WEEK 4 – COLOUR
In week 4, once again our lecturers had mixed up the Groups for our design a world project and so this week, I was moved into Group 5. Their world and story were based on the constellations and how a select few people were given these powers, however they had to conceal them. However, the world was still a work in progress, so for class me and my new group discussed what the world could look like and how it could work for the characters.
We settled on the concept of the world consisting of floating land massed, suspended by an unknown source and interlinked by bridges ropes or various modes of travel. The architecture and clothing are based on ancient European and Grecian styles, with the occasional modern twist.
I began my concept ideas trying to figure out how the land and villages could look and what buildings and significant land masses they could have.
Me and my new group also organised a group meeting later the next week where we could re-evaluate the world and plot, as well as share our concepts and ideas. This was really helpful for me to revise our world and make sure that me and any others in the group understood the story and environment we had agreed upon.
Our lecture this week discussed colour theory and how to use colour palettes in film and animation to convey specific moods and emotions. We were told how to use the various colour wheels (Monochromatoc, Analogous, Complimentary, and Tradic) and how they could be effective in art to the viewers. We then examined colours and the emotions associated with them or that they evoke to have a greater understanding of why we use specific colours for certain scenes in animation.
We had to find screenshots from animated shows and movies we liked and then get the palette colours used in the animated scenes to convey certain moods and emotions to the viewer.
For the first exercise this week, we were assigned to colour one of our previous thumbnails using one of the colour wheel techniques. The colour scheme I wanted to explore was using monochromatic colours, with a blue and cyan palette.
I think I achieved this colour palette well, and I effectively coloured my thumbnail piece with a colour scheme and technique that really conveys the atmosphere I wanted for the scene and environment.
The second exercise was to colour a pre-drawn sketch of a landscape, twice, to see how one can use colour to create different emotions such as Hope, Wonder, Happiness, Sadness etc. This lets us understand how colour can affect any scene, environment or object that is shown, and plays a large part in portraying the mood and tone of a film or animation.
My first landscape was coloured to the emotion of hopefulness and warmth. To create this I focused on using the colour orange to convey this, with accents of green and pinks. For this piece I was inspired by the orange colour schemes used in the animated film The Iron Giant which uses this colour palette very effectively to portray the mood of the scenes.
For my second landscape, I chose the feeling on wonder and fantasticalness, and to use a primarily purple colour scheme to show this. I used quite an analogous colour palette with a mixture of blues and cyan along with the purple. I was inspired by the animated movies Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and Treasure Planet, which both use purple to create that mystical and otherworldly effect on the viewer which I also wanted to capture in my piece. I was influenced by the main colour editor for Sinbad, E. Jane Gotts as well as Sarah-Jane King who was the colour stylist for Treasure Planet.
For my pieces, I had to carefully consider what colours I was going to use, how many colours I had to use, the composition, which value, saturation. Doing these exercises has helped prepare me for when I will have to do colour scripts or general colouring later in the future for my course and potentially for my career.