Colour Theory

Hue

Hue is a term for the pure colours red, yellow, orange, blue, green etc. The three main colours are red, blue and yellow which are also known as the primaries. If we look at the animation Toy Story, colours used are mostly main colours and mixes of the primaries which are giving the characters and the environments a friendly look. Just by looking at the colours you can tell this is aimed for the young fans of Pixar. Even in the title they have used the primaries red blue and yellow. For some of the characters like Buzz Light-year and the three aliens there are also complimentary hues used like purple and green.

 

I was making myself some egg peas and sweet corn which is delicious but to most people it doesn't look appealing and one of the reasons that can be is the colours in the food. I think the yellow and the green being harmonious hues are making it look sickening.

I watched this movie called Fight Club and after learning more about colours I realised how it’s been used in this movie. The character on the right is lifeless and hates is life so his always in grey or white and doesn't have any hue colours which shows his depression and sorrow in his life. But what I realised is that the character on the left is who he wants to be and he wears this red jacket and has blonde hair and also wears other hue coloured jackets which is showing more character and life.

 Value

Value in colour determines the lightness or darkness in hues. In other word its shades(dark) and tints(light). One of my favourite games is Resident Evil. This is the main character in the movie (Alice) and I can see how colour is used. They have used the colour red just as a sign of danger but a couple shades lower than the hue red. It shows that the main character is just as dangerous as the enemies in this movie.

This game is one of my favourite games just like resident evil called mafia 2. I wanted to look at how they used shades and tints of colours to fill the rooms and environments in the game. In this image in the bar it’s full of shades like the blue wall for example but I noticed how the room is filled with the colour of the lights but a only a tint of the colour. The room is lit with tinted yellow on top of shaded colours which is giving the scene a serious and gloomy look.

Heavy Rain is one successful game on the ps3 platform. I wanted to look at how they used shades and tints to show the mood of the scenes because this game is full of darkness and sadness. I wanted to look at the beginning of the game before it got all serious and depressing in the story. You can see how the garden is filled with green tints and other tints that’s shows a very happy mood. So happy that it’s making it look like it’s to be good to be true, like a dream which it is for the main character before the sadness builds up in his life.

Saturation

Colour saturation is a term to describe the intensity of the colour. For example the saturated colour would be very bright and a desaturated colour would be dark. Here is an image I came across that shows clearly how it affects the original image and how it looks more interesting. 

Here I’m looking at heavy rain again but this time at a scene where the sadness has hit the story. I noticed how the colours are desaturated including the character. Even though there is a tint of yellow coming from the sun which is always a sign of life, the scene still captures the sadness in the town and everyone existing in it.

I replayed resident evil 5 and realised they have used desaturated colour in the environments. I can see they have tried to make it look gloomy and more tense because this is a horror game. They tried to do this to add the feel of horror during the day because in the previous game it was based on darkness to make the horror feel, but the health bars are very saturated to make it stand out and aware of their status for the player.

Colour Proportions and Narrative

When colours are compared, our eyes get a visual mix. The colours we look at have different dominance over each other so some overcome the other. So to balance it you would need a larger amount of the sub dominant colour and a small amount of the dominant hue in a scene. Here is an example from Wall E. The scene is full of tints and shades of yellow but there is a very small amount of the colour yellow on Wall E which is bright. With that small amount it captures the viewer’s eyes before anything else in the scene, but looking at the amount of yellow in the background it gives a the scene a warm feeling and that its safe.

Kung Fu Panda is one of my favourite animated films from DreamWorks. I have recently watch number 2 of the film and had a look at the colour concept of a scene. I can see how they used the amount of red in between the streets. From just the colour you can tell that it’s dangerous to go down there and if you noticed the roof of the buildings are blue which show coolness and that it’s the safe area.

Shrek was another animated film I enjoyed when I was young. Here you can see colour concepts for the scene when Shrek goes to the castle to rescue the princes in the tower. By looking at them you can see they tell different story’s from their colour. If I look at the first image the amount of yellow light hitting the castle shows that its either safe to stay on the outside than inside. When I look at the second image where the yellow is just on the castle it only shows that Shrek has reached his destination, but the last image shows that it’s not a pleasant place and the redness around the castle show that it is surrounded with danger.