How I Deal With Colors (Pixel Art)

/ nootall_
If you don't have a natural instinct for colours, then it's really not fun.
I suck at colours, a lot of people I see suck at colours.
But I think I've reached a point where my colours aren't SO bad that they ruin everything.
They're mediocre.
Good enough.
Sufficient.
And so here's what I've learned over the years,
here's how I approach the terrifying world of colors.

[@pixels_per_minute]

Painting in grayscale can, funnily enough, help with color more then actually choosing what colors to use. Getting the contrast and light levels down pat first before worrying about color contrast is a must for most artists.

[@nootall]

Yes, absolutely! I have certainly seen several artists to that sort of thing with their work. I'd be tempted to try that sort of thing myself

[@sorauniverse]

You are the one who made that Sion animation from TheBausffs!!!! Because of that Sion i started learning how to animate in pixel art, started watching your videos and now it turns out all this time it was yours, amazing!

[@nootall]

Yep that's me lol - awesome to hear that it inspired you in some way, thanks for sharing :)

[@readein]

As someone who just recently started learning about pixel art, the "change the hue then darken" tip blew my mind. Such a simple change has made my shading look much better.

[@savagedregime8176]

The strictly monotone shaded aesthetic is something I would affectionately call the "MS-DOS look" given how prevalent it was in hobbyist-developed DOS games once 256 color VGA became standard. One of my favorite instances of great color use in pixel art is Seiken Densetsu 3. Love how those earthy tones in nature are contrasted by more purple and sapphire hues for shadows. There's also plenty of great examples on Genesis since the 64 color limit pretty much forced you to apply good color theory to get the most out of the limitations, and a bonus is how the best looking games also get this very concise overarching tone by recontextualizing the same colors for different elements.

[@lashghost]

Great video! While I am also not a color expert, one thing that I have learned color-wise is that determining contrast is usually more important than color, so defining values is generally a good place to start. After that I usually play around with hues to match to the theme I want, and then consider the contrast between colors (with complimentary colors having high contrast with one another), and occasionally hue shifting from there as needed.

[@nootall]

Thanks! And thank you for the insight, it's cool to see a bunch of people giving their own 2-cent 👍 I think this point ties into something someone else said about starting off with greyscale, or as you say, defining the values as a starting point, and moving onto the color/hues. I like it

[@E_Fig05]

YOU'RE THE ONE WHO MADE THE BOUNCY CHICKEN WALK!!!! THANK YOU, I LOVE IT!!!

[@Tre_Storm_Art]

Your rule with colors works great if all your scenes are outside under the warm light of the sun. The light from the blue sky will bounce around and give you cool shadows. If you want a scene in a sterile feeling environment, I'd recommend switching that rule the other way, give it some warm shadows and cool highlights. It'll make the environment feel colder.

[@nootall]

Interesting - can you give an example of a "sterile feeling environment"? I'd be curious to try out this switcheroo

[@Tre_Storm_Art]

@@nootall Hospitals, laboratories, government or corporate buildings, basically anywhere with florescent lightbulbs, or anywhere you'd want feeling artificial or lifeless. The cool light feels less natural than nice warm lighting you'd get from the sun or a classic lightbulb or a flame.

[@stviz87]

Hmmm what if you want a darker color for the blue? Joking aside, your stuff is amazing and I've been binging your videos. As someone with a degree in illustration you are spot on! Your videos make me think I'd like to download aseprite and play around. Your characters are amazingly designed, I wish I had you as a professor for character design class

[@nootall]

It's a good point lol. In those cases I'll actually go towards purple, but there I have no clear reason I could give 😅 And thanks for the kind comments man, It's stuff like that which really boosts my day. If you do start to have a play around and want any help with anything, feel free to shoot a message to the email in my channel description 👍

[@hellobendaniel]

Love your videos my guy. Haven't jumped into the world of pixelart, but been thinking about for a while and your channel is fuel to the fire :) all the best mate!

[@nootall]

I appreciate the kind words brother 😎Glad to hear that you're liking them!

[@PortuguesePai]

Always wondered who made Simons intro. As others have pointed out, your work definitely got me more interested in pixel art. Fantastic work!

[@nootall]

Thanks man, awesome to hear :)

[@ardosims]

Here are my rules : - There are between 12 and 16 colours maximum in my palette. - I NEVER use black or white, I pick two colours to represent them. - When I need a specific colour that I don't have, I blend two colours of my palette.

[@bijin7510]

Another useful video, thanks

[@vitlaska]

Nice, short and to the point! Here's a tip that goes hard for centuries: If you wanna know if there's enough value (light to dark) contrast between two distinct colors, but the hues are so _heavy_ contrasting on their own (e.g. orange and purple) that you can't really tell it apart, _AND_ you don't feel like comparing the two swatches HSV numbers: just *squint your eyes* at the contrasting area. It just works

[@nootall]

Genius 📝

[@user-yo9ut6il1o]

soooooooo talented

[@bol_l]

THX

[@DylanTheEye]

Very usefull video! Also for the beginners reading this i recomend you dont use black and white in a different layer and set the opacity to smth like 50 cuz it will make the colors look very monotone and bland

[@h9__]

You're so underrated it's almost frustrating

[@nextProgram]

Hello, thanks for the video. Could you please explain whether you should increase or decrease the saturation when you want to create a lighter or darker color and you're hue shifting? I usually decrease the saturation whether I'm highlighting or shading but I'm not sure which is better

[@nootall]

Hey no problem! About the saturation problem however, it's very difficult to state specific situations when you should be lowering or raising sarurstion. It's something I usually experiment with it in the moment. Saying that, one pattern I follow is to make my light colours low saturation, then increase the saturation with the darkness until I get to 70% black and then will start decreasing the saturation

[@nextProgram]

@@nootall thanks for the help. Do you know of anywhere I can learn more about this?

[@Wallace-Jump-Man]

Super interesting video. I am especially guilty of point 1! I will try doin it a little differently :)

[@nootall]

Yeah I think most people do at the start lol - I know I did it all the time in the early days. Shoutout to MortMort's channel for introducing me to this concept many years back!

[@Wallace-Jump-Man]

Amazing. I follow him too!@@nootall

[@bijin7510]

Can you give me advice on which graphics tablet to buy? If you use it yourself of course

[@nootall]

Hey bijin, I use a pretty old wacom intuos tablet that works nicely for me. It's got a couple buttons at the top which I use to go back and forth on the timeline, which feels way better than using the keyboard

[@SlugV]

Do portraits maybe.