Original subtitles

Hey, what's up guys

Nelson here. Welcome back to my pixel art lesson.

In this chapter, will be talking all about color palettes

and going in depth about how to choose interesting colors.

Here's a chapter overview of what I'll be teaching

basic color theory, creating color palettes, using effects for different lighting situations

and coloring from black and white values.

Let's get started

first we're going to go over some basic color theory.

So there are three factors in color

light, hue, and saturation.

Light controls the value of how light or dark a color is perceived to be.

Using light and dark values helps add depth to your drawing

and separates planes from each other

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planes like the foreground and the background.

You can adjust how light and dark your color is

by going up and down the color picker.

Something I learned from drawing from life is that not many things in reality are pure black or pure white

and translating the effect of drawing can be very harsh.

So if I grayscale this drawing I usually save

bright whites as small highlights

because it draws attention to that area immediately.

And the rest of the drawing is more so midtones and darker tones because I never really pick pure black either

Not using pure black gives me more opportunity to add color to my shadows

and match the rest of the scene

In this scene, I have blue shadows

while the midtown's are more of a warm brown

to make it a bit more inviting

Which brings me to the next factor, hue.

Hue controls the actual color of the value

and you should experiment with hues you haven't tried before

and see what kind of unique combinations you can get from it.

Here's a list of primary colors

red, blue, and, yellow.

And the secondary colors which are the colors in between

you get from mixing primary colors together.

Complementary colors are basically the opposite hues of each other

red and green, purple and yellow, blue and orange

these are their direct comparisons of these colors.

But as you can see you can still achieve complementary colors

by having like a dark purple and a bright yellow and

I encourage you to experiment and try different color combinations as well

the hue and saturation slider can be really helpful for that

and you can quickly adjust colors by using them.

If you're more used to traditionally mixing paints

you might find the RGB slider useful to you.

It can be found under window color and it's the RGB slider.

It can help you choose subtle variations of a color you're looking for by adjusting the slider.

Give it a try.

Right now, it's a really dull gray in the middle of the sliders

which is the color selected, and you can see the bar of color

is showing what that color can be if you adjust any of the sliders using the RGB colorspace.

R can control how cyan and red it looks

G controls how purple or green it is

B controls how blue or yellow it can be

I like to use it for a subtle color shifts if everything is one shade

and it can add some more color variety to your drawing

as far as I know, it's more so adjusting the hue rather than the value the value meaning

how dark or light it is

So if you're looking for more subtle color variations

I highly recommend testing that out.

And our last factor, saturation.

Saturation controls have vibrant your color looks

and it's the horizontal section in your color picker.

Colors can also have warm and cool versions of themselves.

I listed out red yellow green and blue

with their warm and cool counterparts

Try experimenting with the color's temperature

to get the effect you're looking for.

Another way I like to paint is to mix with another color on top.

Let's say I have a red and I wanted to look cooler.

I choose a blue and put it at 50% capacity.

And it mixes into a purple tone

In this way, it's more of a watercolor technique

rather than painting with solid color.

And this is what I prefer because sometimes I don't know the exact color I want to paint

so it's always good to experiment and layer colors on top of one another.

Something I like to do in my work is add all the primary colors in my drawing

and it's done in really subtle ways.

I like to usually use one primary color as a highlight

maybe for a signpost or traffic cone or sticker label

and it'll be the thing that stands out

and the other two primary colors would be more for midtones are shadows.

And it would be a bit more subtle.

That way I don't have three bright primary colors overpowering the scene

but instead introducing it in subtle ways

in the end you want your drawing to look harmonized

and there's no need to force yourself to use the colors that I use.

I really encourage you guys to do your own experimenting and see what you like.

There's so many colors to choose from

and it can get overwhelming

another way to figure out colors is by using color palettes.

These websites are really good sources of inspiration

and can help you come up with ideas

when you don't know what colors to choose.

You can make your own by shuffling through the different options

or choosing pre-made palettes with a specific theme

while some are associated with a photo it's inspired by

I personally use Adobe color since it provides me with a theme and image that's included with the color palette.

There's also Coolors which also has palettes presets made by users

and you can shuffle through color palettes by pressing space.

It's a preset of five colors and you can lock each of them individually,

if you want to keep any of them and continue shuffling

you can also ask by the palette you choose in a bunch of formats.

