Picking Colors: Lesson Overview

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

If you’ve been stuck trying to color in a scene of what you can see looking outside your window – or just a face – and getting a dull mess, it’s all right. Our visual system is complex enough to adjust our perception of what we see automatically so we can see objects, distance, and tiny movements in our friends’ faces without thinking.

Figuring out which color any color looks like on a digital screen is challenging. Simplifying a set of colors in a scene you see (or 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 (picking palettes) will help with how to create a scene with the tone you’re imagining.