October 2015

Color scheme

Colour Scheme is the choice of colours used in design for a range of media. Colours that create an aesthetic feeling when used together will commonly accompany each other in color schemes.

List of colour schemes:

Monochromatic colours – All the colours of a single hue. Energy is more subtle due to the lack of contrast in hue.

Complementary colours – Pairs of colours when combined together will cancel out each other. Creates high contrast on the design, captures attention.

Split complementary colours – In addition to the base color, it uses the two “Analogous” colors adjacent to its complement. Also creates a high contrast, but not as strong as complementary colours.

Achromatic colours – Any colour that lacks strong chromatic content is said to be unsaturated, achromatic, or near neutral. Easily modified beside saturated colours.

Analogous colours – Group of colours that are adjacent to each other on the color wheel, with one being the dominant color, and two on either side complementing.

Triadic colours – Three colors equally spaced around the color wheel. Tend to be vibrant. Offer contrast along with colour harmony. Easiest to create a balance in colours.

Tetradic colours – Richest of all the schemes because it uses four colors arranged into two complementary color pairs. Difficult to balance, need one of the colours to be dominant.

Research on Colours

I believe that there are infinite numbers of colours in the world, it will be impossible to name out every single colours that I know.

From a scientific perspective, there are different level of light-dark, level of red-green and level of yellow-blue to create different shades of colours. In addition, the surrounding conditions of also affect how we identify the colours. (Ref. http://www.rit-mcsl.org/fairchild/WhyIsColor/files/ExamplePage.pdf)

In computer display, it can only show 256 shades of red, blue and green each. Hence, the computer can display 256x256x256, roughly 16.7 millions different colours. (Ref. http://www.astropix.com/HTML/J_DIGIT/MON_RES.HTM)

However, for my research, I will only be writing 11 different basic colours: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Pink, Brown, White, Grey and Black.

Red

Red is a warm colour with green as a complementary colour. It always appears striking and catches the viewers attention. Red often represents anger, agressive, strength, danger and stop. Red is often used to alert people of danger ahead. Red also represents good fortune for the Chinese.

Orange

Orange is a warm colour with blue as a complementary colour. It often represents passion, sensuality and immaturity.

Yellow

Yellow is a warm colour with purple as a complementary colour. It often depicts as something positive. Yellow represents passion, cheerful, optimism, happiness, friendly and confidence.

Green

Green is a cool colour with red as a complementary colour. It represents the nature and is pleasing to see as it does not strain the eyes. Green often means environment, refresh, relax, peace and negatively, jealousy.

Blue

Blue is a cool colour with orange as a complementary colour. It is also another smoothing colour and blue objects often appear to be far and distance. Blue can represents the sky, water, calmness, cool, shy and negatively, cold and aloof.

Purple

Purple is cool colour with yellow as a complementary colour. It is often shown as a spiritual colour. Purple represents wealth, luxury and introvert.

Pink

Pink is a warm colour. It is often depicts as something cute and lovely. Pink can also represents love and kindness.

Brown

Brown is the colour of the soil, hence it often gives people the feeling of reliable and support. However, negatievly, brown is also viewed as dirty and old.

White

White complementary colour is black. It often communicates purity and peace. White can also represents cleanliness, clarity, elitism and coldness. It can also represents the season winter, hence snow and ice.

Grey

Grey often represents something negative. It can mean sadness, depression, lack of confidence, neutral and lack of life.

Black

Black also often represents something negative. It often represent death, sadness, depression, coldness and mystery. However, positively, black could mean sophistication. Black is the easiest to match with other colours and acts as a barrier.

2D Project 2: Rhyme

The Chosen One:

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.

The old woman is placed at the Rule of Thirds to attract the viewers attention. The shoe is edited to show dynamic perspective and creates a leading line towards the old woman. The shadows and the highlights on the shoe also focus the old lady. The footprints below balance the image with the blank spaces above, hence the overall image is well-balanced.

And the Dish ran away with the Spoon.

There is a high contrast between the background and the foreground to bring forward the main focus. The plate and the spoon are focused by placing at the Rule of Thirds. With a darker background and the shadows of the plate and spoon on the ground, it creates an atmosphere of mystery and adventure, like a couple running away from something.

The cow jumped over the moon.

The cows are duplicated to create a flow over the image. It directs the viewers from the back of image to the front, hence the movement of how the cows jumped over the moon. The moon also covers one-third of the whole image to balance the overall image.

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

The whole image is placed at the center. The king is found at the top to represent the hierarchy while the horses and men are at the bottom. The cracked eggshell is distorted to join with the egg below to show the connection between the eggshell and the egg.

The Others:

She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do;

The children are repeated many times in different sizes and orientations all over the image to represent the many children and the confusion caused for the old women. The old woman can be found at the Rule of Thirds and is being framed by the children, showing how she is surrounded by so many children.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

The repeated eggshells create a comical effect of how Humpty Dumpty would “shout out” when it fell. The large eggshell also contrast with those smaller ones in terms of size.

Could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before.

Th bandage is edited to have a sense of depth and height over the eggshell, showing how its trying to fix the Humpty Dumpty but is unable to do so. The shadow behind the eggshell also creates depth to the image.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

Contrast is used here to focus on the Humpty Dumpty. The Humpty Dumptys and the eggshell are placed at a position to show a slow motion flow of the fall. The black background also acts as a wall and covered two-third of the overall image making it balances.

The cat and the fiddle,

The fiddle is the focus of the whole image, hence it is darker and placed at the center of the image. While the cats are arranged from tall to short to create dynamic lines. The overall image is relatively symmetrical to create a balance and harmony to the image.