Hey everyone, welcome back.
So now that we have a sketch there were happy with, we can proceed
to find a palette for our illustration.
During this video. I'll be creating a color study alongside you
by using one of the methods that we reviewed earlier--
using an online palette, taking one from a pre-existing image,
or creating one yourself.
I'll be creating one from scratch in this video,
but in my usual process,
I'll create four to six palettes for an illustration, some by myself and some through online palettes.
But before we start, I'd like to talk about how I choose color palettes for my characters
with pre-existing palettes.
So in this case, I created 8 color variations.
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Some of them were by me and some of them were through online palettes.
Most of the time for my own palettes, I tend to stick with local colors.
Local color is when things are their natural color.
For example, when grass is green or wood is brown.
In these cases. I use natural tones depending on the color of the skin
so I don't usually use a skin tone like pink or blue unless that's part of the character design.
When I'm looking for online palettes,
I'll look for ones that have one of the character's dominant colors.
So in this case with Zenitsu, I looked for an orange or yellow tone for the hair to build around.
Then even if the color palette didn't have a color uhh,
for the skin, for example, I would still be able to kind of eye it
based on the yellow or orange from the palette.
In the end, I ended up using this palette in terms of color,
but in terms of value I ended up using this palette.
So, let me show you what I mean.
Remember the layer blending mode "color" that we talked about earlier?
By moving this layer over to this one and then selecting the color option
it'll overlay the colors on to the layer beneath while
retaining its value structure.
Here's what they look like side by side so you can see a better example of what I mean.
Now returning to our sketch,
I'm just going to go right in and start laying down colors.
While doing an illustration with more background,
it's helpful to lay down a base color first that will be like your starting point.
This is because the color of the background can greatly affect the rest of the colors in the image.
I will say that creating a palette by yourself is a lot more difficult
and it would probably be easier for you
to use a pre-existing palette.
For instance, not every color study I create is a success.
And for images that have more background
it might be easier to reference a photo or an artwork rather than a palette
since they have a wider variety of colors available.
For this assignment I created (or tried to create) 6 different color combinations
and the only successful ones were ones that I got through referencing mood boards or illustrations.
So I would say that my success rate for creating my own palettes is about a 50%..?
Or less if I'm trying to create a palette with non-local colors,
but it's all just part of the trial-and-error process.
For once I actually have a kind of vague idea
of the kind of palette that I'm going for but I'm not really sure how it'll turn out
so we'll just have to see.
If you don't have any ideas in mind before you start though
and you want to try creating your own
you could try to consider something like complementary color palettes.
Complementary colors are ones that are across the color wheel from each other
so, red and green, blue and orange, or purple and yellow.
When you think of these colors though, you'll tend to think of the most vibrant hue of these colors
the ones that appear on the color wheel.
However, you don't need to use the most vibrant colors.
For instance, my oc, Vernon,
is a blue orange color combo, but I desaturated the orange and blue
and chose a lighter blue.
The artist, pix_bun, also uses a really beautiful combination of more vibrant blues and oranges
for the Azura City in their Ambrosia project.
By changing the color saturation,
which can also be referred to as the vividness,
you can still find pleasant combinations just through the complementary colors.
Another word you've probably heard me say a few times now is "hue".
Hue is referring to the color itself.
So if you move the slider around the color wheel
You can change the hue.
With hues, you can get different versions of the same color.
Take this red here for example.
The red in the center is probably closest to what you think of when you hear the word red,
but by moving the hue slider slightly left or right
you can get a warmer or cooler red.
The red moves towards yellow is warmer,
and the red moves towards purple is cooler.
Each color has its own warm and cool variations
giving every color a wide range of possibilities.
One thing I want to mention, if you noticed my picture,
is that the colors in the front, I'm trying to make them more saturated,
and the ones further back, I'm trying to pull down the color's vividness.
This is because of the atmospheric perspective
that I mentioned to you earlier.
The green in the back is even still a bit vibrant now that I'm laying down the colors in the foreground,
so I'll go in and adjust it later.
If this is a lot for you to take in at first
another palette type that you could try as a monochromatic palette.
Monochromatic palettes are palettes that are mainly in one color.
So if you use only reds or only greens.
However, within these palettes
you can have different hues and saturations of that same color to get more range.
I rarely try out monochromatic palettes for myself,
but sometimes It's cool to see what kind of effect they can have
and it might be easier at first to try something with a little bit more of a limited range
before just going right in and literally having every color your disposal.
So right now,
I'm just laying down any colors and
trying to find something that fits within what I've already set up.
It's helpful to block in the major colors first
before trying to tackle all the smaller details
just so you have more of a sense of what the overall image will look like.
Then after you've blocked everything in,
you can go in and create some more variation with those detailed areas
As you can see, I'm not really worrying about shading at this point.
I did put a little shine on the frame,
but other than that, it's really just all flat colors.
I knew I wanted to attempt an earthy palette because of her theme,
but I also wanted it to be a bit otherworldly.
