will be looking at will be what colours bring out in a emotional sense

for example Red can mean danger, anger, but also Lust

Unlike Blue, which can be seen as calm, but also depressive

 

If you want to get creative, try to link your characters colours and look to their backstory and personality, do they like to have fun? Yellow can be a good choice for you!

 

Now, here is a example of good colour co-ordination using my lovely character, Kitchi Ikamura!

Using Natural colours and colours that blend into each other, I created Kitchi based from a Red fox, don't be afraid to deviate a bit!

 

And now what happens if you slap some colours together willy nilly..

YIKES! Now I'm going to have nightmares tonight..

 

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading! TATA!

 

 

[PhantasmicDream]

I'll add some more information, because I went to school for art and I enjoy character design.

 

One way to pick out colours is by staying in a section on a colour wheel, if you want a more cold setting youd stick with the greens, blues, and violets. You can kind of play it safe that way.

If you're wanting something to be more noticeable on your character like say their eyes, then you can look at the complementary colours, these are colours that are opposite from eachother in the colour wheel, so red/green, blue/orange, and yellow/violet. So if you're playing an dark purpleish cat, you can give them bright yellow eyes.

 

Saturation plays a huge part, if you're character has super high saturation or is super vibrant in colours 9 times out of 10 it's going to look like a mess (as you can already see) however if you have your character super desaturated it's probably going to look muddy. 

Finding that balance in colour can be hard and may involve playing around a bit. And I suggest what ever you want to stand out the most to be you're brightest more noticeable colour and then dull everything else down.

 

If you're just having troubles picking colours in general, find colour swatches and put them beside each other and see if you like how they look together. Or you can even look up colour pallets there's websites where people just combine colours together and share them for people to use.

 

And I'm always available for questions involving art and colours

[LittleBigKid2000]

I wonder if green would've been a better choice for Entchtut's eyes, even if she'd look more like a furry Ms. Frizzle then.