UNTIL NOW, WE’VE FOCUSED ON DRAWING, as this is the foundation of all the arts. An additional part of every game artist’s professional repertoire is to demonstrate an understanding of color and the ability to use digital tools, such as Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. Once you have the whole set of skills you’ll be a very versatile artist indeed.
The following Color section will give you an overview of basic color concepts, including an introduction to the color wheel, color temperature, and color concepts for harmony and contrast. These lessons will give you confidence in your color selection and the application of color to your character and environment designs.
The Digital Tools section will show you a very simple process for adding color to your sketches using the layer features in Photoshop and Painter.
Color can communicate emotions in a very primal way. Although the symbolism of colors varies between cultures, there are constants to be found in color practice that will help you significantly enhance the emotional messages of your designs.
One of the primary functions of the color wheel is to order colors in a circle so that primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) sit opposite their complementary colors—the secondary colors green, purple, and orange.
You can also think in terms of temperature and split the color wheel into two halves, one side featuring warm colors and the other cool colors, dominated by either the warm orange or the cold blue.
A third way to use the color wheel is as a value scale, from the lightest color, yellow, to the darkest, purple, with all values in between being gradients of midrange values. This latter concept was a favorite of the Impressionists, who avoided using a black pigment, preferring to describe light and shadow with color.
The significance of the primary colors is that, in theory, every color in the spectrum can be mixed using just these three hues. Secondary colors are the result of mixing two primary colors together. Yellow and red, for instance, create the secondary color orange.
Complementary colors have a curious visual relationship to each other in that placing them side by side increases the intensity of each. Notice how the orange tile against a complementary blue background appears more intense and brighter than the tile of the same color against a red background. Complementary colors can be used to attract the viewer’s eye to important items, as they create an eye-catching contrast that can be likened to black against white.
Journey
Journey takes advantage of color contrasts to create subtle emotional effects. In the opening desert section, the environment and character feature warm colors that sit very close to each other on the color wheel. The emotional effect of such closely related colors is one of harmony. (photo credit 8.1)
Journey
To create situations with more tension and unease in Journey, the red and orange colors of the character are contrasted with their complementary colors of green and blue in the background. In addition, the value key is shifted from high-key to low-key.
You must consider not only the color of objects but also the color of light. Light has different colors depending on its wavelength. The sun radiates warm colors in the range of red, orange, and yellow, which makes the color of illuminated objects appear warmer. If a cloud passes in front of the sun, then the blue light of the sky (which is the second brightest light source in a landscape) becomes the dominant light source and the very same objects take on a cooler hue. Therefore, it’s the dominant light source that dictates the temperature of colors within a scene. When we speak of color harmony, what we’re referring to is the overall temperature that unifies all the colors in an image.
As you get deeper into color, you’ll find that there are even more subtleties to be discovered in terms of temperature. It’s possible to have a cool red, or a warm blue. The two blues, for instance, sit very close to each other on the color wheel but the one on the right is positioned closer to the reds and oranges, making it warmer, just as the red on the left is cooler, because it’s positioned closer to blue on the wheel.
Selecting which combination of colors to use depends on the overall light temperature in your scene.
Stream in the Jura Mountains (1872–73) by Gustave Courbet (1819–1877)
Landscape in the Jura (ca. 1870) by Gustave Courbet
Gustave Courbet’s fascination with the phenomenon of light temperature is exemplified by these two paintings. Each has a distinct color temperature, even though they were both painted in the same region of the Jura Mountains. The painting on the left is cooler than the one below. What Courbet recorded are two different lighting situations, caused by atmospheric conditions and times of day or season, that have affected the colors within the landscape. Objects bathed in direct sunlight have a warmer hue (below) while a cloudy day makes the color of objects appear cooler and grayer (left).
Portrait of Clara Serana (ca. 1616) by Peter Paul Rubens
Praying Hands (ca. 1600) by Peter Paul Rubens
In figurative painting, the concept of warm and cool colors gives figures a sense of life and living warmth. These two paintings by Rubens illustrate the areas of the figure that are conventionally painted with reds to suggest warmth, indicating the parts of the body where blood vessels are closest to the surface of the skin: cheeks, nose, ears, fingers, knees, and feet. Cooler colors suggest skeletal landmarks. Note also that the “whites” of the eyes have a cool color temperature.
Adobe’s Photoshop and Corel’s Painter are industry standard tools for digital 2D art. They both have fantastic features that allow you to experiment with and add color to your drawings.
I recommend that you invest in a graphics drawing tablet and pen, which is the best alternative to drawing traditionally. A computer mouse doesn’t allow for the same level of dexterity.
One of the main advantages of Photoshop and Painter is their layer feature. The layer feature allows you to separate the stages of an image into more manageable steps, in fact mirroring the stages of creating a classical painting: a finished drawing followed by a black-and-white tonal painting over which glazes of color are added.
We will use Photoshop to illustrate the powerful features of layers for adding color. If you follow this process you’ll have no trouble using the same process in Painter. Both programs are available on Mac and PC platforms and therefore share the same shortcuts. Here in the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl/Cmd, Ctrl refers to the PC platform and Cmd to the Mac.
The following steps assume you have a basic knowledge of Photoshop. Please refer to the Help menu within the program if you’re unsure about some of the settings discussed.
