Picking Digital Colors

It’s time to discover what color is all about: inconsistency and subjectivity.

If you’ve been stuck coloring a simple landscape – or just a face – and getting a dull or mismatched mess, it’s not because you’re bad at it. Our visual system is complex and adjusts our perception of what we see automatically so the immeasurable variety of colors we see can make sense as objects near and far and and tiny wrinkles in our friends’ expressions – like a fake smile versus a someone trying to hide a smirk.

[ image(s) of awkwardly colored outside scene(s) or face(s) with reasonable color choices ]

Figuring out realistic colors on digital screen is challenging – and simplifying a color set into 4 or 5 that look how you imagine is also hard with seemingly infinite combinations to choose from.

This lesson goes over what characterizes colors in video games, and the next one – about picking palettes – will help figure out colors to control the tone and realism of your projects.