Lesson 16: Color Harmony

The final level of the color trilogy is color harmony and unity.

This means you need to make the colors of everything in the picture harmonious and unified: the scene, multiple characters, special effects, UI, and so on.

How can you achieve this quickly?

Method 1: Use the Same Palette for Everything

Including characters, scenes, and UI. This will definitely be harmonious.

Cross-shaped color palettes are popular now.

The advantage is that it can maximize color savings.

In a cross-shaped palette, colors can eventually loop back, meaning that the light and dark transitions between certain colors can reuse colors.

The highlight color of the green grass is lemon yellow; the highlight color of the red grass is light yellow. If a cross-shaped palette is not used, you might need to add 2 more colors to paint the highlight areas of the green grass and red grass separately.

Method 2: Collect Works by Pixel Art Masters

Author: Derek Yu

Collect works by pixel art masters you like, preferably covering all 7 basic colors (red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple), with 2-3 light and dark gradient colors for each color.

Because these are pixel art pieces you love, you will naturally be motivated to collect them. Using a master's palette to draw pixel art is very comfortable.

Because once you have the colors, you only need to think about shape, and the difficulty is instantly reduced by 10 times.

In traditional painting, it is absolutely impossible for a beginner to master the trick of color without 3-5 years of practice.

Method 3: Use Only Neutral Colors

What are neutral colors?

They are colors with relatively conventional saturation and brightness, neither too bright nor too dark, with saturation neither too high nor too low.

Neutral colors are not outstanding, but they won't go wrong either. They can be said to be the baseline for judging whether pixel art is good or not.

Homework

Complete a pixel art piece with harmonious colors, or modify an old work.