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Now that I've looked at shape theory, I feel like it's important to look at colour theory as well. This will hopefully allow me to shape and colour my sprites as much as is humanely possible. Though seeming small, the potential benefits of this research could set my game aside from those already made, meaning a huge improvement in my work and in my portfolio. The link to the website I used for this research can be found in the bibliography or below.
What is a colour wheel?
The colour wheel is an organised circle with all the various colours that the human eye can see.
Despite the version on the right generally being accepted by colour theorists, the circle can realistically be in any order with any hues and still be considered with a decent amount of merit as long as some kind of merit has been applied.
Despite the disagreement over how the colour wheel looks, it can generally be divided into 3 seperate groups of colours.
Primary Colours -
Primary colours are colours unmixable by any other colours, alongside not being able to be made by mixing, these colours are generally considered the basis for every other colour, making them the "primary" or initial colours.
Secondary Colours -
The secondary colours are green, purple and orange. These are called so because they can be mixed into existance by the primary colours, acting as a sort of secondary type of colour on the wheel.
Tertiary Colours -
Tertiary colours are colours that are made by mixing a primary and a secondary colour. As a result this gives the colours made a double barreled name, the list given by the website is below.
Yellow-Orange
Red-Orange
Red-Purple
Blue-Purple
Blue-Green
Yellow-Green
What is colour harmony?
Colour harmony is achieved when the various colours you have arranged together form a relaxing, pleasing appearance. This relaxation is caused by the balance of most colour harmonies, where the eye will not see what it's looking at as messy, chaotic or overstimulating. This also works for boring colours, the brain will perceive the bland or boring visuals in the same negative way that it would perceive an over-contrasting and over-saturated environment. The human brain tends to always choose order over anything else, with the equilibrium of chaos, contrast, order and saturation being the perfect way to get colour harmony.
Methods to get colour harmony
A colour scheme based on analagous colours -
Analagous colours are colours that are in a row of 3 on the colour wheel, this is the case on a 12 segment colour wheel anyways. These colours normally include a primary colour that is the predominate of the other.
Complementary colours -
Complementary colours are ones opposite on the colour wheel, an example is red-green. The flower to the right, despite having a massive amount of contrast actually manages to have a greta colour harmony between the
A colour scheme from nature -
The website describes nature as the perfect departure point for colour harmony. The strange thing, is that this is regardless of whether the colours fit the normal standards and beliefs of colour theory.
Colour Context
The perception of colour can be altered by the surrounding colours, for example; the red on the image to the side looks most vibrant on the black background due to the contrast, it also appears larger for the same reason. On the orange background it looks duller due to the lessened contrast and on the white doesn't look as bright as it is being partially dulled by the surrounding brighter colour. The brilliance is also highest on the blue-green background due to the opposing colours.
The left purple has a slight red-purple tinge compared to the right due to the background it's on. This is all despite the purple rectangles being the exact same. I also realised that the rectangle on the right seems darker than that on the left.
Conclusion
By using colour theory I think I can improve my work greatly, the environment I create can have a high amount of harmony to make the player appreciate their surroundings more. I can also use colour theory for my sprites and monster to perhaps make the monster not harmonious and so difficult to look at in comparison to the character which I would make with relatively good harmony. Furthermore, I could use the idea of natural colours if I do any plant pots for decoration or something similar such as a painting on the wall.
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