Brain Powered Madness

Psychonauts is a game in which the protagonist is able to visit people's minds. It uses a quirky, stylized art style and is both original and fantastic. While the real world is depicted as being relatively muted and dreary, mainly by using desaturated and few contrasting colours, the mind worlds are both colourful and insane.

The real world.

The designers went all out with this game. Every person's mind is altogether different and creative use is made of that fact. For example, a paranoid milkman's mind looks like an American suburban area, but with crazy twisted roads, a bright glaring sky and camera's popping out of mailboxes and rubbish bins.

The Milkman Conspiracy.

Alternatively, a Spanish painter with relationship issues has a mind like a historical Spanish town - except everything is in fluorescent colours and black backgrounds, as if the whole world is a black velvet painting.

Black Velvetopia.

Xibalba

The Fountain is a film I've watched many times as one of my long-time favourites. It has a complicated storyline taking place in three seperate planes and is done very well. If you haven't seen it yet, I heartily recommend it.

Golden light is a recurring theme in this film.

The film makes good use of colour balance. A particular golden yellow light is used throughout the film. It intensifies in important moments and is muted in others moments; when the main character's wife is dying in hospital, she is bathed in a white, clinical light. But outside the hospital room the light is golden. That gold light becomes associated with the will to live and determination over the course of the film.

Golden light versus white light.

Purple hues provide a beautiful contrast with the gold.

These Colours Make Me Feel Things

Next, Saturation! Saturation makes us happy and alert. It's vibrant and energetic and thus often used in happy or dynamic situations. In the film Moonrise Kingdom, two kids run away together on an island. They're innocent and excited about their adventure, so the saturated colour works extremely well to convey that feeling.

"Is.. is that a bear?"

Going back to the Incredibles from the last post, the following image shows shots that are quite saturated. In these shots, the characters are happy for the most part and performing all kings of actions. Especially in the bright shots, it adds a dynamic feel. In the lower left shot, Mr. Incredible is quite angry. The colours are quite saturated, but with the high contrast and the glare of the red light, clearly showing his emotions. I suppose saturation isn't purely about being happy, it's being more about being expressive, or emotional - though that is a loaded term - more than anything.

Grey, Grey, Everything's Grey

So this weeks's theme, which I sometimes hold to when it's convenient, is saturation. First post of the week (yes, this one) will be about desaturated palettes! Desaturated palettes are mainly used to convey boredom and depression, so I'm going to try and make this post as boring and depressing as possible. First, let's set the mood: click me

Perfect. Now look at this image and imagine working there.



Fun Place of Rainbows and Sunshine Ltd.

Christ. Next, yet another analysis of Pixar images. Bob here is stuck in a horrible, unsatisfying job, everything keeps going wrong and he just misses being the awesome super hero he once was, having to work a demeaning job when he knows he could be so much more.

Sad. Just sad.

Fight Club uses the same tricks. Only during a fight or in the presence of Tyler does the contrast and colour pick up a bit; at any other time the lighting is washed out and desaturated.

Whatchu want?

Things From the Dark

When speaking of contrast in colour, the dark has an interesting effect on people. People are inherently afraid of the dark, for reasons both rational and irrational. It is something which stems from our earliest days, a sense of danger in the darkness, a sense of The Other, of alienation. They frighten us because they could contain anything, it is left up to our imagination and up to ourselves to decide how much we scare ourselves: all a good image or film has to do is make us feel like there is something lurking in the darkness, but not actually show it to us.

This tends to work in all media. Let's talk about video games because I love to play video games. Did I mention I love video games? I love video games.

Dear Esther is a simple narrative game. You, the protagnist, makes his way across a Scottish island, providing a disjointed narrative of his personal journey which brought him there - both recently and in his distant past, only hinting at a deeper storyline. The atmosphere is what really makes this game though, it is a journey through dark caves and beaches.

Alone on the island.

Furthermore, the protagonist is completely and utterly alone on this island. Right?

Dark shadows make occasional and subtle appearances.

Maybe not. The stark contrasts and deep shadows instill a sort of irrational but instinctual fear in us. The cold colours make us also feel cold and alone, perfect for the atmosphere.

