Colors tell a lot about our environment, personality, and hopes. Just picking colors that seem nice together won't work in the character design, knowing and understanding color theory is an essential part of the process.
In this lesson, you will learn that you can't pick colors randomly for the character and how to apply them to the greyscale image.
Colors are associated with different feelings like red is seen as the color of love, passion, and anger. Purple is seen as the color of royals and maybe even corruption, as the purple pigment was extremely rare and expensive in the Middle Ages and only the wealthy could afford it.
So, if your character has some personality traits that could be presented with colors, pick those for the palette. Search the internet for the colors' meanings and start from there to pick the colors.
One way to shorten the color picking is to use ready color palettes found on the internet. Nature is full of colors that work together naturally, so why not use them as a guide. Pinterest is full of a wonderful variety of color palettes. Take a small stroll around and see if there are colors that could work for you.
Spend some time with the colors and search for their meanings, but don't go overboard with the amount. Stay under eight colors, so the character won't become chaotic. Reference boards are great guides for the colors, use them if you have difficulty finding a starting point. You can also use ready color palettes.
After the color palette is done, go back to your character's savefile. This is also a phase that might include some design changes, so don't panic when you realize that some changes are needed.
Tähän tulee video, joka on noudettava Risestä.
Tähän tulee video, joka on noudettava Risestä.
In most digital drawing software, you can create a clipping mask, which prevents the coloring from going over the lines. In Krita, the clipping mask is created by right-clicking the layer with the drawing and from the group -section on the menu choosing the quick clipping group. Change the layer's mode to overlay, and experiment with other layer modes some time to see what sort of effects they have. Now you can add color to the new layer that was created.
The values from the previous lesson are now truly showing their benefits. Even when you color with the same color over different values, it appears a completely new color.
Shoshanna's colors include red for passion and strength and golden yellow to present her confidence.
The values and the colors are now there, so the character design could be considered done, but there's still a bit to go. The final polishing and design changes happen in the next lesson.
See you there!