[SGD] Color Theory: Importance & Usage

じ☆ve冰风

Color Theory

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Color theory plays a pivotal role in game design, influencing everything from gameplay mechanics to user experience. By understanding color psychology and harmony, game designers can evoke specific emotions, guide player attention, and convey vital information seamlessly. Colors not only set the mood and atmosphere of a game but also aid in creating memorable characters, distinct environments, and intuitive interfaces. Whether it's using contrasting hues to highlight interactive elements or employing complementary colors to enhance visual appeal, mastering color theory empowers designers to craft immersive and captivating gaming experiences that resonate with players on a deeper level.

Where to start​

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First you need a concept. If you create a game there are many visual elements from text to icons, game specific bars or animations - the list is endless and can be broken down until there is a pixel left on screen.​

A theoretical concept

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Game takes place in a Neo Cyberpunk Enviroment. We now need to break down what "Neo Cyberpunk" is following these simple steps:​

• What defines "Neo Cyberpunk"?
  
• What is the look of "Neo Cyberpunk"?
  
• How can I recreate an existing look?
  
• How can I create my own?
  

As a Designer I have learnt that recreating a certain look helps to understand the concept and idea the best. First let's take a look on how to find out what "Neo Cyberpunk" is:​

A quick google image search shows the following results

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Using your software of choice let's use a color picker and try to find the most appealing and occuring colors available:​

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What does this tell you? Generally that "Neo Cyberpunk" utilizes very bright, neon-like colors that are very bright in the center of the light source and spread out more intensive in color, rendering the surroundings in a specific tone of color. What is also very important to note is that the "darks" or darkest color of the source material is not really 100% black. The 2 specific colors I have chose are both a very dark shade of blue.

With those information you can start to create Icons, Windowskins, Font Colors etc.​

A little Mockup/Demonstration

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This is a way to capture the Essence of "Neo Cyberpunk". But how can one make this unique? Let me introduce you to my favourite tool and I use this tool on a daily basis: https://color.adobe.com/. This handy tools helps you create stunning palletts from existing colors and new ones, and this is where we can make everything unique. Let us take one of the Shades of Pink and turn it into something else:





Let's grab the 2nd color from the left, the Red with the code #FC4C72 and let's change the Mockup/Demonstration accordingly:​

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With just one little color swap we have changed the entire feel of look. With a workflow like this you can experiment for hours and hours and find new and interessting color combinations and feels. There is a limit:

You should never use more colors than needed. To explain why, just take a look at the Mockup below:​

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Simply put: I have turned a very appealing and decent looking color-scheme/palette into a mess. You can tell by just looking at it that we utilize a high number of colors that is just plain to much. You also need to take into consideration, that you have other elements in your menu for example Actor Portraits, Item-Icons, Background Images, Overlay etc.

I hope I could share some inside into basic Color Theory and how to find a feel, utilize the feel and customize the feel.

In conclusion​

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Let your imagination run wild and have fun creating exciting color combinations.


本贴来自国际rpgmaker官方论坛作者:SGD处,因国际论坛即将永久关站,为了存档多年珍贵资料,署名转载到本论坛存档,由于官方帖子为英文原帖，需要中文翻译请点击论坛顶部切换语言为中文就可以将帖子翻译成中文浏览,方便大家随时查看,原文地址：https://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/threads/sgd-color-theory-importance-usage.167825/