Location: Index >> Special Features

By: Lisa Novianty Fermanto

Overview

One thing that we often overlook in creating a concept painting is color reference. A color reference can be

a reference photograph in which a color palette is derived from. Extracting a palette from another source is not compromising the originality of your piece because you are not copying from it; you are manipulating elements (in this case, hues) from the source to help you depict a certain look to your own design.

Clockwise: Costume painting of Giselle from Enchanted,Reference board

and a color palette derived from it. Images © Disney

In the traditional way of painting, we mix our own palette to match up with nature or the subject that we are painting, just like how the old master painters would do small color studies of landscape before painting it on a bigger scale. With the invention of color photography and Photoshop, we use the eyedropper tool to pick the color from a photo to get our palette. This way of working is very efficient for an entertainment project, where time is limited.

During the pre-production stage of Disney “Enchanted”, a few references have been used to generate the color palette for the costume illustrations. Earlier on, it was decided that the Art Nouveau (as seen in Alphonse Mucha’s work) will have an influence on the movie. The flowing organic lines as well as the ethereal hues capture the magic of Andalasia, the land of happily ever after. These serves as a strong contrast to the modern day New York City where the main character Giselle was later transported. Working with Mona May, the movie costume designer, the the illustrators put together a color board like the one the left.

Picking a Good Reference

There is vast library of reference in the internet but taking our own pictures help us observe and learn more from the subject. Digital manipulation in Photoshop enables us to adjust the saturation and intensity of the hues and also mix references together to get a unique combination. Whichever way we mix our palette, basic fundamentals of values and colors still apply.

There are ways to extract a palette from a reference. In the next section, we will use Sims 3 as an example to see how the process takes place; from putting together references to a color production painting and the result as seen in final product.

From Palette to Painting

Using the palette, we can produce a few production paintings that set the mood and the look of the game during the production stage. Below is an example of a painting based on the color palette we have obtained earlier.

From Painting to Screen

As you can see in the examples below, the color studies have much influence on the final look of the game. This describes how important color studies are in the pipeline, whether it is for movies or games. It is a crucial part in pre-production and all these are derived from the right library of references.

Sims 3 © Electronic Arts