Week 4 – Colour

Design a World

This week Harry and I got moved from Group 9 into Group 1. This group’s world is focused around a conflict between a tea mafia and a coffee mafia, with 1950’s noir vibes. This was a big change up from the dystopian, horror, submarine we were just in, so we had a lot of questions.

We discussed the world, asking about different characters and locations and generally how the world works. I noticed all the characters had either a mug of tea or coffee as a head, except one character that was a biscuit. This led to me asking about what other forms characters outside of the mafia took, civilians, journalists, police officers, etc. Where they forced into an alliance with whatever beverage they were born as? This wasn’t really developed and there weren’t any strict rules on what they could be, as long as they fit the world’s theme. I suggested having scones present, which the group seemed to agree with, and I thought it would be interesting to have assorted pastries, stemming from the idea of having a policer officer as a donut.

I wanted to further develop the tea and coffee idea, and asked about decaffeinated coffees which surprisingly hadn’t occurred to the group. I also suggested an Irish Coffee, straying away from just different strains of coffee. I thought it would be fun to have this character make his money running an illegal gambling ring in “Cold Brew’s Bar”, while making and selling whiskey as a front.

 


Colour

This week’s lecture went over terminology, colour systems, colour wheels, colour and emotions, colour scripts and we were set two exercises over the week to complete.

Exercise 1 – to take one of our thumbnails from previous weeks and to colour it using one of the four colour schemes we covered in the lecture; monochromatic, complementary, analogous or triadic. This was a little awkward as the only file type I had my previous thumbnails saved as were .jpg, so I had to work overtop them, unable to access the previous layers.

I used complementary colours for this task, purple and green. I wanted to make it look ethereal, kind of out of worldly, I thought this suited the cosmic mystery of the squid world. I looked to H.P Lovecraft’s ‘The Colour out of Space’ for inspiration, it made use of very vibrant and purples and blues, contrasted with the normal colours of the world. So I chose deep green (similar to seaweed) to complement the vibrant purple.

I tried another thumbnail, I started out monochromatic but thought it needed more, so this too ended up a complementary colour scheme. I used red light to signify the danger present, and it slowly fades into the cold, blue shadows, where our protagonist is hidden. This was one of my favourite thumbnails I did previously and wanted to try out some fun ideas with it. I don’t think it came out that well, but I was just experimenting with colours.

Exercise 2 – to take a the linework of a landscape provided and colour it in two different ways, conveying a different emotion in each one. Think about which emotion you are trying to convey, and select a colour palette which reflects this.

In order to warm up for this, as suggested, I looked into different artists styles of how they work with colour. I picked out stills of animations that I like and created a basic colour script using block colours, discussing what kind  of colour scheme was used and what mood it conveys:

The first still is from Up, using an analogous Blue-Green colour scheme. The colours are very vibrant and warm, conveying a pleasant and happy mood. This image feels very fresh and bright – optimistic, similar to their marriage.

The second still is in the same sequence of scenes, following the diagnosis of a terminal illness to Carl’s wife, a very serious and depressing situation. The colours reflect this, the once bright, vibrant colours are now desaturated, cool, blues and greys, with an almost monochromatic colour scheme. These two scenes provide a strong contrast of moods and colours.

Finally, The Jungle Book, using complementary colours. Despite blues and yellows tending to induce a sense of calm and relaxation, this scene has very sinister undertones, conveying an anxious and scary feeling. Mowgli is in a paralysed trance, hypnotised, perhaps the reason for the use of these colours.

Original Line art
Peace, Tranquillity
(an accepted?) Doom, Dread, Fear

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