Colour theory

Primary colours:
The primary colours are the 3 colours that can't be made by mixing. It's worth noting that there are 2 sets of primary colours Red, Green and Blue (the primary colours of light) and Red Yellow and Blue (the primary colours of pigment).

For the sake of this task I will use the RYB primary colours.

Secondary colours:
The secondary colours are the colours that are made by mixing any two of the three primary colours with equal amounts. These colours are Green, Orange and Purple.

Tertiary colours:
These are the 6 colours created when you mix a primary colour with a secondary colour. The two colours must be next to each other in the colour wheel for this to work however, for example Orange and yellow or Blue and green.

The colour wheel

This is the colour wheel, it's used to represent the different colours that can be created by mixing. For instance you can now easily see the colour made when you mix purple and red.

The wheel also has another uses, it is perfect for showing the different types of complimentary colours.


Complimentary colours:
Complimentary colours are colours that when put together wont clash and mix very well together in the same place. An example in a game would be the Orange and blue portals is Portal.
These colours are directly opposite each other on the colour wheel. E.G. red and green.

Analogous colours:
Analogous colours are a set of three colours that a re next to each other in the colour wheel. The three colours will work well harmoniously and are generally set up as one main colour and two supporting colours.

Triadic colours:
Triadic colours are all evenly spaced around the wheel and are used can make vibrant colour schemes that work best when one colour is the main colour.

Split complimentary colours:
Split complimentary are just like normal complimentary colours but instead of it being the two colours opposite each other you take 3 colours, 2 of witch are the colours next to the normal complimentary.

Square (tetradic) colours:
Tetradic colours are a group of two complimentary colours all equally spaced around the colour wheel. these are great for creating a varied colour scheme with one colour being dominant. however the cold and warm balances can get a little off if not used correctly.

Hue/ saturation and value (tints and shades)

Hue:

Hue is a another word for colour. The hue is essentially the base of any colour before you add and black or white (shade and tint).

Saturation:

Saturation is the term used to describe the colourfulness of a colour. When the saturation is taken down to 0% it turns into grey, black and white or a tone. the same effect can be achieved by adding grey to any colour. when at 100% the colour is a pure and gives off no grey or tone.

Value:

Value is the lightness or darkness of a colour. This can also be called shade, tint or tone and is achieved when black (shade) white (tint) or grey (tone) is added to a colour. 

Tints and shades:

The tints and shades described in the above paragraphs are the words sued to describe the process of adding black or white to any colour. adding black gives the effect of a very deep shade   and is used mostly for dark edges of shadows or unlit colours. Adding white give the effect of a bright tint and is used for highlights of very brightly lit colours. to achieve a value for anything in between white and black grey is added to create a tone.

Without hue and saturation colours become very indistinct making them a very important factor of an image. for an example here is the same colour wheel used above but with the saturation, and therefore the hue, taken down to 0.

As you can see all of the colours but one look exactly the same, even though with saturation at %100 they all look very different. the only one colour that stands out is the colour made by mixing green and purple, this is different as the value was altered for the original to help it blend better with the other colours making it stand out as a darker grey.

Warm and cold colours

Warm colours:

warm colours are the colours in the wheel that give off a warm feeling when viewed. this is very effective when trying to capture a hot landscape or the fire in a pit. they also give the effect of drawing an object towards the viewer.

 Cold colours:

Cold colours are the opposite of warm colours in that they give of a feeling of cold to the viewer. they also have the effect of making objects sink into an image. these colours would be used to make a arctic landscape.

Game colour pallet

Games use this knolange of colours to their advantage. Here we have a screen shot of Borderlands 2, you can see that they have used a very blue colour pallet for this section of the game. This works well with the contrasting colours of the characters and also give a feeling of cold due to the blue hues. another aspect of this is that the blue scenery sinks into the images and the warm coloured characters stand out.

Exploring tone

 I  this task I went through a number of exercises to learn the different aspects of tone. through these exercises I hope to understand how tone can be used to help draw the eye into an image and to find the techniques used to make good tonal drawings.

Exercise 1

These two drawings both show how you can create different shades and tones ranging from total white to total black. Using digital software and pencils it is possible to create a wide verity of tone and both work well, however I found that both are different. The digital drawing allows for much more accurate tones but don't allow the same flow as pencils do as they have the ability to be pressed down lighter or heavier for different gradients. You can do this digitally to but I found that it takes a little more concentration as you don't get the same feed back with a stylus that you do with the pencil.

