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Colour Theory, a short talk on something I know nothing about.

I was asked a question on Bluesky recently about how I select my colour-schemes. I had to go away and really think about how best to answer the question because the immediate answer is not particularly satisfying: The honest truth is I just make it up as I go along, relying on intuition and, when that fails, screwing up repeatedly until I get something that works. I think I've said elsewhere, but colour-schemes are the thing I either just get right or otherwise spend an inordinate amount of illustration time on.

That said, I really wanted to provide a good answer to that question, so I went away, delved deep into the vast emptiness of my brain, and managed to dredge up some tips I hope will be of use. I've tried to be concise but it's still way too long for a… 'bluet' or whatever the hell it's called on Bluesky, so it's here instead.

Whether it's mechs or vehicles, I always assign the parts of whatever machine I'm designing loosely into two groups. I don't really have a name for these groupings, because I never have anyone to explain what I'm doing to so, for the purpose of this explanation, we'll classify them as 'ornamental' and 'functional'. The armour or shell, though it may serve a purpose, counts as ornamental, whilst any internal frame, joints, mechanics, pipes etc, count as functional.

So, even if I don't know what the colour-scheme is going to be, I do know when designing the machine that these elements need to contrast one another and, when it comes time to colouring them, I'll set them up on separate alpha-locked layers with placeholder colours to make adjusting them independently possible.

In the case of the ZOE-themed robot I already had an idea and knew it would be coloured similar to an astronaut, to suggest a space theme; so off-white for ornamental, dark grey for functional. Then I figured I wanted to add an 80s vibe to it: the secondary colour would be pink, the third yellow, and then an electric blue for the advisory symbols and notices. Importantly, all of these colours still contrast with the dark grey because they're bright and highly saturated, and the grey is the opposite of those things.

To add some interest to the functional element, but maintain a good delineation between it and the ornamental element, I used a bronze colour for the cockpit and advisory notices, rather than using one of the colours I'd already used. This was used sparingly and also as an accent to separate and draw attention to the head. It is possible to use colours from one element on the other but doing so without restraint could easily result in that delineation of forms blurring and lead to a less appealing image.

Once I've got those colours locked in, I then added the shadows. This is an important step in my illustration process because I usually use very saturated shadows, which can have a tendency to alter how the "actual" colours of the machine will be perceived. The illustration above shows the original shadow colour and an alternative one to highlight how influential this step is; it's a bit of mind-trickery I don't know the theory behind so I'm afraid I can't elaborate on it.

So, I guess I've outlined a process of When things go well but, what about When things go to shit? Well, I can offer two solutions there.

The first one is exceedingly simple: Find a reference. I was recently watching a show and saw the hoody above. The colour-scheme caught my eye and, whilst I totally could remember it, I screen-capped it and left in a folder somewhere. If I'm really struggling, I'll think of something I've seen, like this, and use it either as a starting point or as the scheme itself. So look out for these colours turning up in a future illustration.

Furthermore, if I've got nothing like that to pick from, I'll just cheekily take the opportunity to make a reference to something, like Silent Bomber (illustration below). Nobody got this; when you don't talk to anyone, you tend not to see how obscure your references are.

Then there's option 2: Find a slider and slide it. I do most of my illustration in Procreate which, like most art/graphics apps, has a variety of editing options that simply let you play around with settings and drastically alter the appearance of something. Does that blue and grey look too plain?

Go into the Hue/Saturation/brightness menu and slide everything everywhere until something catches your eye. Or just apply a gradient map and see what happens. The pics above are the original colour-scheme (left) and one (right) where I slid the hue slider and found something neat. I had to touch up the accents but, otherwise, it really was that simple.

Messing around with things like transmuting the livery of an F1 car onto a robot, or wildly flapping at buttons until something happens are great, and valid, ways to learn what works and what doesn't.

Anyways, that's about all I got. My Bluesky is here BTW:

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After roughly 50 days of doing some hobby activity with Gundam kits, I finally got around to actually make something in their intended, 1/144 scale.

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I had an Elster cast without legs, and she got sucked into a completely different future. Maybe on Leng, maybe 262144 cycles later.

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A small Ara drawing on a piece of office paper.

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This time, it's Eusan Nation military. Somewhere on Kitezh, judging by the reddish sand. (this project was an excuse for converting a Schnapper)

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And so, I painted that creepy Empress shrine.

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Does it count as fan art if you're not a fan? While I love Signalis, I haven't been able to play much of Half-Life (whoever decided to make the grossest monster have persistent corpses -may they be slowly lifted into barnacle's maw).

Technical information: the model is roughly 30mm tall, on a 25mm base. Besides the crowbar and the hand that holds it, fully sculpted by me.

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Signalis fan art continues - this time, with some variation. The mannequin consists of Storch and Starling halves, and is inspired by an enemy from Silent Hill. The one-armed Starling is inspired by my initial misunderstanding of the in-game model: I thought their baton was an extension of a creepy long limb. And then, there's the Kolibri with an assault rifle - a weapon type not explicitly present in canon.

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Signalis fan art: now a Gundam. Welcome Mobile Suit Penrose.

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