Movie Posters: The Good, The Bad and The Awful

So far I've only talked about nice colour schemes, so this time I'd like to talk about bad colour schemes! More specifically, really bad movie posters. Because they're funny in a trainwreck sort of way.

First, let's start with The Good.

Good promotional material can make all the difference.

These are nice movie posters. They're interesting, clever and give a general idea of what the movie is about. Their colour schemes are beautiful and give an impression of the movie's atmosphere. In this case, the Drive movie poster feels like a night-time drive, clearly at high speeds. The 127 Hours one is shaped like an hourglass, using the colours of the horizon to reinforce that idea. Finally, the Star Wars poster gives a solitary feel, the boy has the same colour as the desert, he seems to disappear in its washed out blandness. But that shadow is stark and looming over him.

Next, the bad!

I think Terminal Velocity is about a man whose rocket-powered head takes off into space.

While not absolutely horrid, they're boring and generic and don't tell us anything about what to expect apart from Some Kind of Romance, Vikings doing Viking Things and Generic Comedy from left to right respectively. The colour schemes are generic and boring and don't add anything to what we're already seeing. Also, in the first poster that guy's head looks like it's rocket powered and about to make its way to Mars. Just sayin'.

Finally, the awful.

Come on X-Men you're not even trying.

Yeah. These posters look like they were cobbled together by the producer's nephew with his pirated copy of Photoshop 2.0. They usually lack any kind of art direction, style or original idea. They're the real stinkers.

Christ.

The Fall

This week I'd like to talk about one of my favourite films: The Fall. The colours in this film, are simply stunning. It makes use of wonderful contrasts, or lack thereof. It uses beautiful locations from all over the world and does not use green screens or rendered CG scenes at all.The film takes place, for the most part, in the imagination of a little girl. A story is being told to her, and what we end up seeing is how she interprets it in her childish mind. That's why many plot scenes are quite outrageous and all the locations seem dreamlike and surreal. However, they're all real.

Beautiful scenes.

And they're all gorgeous. It makes such a wonderful use of contrasts, both with colours already existing in the scenery and with costumes. Damn I love this film. 

Beautiful use of contrasting and complementary colours.

Glitch Hunting

Last time I talked about pixel art, and today I'd like to spend another post rambling about computer-only art. In this case, Glitch Art.

A collage of various glitched versions of the same image.

Glitch art is created by forcing images into channels where they can't really go. For example, opening the image as a text file, deleting lines in a text editor and then opening it as an image again. Or opening it in an audio editor and changing things there. The result, in any case, is unique and completely accidental. Similarly as with pixel art, the process is at least as important as the result in glitch art. The resulting combination of the obviously messed up imagery and strange colours randomly appearing make these images strangely eerie. As there's no humans involved to make choices about colour, they tend to be completely wild and random, usually with bright, primal colours. In any case, they're always interesting to look at!

Glitch Art works particularly well for moving imagery.

Foolish Samurai Warrior

Today I found myself watching an old Cartoon Network show, Samurai Jack. The art style really appeals to me, but after considerable appreciation of the visuals I realised that it's the colours that really make this show. Dramatic contrasts or a complementary palette, they all come to their right because the shapes used aren't complicated enough to distract. This really lets the colours (or lack thereof) come to their right.

Simple square sponge prints and constrasting colours make this image beautiful.

Complementary colours with highlights.

Pixel Art

With Colour Theory proving to be an excellent excuse, it's time to breathe new life into this blog. Surprisingly, the topic of choice will be all things colour related!

I'd like to start this series of posts off with a bit on pixel art. Pixel art is born from the depths of game development, but has since taken on a life of its own. It's interesting, because even though we've far surpassed it technologically, it's still very popular amongst many artists, with some even focusing on it exclusively.

Many think all digital art is pixel art, seeing as it's all done in pixels, but that's missing the point. Pixel art refers to picking each colour carefully, working with each pixel individually. The process is what matters, and the effect it has on the final product. Treating every pixel with such care is essential, as when you're working on such a small scale, a single pixel can make a world of difference.

Holy crap.

The above image is made with only 15 colours and a massive dose of Effort.