This first image was created using pencils. as you can see each tone was made using a different type of pencil, the "H" pencils are harder and the "B" pencils are softer. These give a great variety of tone but I feel that the harder pencils are much more difficult to use as they can damage the paper due to you needing to press quite hard to get any mark to show at all. The other issue is that you have to keep sharpening them if you what to keep better control of your lines.

 This next images have been created in the same way but by using a piece of software called Photoshop. This again shows a great variety of tone but can offer a greater level of control as with this you can be certain that the tone will never get lighter or darker by mistake as there is an option to stop any sort of pressure sensitivity. However if you do want this option you can turn it on or lower the opacity so that it acts a like a pencil.

 

Exercise 2

In this exercise I was tasked with accurately showing tonal shading on 5 different shapes. It is important to know how light falls on shapes as you can use the knowledge to add tone to most objects, this is because they will mostly all fall into the same category of one of these 5 basic shapes. For example a head could be shaded like a sphere or a tree could be shaded like a cylinder.

With the sphere in order to keep it looking round you need to make any tonal shading you do curve around the object. with this image I make the dark tonal shading radiate from a highlight that is pointing directly at the source of light. Also spheres have a small amount of light on the under side where the light is reflecting off the floor.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       For the cube the face that it not in the direction of the light source will be in the shade. In most cases ther are 3 base tones in a cube, the dark "away" side the mid-tone side and the bright side that is facing the light source. In this image two of the sides have equal exposure to the light so they both have roughtly eaqual shading. also on cubes any edge that is facing the light should usualy have a highlight.

The pyrimid is simmilar to the cube, however with the pirimid you will usualy only see two sides. The only time you see the other sides is if you are looking at it from the top or if it has more than 4-5 sides. This means that there is one bright side and one dark. Like the cube any edges facing the light will have a highlight.


With the cone you need to remeber that highlights and shading will usuly be triangular in shape. this means that it will be wider at the bottom and taper to a point at the top. also dont get it confuzed with the sphere where the highlight is a pin point, here it will be a strieght line down the side.



The cylinder is very simmilar to the cone with shading, however insted of it tapering to a point any tone will be in a straight line from top to bottom. also there will be a flat surface on the top/bottom that will be shaded in the same way as the flat faces of the previous shapes however any tone will be curved.





Exercise 3

For this exercise I had to find an image of a simple landscape, blur it and then make it into a grey scale (black and white) image. from here I added different coloured lines to show the different areas of tone, this would then help me to see how tone effects the image and shows distance

From this image you can easily see that the foreground in the landscape is much darker in tone from the background. This helps the eye travel from the front to the back of the picture and give a sense of depth to an otherwise 2D image.


Through these exercises I have learnt much about tone and the techniques I can use to effectively use it. For shapes I have found that in general the shading will conform to the shape of the face it is on, for example a conical shape will have tone in a triangular shape whereas a sphere has circular shading. also for landscapes you can use tone to draw the viewer into the image by making objects further away lighter in tone.

Developing my own visual library

At our first day back at college we were shown a video on developing our visual library. This is basically all the things we have every see in our life or thought of in our heads. You develop it by watching films looking at animals etc.

To help me develop mine I looked at what I allready do.

• I watch TV programms that can help. by witch I mean that I watch good programs not rubbish like Big Brother.
• I play a good variety of games.
• I've travelled the worl and have seen the sights and experienced things you can't really get a feel on of pichures

With all this I have one thing missing...Books! Ever since I really got into my games I have never had time to read in bed like I used to.
This is mostly because I only really get the chance to play games in the evening with all the work I do, also my best friend lives in America and she can only get online in the evenings.

So from now on I propose that I will try to cut down on my computer time in the evenings and try to read books like I used to.

"Tipsy house" Summer project

Over the summer, in between year 1 and 2, I was tasked with creating a concept of a house that had to be based around this extract form 'Memoirs of a Geisha'

"In our little fishing village of Yoroido, I lived in what I called a "tipsy house." It stood near a cliff where the wind off the ocean was always blowing. As a child it seemed to me as if the ocean had caught a terrible cold, because it was always wheezing and there would be spells when it let out a huge sneeze--which is to say there was a burst of wind with a tremendous spray. I decided our tiny house must have been offended by the ocean sneezing in its face from time to time, and took to leaning back because it wanted to get out of the way. Probably it would have collapsed if my father hadn't cut a timber from a wrecked fishing boat to prop up the eaves, which made the house look like a tipsy old man leaning on his crutch."

From this I did a a few sketches from witch I made a refined drawing. This later turned into a full colour drawing. Here I'm only going to show a sample of my drawings as there is really to much to post here without it looking messy.

I also did a whole document of written research and development that I will also be leaving out of this post. Anyway enjoy the pictures!

Click any of the images to enlarge them!