Both Photoshop and Painter are excellent programs for digital painting. Some artists use both programs, taking advantage of their respective strengths, while others work exclusively in one program. Although Corel’s Painter is somewhat limited in terms of photo editing capabilities, which are Photoshop’s particular strengths, it surpasses Photoshop when it comes to mimicking traditional media. Different media will give your character and environment silhouettes different edge effects that may be more suitable for your style of game, such as a soft watercolor brush or the harder-edged round-tip pen.
A workflow that makes the program’s tools transparent is as much essential in Painter as it is in Photoshop. Memorizing keyboard shortcuts for the most common tools will allow you to spend more time engaged with your artwork and less time navigating menus to switch between tools.
The great thing about Painter and Photoshop is that there’s no single correct way of doing things. By experimenting you’ll be sure to develop a personal workflow.
You can use the character you created, copied, and saved in Level 6 for your digital color practice exercises and lessons in the pages that follow.
If you want to experience the same freedom in digital painting that you have drawing with pencil on paper, you need to familiarize yourself with shortcut keys. Memorizing shortcut keys allows you to concentrate on creating your artwork without having to constantly look down at the keyboard or navigate to a menu.
Here is a list of the top thirteen most commonly used Photoshop shortcuts that will make the painting process easier. Shortcuts in Painter are very similar. Notice that the cursor changes to reflect the currently selected tool or action.
LMB refers to left mouse button. If you’re working with a graphics drawing tablet, tapping the pen on the tablet will perform the same action as clicking LMB.
Use the drawing from Character Design (this page) for this exercise. Scan your drawing at a high resolution of 300 DPI, open it in Photoshop, and save it as a Photoshop file, with a PSD extension.
You will create five layers in the Layers palette. Each layer should be set to a unique blending mode to perform its designated function. To change a blending mode, click the highlighted drop-down menu while the respective layer is selected. Notice that the Mask layer has been made invisible and that the Mask and Drawing layers have been locked.
It’s worth naming each layer to keep your file organized and to make sure that the layers are ordered exactly as above. Remember to click (Ctrl/Cmd + S) at regular intervals to save your work in case your computer should unexpectedly crash.
DRAWING LAYER It’s fairly self-explanatory that the layer named Drawing is where you paste your scanned character sketch. Change the blending mode of the layer from Normal to Multiply.
It’s essential in this layer that you remove any visible textures from the paper so that the background is pure white. You can do this by adjusting the image’s contrasts using the Levels (Ctrl/Cmd + L) or Curves tool (Ctrl/Cmd + M). Finish by clicking on the Lock All icon to ensure you don’t accidentally paint onto this layer.
MASK LAYER (LEFT), ACTIVE SELECTION (RIGHT) On the layer named Mask you use your drawing as a guide to paint a black silhouette (left), making sure to keep the negative area detail-free. Fill in the silhouette using the Brush Tool (B) with a hard-edged brush, and finish by making the layer invisible.
The Mask layer will allow you to create a mask so you can paint within the contours of the character without worrying about accidentally painting over the edges. To activate the Mask, hold down (Ctrl/Cmd) and click on the layer’s thumbnail in the Layers palette. The activated selection will be indicated by “marching ants” (right). Your paintable area is now restricted to the region within this selection. You can make this active selection less distracting by hiding it with the shortcut (Ctrl/Cmd + H).
When you want to paint outside this region, you have to deactivate the selection with the Deselect shortcut (Ctrl/Cmd + D).
Consider creating masks for individual elements, such as the head, legs, and hands, to make selection easier.
COMPOSITE To take the edge off the daunting white canvas, you can use the gradient tool (G) to create a mid-toned background on the layer named Background. Activate the Mask selection, choose the layer named Color, and you’re set to begin painting!
The reason you set the layer named Drawing to a Multiply blending mode becomes evident as you begin painting. As illustrated in the composite image, the Multiply blending mode turns white areas transparent, so only the pencil lines are visible as an overlay. You can therefore experiment with color on the layer below without affecting the original drawing.
COLOR LAYER On the layer named Color, it’s best to use a soft-edged brush set to the biggest size the area you’re working in can manage, so that you can lay down more color in less time. Smaller, harder-edged brushes should be used for the finishing details.
Paint fairly monochromatically so that you can concentrate on establishing the lighting to create the illusion of form with core shadows and reflected light.
The three daubs of color in the top right-hand corner represent the three values used to paint the skin texture. (Three values are sufficient to model a form, as you saw in Advanced Lighting and Values [this page]).
You can quickly sample colors from your image with the Brush Tool (B) selected by hovering the cursor over a color that you wish to use while holding down (Alt) and clicking (LMB). The color is automatically set as your brush color and you can continue painting. The colors you choose should reference the colors in your research mood board. You may even wish to sample colors directly from your reference images and apply them to your character.
GLAZE LAYER For the finishing touches you can add subtle variations of color by painting on the layer named Glaze without affecting the values that you laid down in the previous stage.
Set your brush to a low opacity of around 10–20 percent and use a warm red to add reddish tints to areas such as the nose, ears, and hands to give your character a sense of living warmth. You can also add cooler tints of color to create an interesting temperature contrast.
Finish by adding some overlap of color between neighboring objects so that they appear to reflect each other. This effect is called color bleeding.
FINAL COMPOSITE The final composite consisting of a drawing overlaying a gradient background, a color layer, and color glazes.