Sarah's BA Blog: colour blind

colour concept for the characters....yes i realise these arent the final final designs but the file is now available so we can easily play about with colour options until we find a suitable match for all. I've used painted textures which were created by the talented Dan Grigsby for our project last year, these may or may not be used for the final look but its a good indication of the painted look im after for the piece and gives more depth to the characters.

heres the original drawing, scanned in and using the lasso tool drawn round to create the new shapes for colouring.

heres my first attempt:

i've always imagined macho gnome wearing red but its amazing how like santa claus he's now looking like. Ive used the same colour throughout the design and you can see that it definatly needs more difference in order to break up the design. I like the green colour used for Gnome although we have to be wary of this as we dont want him to blend into the background. The pink used for Lady Gnome was just the first feminine colour i could think of but i dont think it really works here. Producing this concept art has shown me how her dress needs a pattern of some sort in order to break up the shapes more.

Tell you what though...im loving the mushroom!

i quite like the saturation levels of the three above, that there not the plastic fantastic colourings that you typically see on gnomes. Lady Gnomes dress looks a bit like a night shirt here...might be to do with the frills. I like the blue used for Gnome here, could potentially be his colour and the green sort of works on Macho Gnome, would certainly signify his jealousy and greed part of his character.

Again this is a nice red used on Gnome, its not the bright pillar box red you'd normally see and instead has some nice pinky tones in it. The Blue for Macho is also nice but i dont think it suits him as much as the red or green previously used. The yello on Lady Gnome is a no no here, she just stands out like a sore thumb and just reminds me of mustard. Its too bright and in your face, perhaps yellow could be used sparingly for parts of the character (hair or dress frills etc)

Yellow looks not as bad on Hero but im still not very keen on it. This selection was supposed to represent a more autumnal look to the characters, representing change that'll occur from all of them. Not sure this pallette suits though. The orange is too bright on Lady Gnome and the red a little desaturated on Macho.

A massive NO to the yellow of Macho, just looks completely wrong on him. Blue/Purple used on Gnome is a nice colour but i dont think it suits his character. The Green isnt a favourite of mine for Lady Gnome but these experiemnts are providing all the possibilities we could go. At least we'll be able to rule out some definate NOs when deciding the final palette.

HA! just as a matter of trying every colour here but again a huge NO to the pink for Macho, looks completely out of place and not in his character. The orange isnt too bad on Hero and the blue is a possibility for Lady Gnome.

Dunno why but i found it difficult to alter Machos suit to purple...hmm. At any rate i dont think this palette works at all for both Macho and Hero but i was attempting more blue palettes. Lady Gnomes blue though is a possibility, its quite soft and not too dark for her.

A step further...

taking the best of colour options for each of the characters, heres some further development that could help break up the colour and shape of them

Lady Gnome: addition of small flower print across the dress as well as alternative hair colour experiments.

i dont lke the grey/white hair on lady gnome, makes her waaaaay too old, this way just the template painted texture used and i thought i'd include it in the experiments. My favorites are either her with blonde or brown hair. I dont think the red is as effective although does work quite well with the blue dress. Anyway, we have lots to pick and choose from.