Another thing you can consider while creating palettes is,
what do you want the mood of the piece to be?
Once you've consider these things
it can help you to decide whether you'd like to try using a warm or cool palette for example.
Occasionally you might also see artwork
that is primarily black and white but has one spot color.
By using just one color.
You can really accentuate a part of the image.
This method of coloring can be noticed a lot in storytelling
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as the color is usually symbolic of something.
There are even people who work in black and white first and then add color later.
One of my professors actually worked this way.
I personally find this method a bit more challenging
but working with colors first or working completely black and white first,
there's no right or wrong way.
It's all just up to your preference in the end.
The helpful thing with working monochromatic first
is that you can really pay attention to setting the values
without getting distracted by the colors.
Honestly, I will say that I found that I tend to take longer on my color studies.
My professor had told me that color studies shouldn't take any more than like 5 minutes each,
but I usually take closer to 15 minutes
depending on the illustration's complexity.
I think there's probably easier ways to create quick color palettes
such as using gradient maps, but that's not something that I've quite delved into myself yet.
I'm also being a bit more precise than I need to be here
but your color studies can really be loose like your sketch.
It's more just to capture the overall look.
Going back to the topic with, uhh, characters with pre-existing palettes
if my character had a pre-existing palette
I would either choose a color palette with one of her dominant colors,
or I would just try to pick colors that are as close to the reference as possible.
After that, you can add effects like multiply and overlay to change the color palette even more.
So let's take one of my unfinished attempts as an example.
If this was her initial color palette
and we try to put it into the background like this,
we can notice that she doesn't match with the surrounding scenery.
but just by creating a simple multiply layer, I'll choose a yellowish overtone to
help match the background
and now you can see already that she's starting to blend in more with the space.
That's how I would approach characters with an existing color palette but
I just wanted to show an example
where the character is being designed with the image.
So in this case, I'm just trying to incorporate colors from the background into her design
without making anything blend too much or have it be too out of place.
And then I've finished up the palette.
So, after this you can go in and just adjust
things with the tone curve if you want to fix up the values of it.
So I noticed that my values are a little bit murky
so I adjusted them in the tone curve and then
I changed the layer to black and white with a blue button in the layer property menu.
I realized that the black and white values still weren't as solid as I wanted them to be
even after adjusting the colors, so I tone curved the image once more
while keeping it black and white to see the values more clearly.
Then, once satisfied,
I set a duplicate colored version over the black and white version
and then changee the layer blending mode to color
and now it has better values.
Once done, I just created some other variations through the tone curve and blending mode options.
Honestly, I don't even really use this method too often for creating color palettes
as I prefer to just use directly from online palettes or to create my own,
but I wanted to just quickly show you some other variations to this palette.
If you're familiar with gradient maps,
they're also a great way to be able to quickly add colors to your sketch.
I don't have much experience using them myself,
but you can very easily
add color to a black and white image
with just some simple gradient maps
and playing around with the layer blending modes.
Here's just an example of me trying to use gradient maps.
You can find this option by going to Edit Tonal Correction
then selecting the gradient map option.
CSP has some presets that you can use if you'd like,
but you can also create your own
by switching out the colors
For now, I'll just choose a preset and try playing around with the opacity and layer settings
until I can find something that looks okay.
I'm also gonna go ahead and create a wildly different color palette.
I personally wouldn't choose to use a color palette like this,
But I just want to show you how much you can exaggerate the colors
just to see how much variation you can get.
All right, so that's basically it.
You can see that even though I've only created one
I was able to come up with some
pretty different variations.
I definitely suggest that you try to create at least one more option
or until you find one that you're excited to work with.
I ended up choosing the more orangey palette
and I actually got a bit carried away
so I went in and started to add some of the colors
just to see how it would affect the piece.
So as you can see instead of shading the wall with a lighter orange,
I used more of a light yellow to help bring it out more
You don't need to go in and start shading at this point,
but I just wanted to get
more of an idea of what this palette would start to look like closer to the finished stage.
And I actually have a special problem with my clip studio.
So the issue is that the colors that I use in my program
look more saturated then how would actually saves.
So when I open the finished piece,
it'll usually be more desaturated by a little bit.
I've checked into the color profile and that's not the issue
and this issue wasn't on my old computer either.
so I'm not exactly sure why it does that
but this is how the colors actually look.
In this case, I actually think that the issue is working in my favor
because I think that the colors that I was using were a bit too saturated.
But normally I have the opposite problem and I have to go in
and add a little bit of saturation back into my pieces.
Hopefully though you don't have this issue and it's just me.
So now that you've had practice applying colors to a full picture,
why don't you try to do one more?
Maybe go for a completely different mood
just to see how wildly different you can get.
If you have any questions with your color or need an extra pair of eyes for your color studies as well,
you can share your progress in the comments section below
and let me know what methods you chose to try out as well.
In the next video, we'll be going over values
and I'll be creating some value studies with you.
So I'll see you next time!