Of course, I will leave a link to these places in the class notes

so you can check them out later.

So for this exercise

we're going to be using the color palettes and modify it

for different lighting situations on a single character.

I have a neutral color character to start off with

and I feel like a white and black outfit with a beige tote bag

would be a good test bed for our colors

so you can really see them in action.

This set would be the true colors of the character

and we're going to be doing four lighting situations

and let's just see what we come up with!

It's going to be a surprise for me too, since I've never use these files before.

The character is around 54 by 126 pixels

and you're free to use any object you want.

So I duplicate a character four times to have a slot for each color palette

and we'll group them in their own folder to keep everything organized.

I'm going to be using two color palettes that I generated myself

and I'm going to be using two premade palettes just to see what would happen.

And I'm going to drag the image of the palette over to my canvas.

Let's make a new adjustment layer

and pick the gradient back down here.

Your gradient map will automatically pick up the two colors from the bottom left color picker.

So that's why it's a really ugly green right now.

So what you want to do is eyedrop each color from the palette

and copy the RGB code on to the gradient map

And remember, colors on the left side mask over the dark tones

colors on the right side mask over the light tones

You can just click underneath the bar to create a new color slot

So after you add an all of the colors,

you may have to rearrange them and adjust where they are.

To get the desired effect.

When you're finished adding all the colors of your palette

click "create clipping mask" on the gradient map layer

and it should adhere to layer with the character below.

The first palette I really love the combination of pinks and greens

being subtle versions of red and green which are complementary to each other.

I adjust the gradient map to around 30%

So the effect is more subtle.

I duplicate the layer and change the layer mode

to linear burn to emphasize the colors

and it's already looking pretty good.

We instantly have a new palette for this figure

and I can see this girl in the setting of a spooky and Misty town at 6 a.m.

Oh, and there's also gradient map presets already in Photoshop

so you can choose from those as well.

The second palette we're going to use a lot of yellow and gray tones

and these are colors that I usually don't put together.

We're going to do the same thing and eyedrop the image of the palette

and put it into our gradient map bar

It turned out really well actually.

When I put it to 50% on normal and 50% on multiply

I really like it. It's kind of like a hot summer day in Asia

and the muted tones give a sense of nostalgia.

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Again, look through all the layer modes and play around with the opacities of it.

Each one produces a really unique looking affect

so the combinations for these are literally endless.

I like how her skin tone is much more yellow in this version

and the reds are now more purple.

yellow and purple being really good complementary colors

For a third palette we're going to be using a preset called "I met you"

which has a girl with a bloody splattered face.

She looks really intense :(

The pallette is generally cool blues and a deep red.

The tones look really similar to each other

when I put it into the gradient map.

So I rearrange them to fit the characters tones.

I end up putting the layer on normal at around 45% and vivid light at 20%

They had a really unique feel to it

like you're at an underwater aquarium

and I feel like if I was trying to achieve the look of an aquarium

starting from scratch, I'd take much longer figuring out the colors.

So this was a really quick and easy way to achieve that

without spending a lot of time.

For the 4th palette it's inspired by tangerines and has a lot of yellows

oranges, browns, and a dark green as well.

I was really curious what a palette of a fruit would create

and after rearranging the colors from dark to light

I was really surprised how normal mode at 85% would work so well.

It gives off a really heavy nostalgic vibe

and I can easily see this as autumn season and it's starting to get a bit chilly.

Understanding lighting situations is really important

and having the flexibility and vision for all them is a really good skill

to have in animation or video game development.

You want to convey the idea and have it read as quickly as possible.

Today I use random color palettes that I've never used before

and I already got really wonderful results

Imagine what it would be like if you already knew what you wanted to convey.

It's a super powerful tool to get the ideas pumping out really quick.

These palettes really sparked up my imagination

and I could create a series of work from each of these palettes

and they would all have a different feel to them.

This is a really powerful tool to work with if you want to experiment with color

and try something new

but in no way will this replace color theory

which is why I wanted to cover that first before talking about this.

Last video when I was making backgrounds,

I use it as my color adjustment to unify everything together

this time, I'm using it to create variation and explore different options that I have.

Thank you so much for watching.

Let me know if you have any questions about it.

I'm curious to hear about what kind of colors you like to use?

What's your process like when you start out?

In the next video

will be learning about how to give black and white drawings some instant color

See you in the next one and take care!