Transcripts
1. Introduction: There are many ingredients to tell a story, dialogues, narration, scene, shape, characters, action, motion. But what really adds flavor to story is color. Hi, my name is Hadis, a little filmmaker and animator. My passion for storytelling and documentaries brought me to the land of animation. In my opinion, animation is a great way to talk about abstract concepts, to talk about innovation with no limit in storytelling. Out of my short films, the ones I had more space to experiment with were my favorites. But before experimenting, you need to know about basics. In today's class, we are covering basics of colors by coloring one single frame. Understanding what colors to pick to tell a story is a valuable skill for any visual storyteller. Whether you are a content creator, a graphic designer, an illustrator, or an architect. Throughout this class, you'll become familiar with different combinations of colors based on what is happening in the story or what you want to attract attention to, or what feeling you want to form in audience. You'll be focusing on few classic palettes such as monochromatic, complementary, split complimentary, triadic, tetradic, analogous, and I provide you with tips and tricks on how to apply their palettes. For example, how much of each color to use in your frame of illustration, or how to separate and space out the colors. For your class project, you select an image and apply each palettes that are suitable for that frame, including two or three sentences describing their mood, feeling, or a story you had in mind. This could be a frame of your favorite movie, your own artwork, or one of the references in the project section below. By the end of this class, you'll be able to make faster and more intentional decisions about colors to visually tell your stories. Are you ready? Let's color your world.
2. Your Favorite Film Color Palette: Welcome to this lesson. If you are here, that means you are really determined and you are ready to learn my practice. Congrats. In this lesson, I will show you how to catch colors from a selected frame and then apply that to the destination frame. I want you to do the process with me. Please do not postpone that to watching all the lessons and then after that, starting the project. Just right now, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and start. Open Photoshop and let's get started. If you do not have access to Photoshop, no problem, you can use GIMP. At the end of this lesson, I'll show you how to do this similar process in GIMP, which is an alternative open-source and free software. Now we need two frames, one as the source frame and the other as the destination frame. Where to find the source frame, you can choose a frame of your favorite movie. You can download it from Internet or you can take a screenshot. For example, in VLC player, you can take a screenshot of the movie. Here, this is my desktop, and here is a magnifier, so you can see that this is an open VLC player, I open one of my [inaudible] animation. To learn how to take a screenshot, you go to the frame that you want to take a screenshot, go to View and Advanced Controls, then an icon that is similar to a camera will appear, you press on that, and the screenshot will be saved on the address that is shown on top of the screen. Now the second question, how to choose the destination frame that we want to apply the colors on that? Imagine that is a frame of an animated movie that you want to make, a short film, a feature film, one for Instagram, or one for TikTok. An animated film can be done in many different techniques. It can be done in 2D techniques, so you can choose one of your illustrations as a destination frame. An animation can be done in 3D CGI technique, so you can use a render 3D CGI. An animation film can be done in stop motion, so you can choose a photo. Now please open Photoshop. Now I open Photoshop and open two frames, the source frame and the destination frame. As you see, here is a frame from the movie Matrix. You go to the destination frame and then go to the Image Adjustment, and you choose Match Colors. Then a dialog will appear. Now, we should choose the source frame. I choose the source frame and you see the colors are applied on the destination frame. You can play with the scrolls of lumination and color intensity. I don't want you to be confused with numbers, I just want you to play with them and think about the mood, the feeling, the hour, the place, and the story of the image as the color change. With preview, you can see before and after. Click okay after you're satisfied. Then press the text type tool and type some sentence about the feeling or the story that you are referring to. Set the color and text and save this image. I have a gift idea for you. You can ask your friend's favorite film and apply its colors to one of your shared photos. Now let's do it again for another one. I open another animation that I made with [inaudible] and pause and I'll take in screen, open the source frame, and the destination frame, and the Photoshop here, the source frame is a frame from the animated movie, Wall E. Image, Adjustment, Match Color, and you select the source frame. You might say, oh, no, that totally ruin the colors of my frame, of my illustration, of my photo, but just think about it as a story. Story is important. Let me show you something. Let's go to this site, Zippy frames, which is great for animation. Here is a review for the animated film, Long Way North. Look at the colors, you see the colors match the story, the place. What is happening? The hour of the day or night? That is so important. Think like this. Let's have a break. Tell me what is this color. It's something between green and brown. Yes. Let's press on and take the color, and with a brush, I make a sample. Let's make a new layer to put it behind that brush. That's completely wrong. Let me show you another one. Search blue or gold dress tests. That was so popular some years ago, and I test that in my class too. What color do you see this? Blue and black or white and gold? Some people see it as first and others see it as second. That's because colors are perceived so relative to their adjacent, so do not rely just on the codes of the colors. In this class, I want you to form a new perspective about colors and storytelling in your mind. While doing the process, please always ask yourself, what feeling do I have from this image and this color? If this was a moment or a movie, what is happening in this moment? If this is a frame of a movie, what is the genre of this movie? Who are the audience? What is the age of them? Let's do the similar process in a game. I open to [inaudible] as the source image and the destination frame. I go to the destination frame, go to Colors, Map, and then select Sample Colorize. You should now select the source frame. I select a frame from Blade Runner and then want to apply them to my destination frame. So I press Get Sample Colors, and some process is done and you see the color is applied to the other one. You can play with the scrolls. We should talk about tones later, but just play with that and think about the story. Let's do it for another frame. Map, Sample Colorize, and get sample colors and apply it to the destination frame. Don't forget to think about the feeling, the mood, or the story, and type that with the type tool. Here, for example, I'll write, while being stuck in the air pollution, remember the old days. Change the font and the color, and that's all. I recommend you to make a sheet from the source color, destination color, and the final result, along with the lines of the story, mood, or feeling, that you add with that. Let's review what we did in this lesson. We started catching the colors from a frame and then apply that into another frame using Photoshop and GIMP. We tried to think about meaning, emotions, and feelings of the new image with manipulated colors. Just right now, don't forget to save the file you did in this lesson and write the description you made about that. In the next lesson, I'll show you how to apply a monochromatic color palette into your frame. See you in the next lesson.
3. Monochromatic Palette: In this lesson, we will make our first color palette and monochromatic color palettes. So get ready. We have some some class because we wanted to dive into paints and make it digital color palette. What do monochromatic means? Mono in ancient Greek means one, only, single, and chroma means color. What monochromatic does not mean? It does not mean to use just one single color all over the frame, but we use also black and white and mix that with the main color. Next question. Why, what for, when should I use monochromatic color? To show time. Is it day? Is it night? Do you remember long way North that we saw in the previous lesson? At night, the color palette was totally different and monochromatic. I remember I was attending a workshop that was about lighting for stop-motion animation. Later, who was a photographer, told us that getting knowledge about lighting is so necessary. That's completely true. Try to bring your camera everywhere with yourself. Take photos and then after that analyze the photo. Think about the color, the lighting regarding to the time or the location. Another reason for using monochromatic palette is about location; does it happen in North pole or does it happen in desert or maybe it's happening in amusing park. Monochromatic color palette can also be used to tell a story. For example, in Wall-E, a monochromatic color palette help the audience feel the Earth is abandoned. Or as you might know, sepia can also refer to what has happened in the past, which is called flashback. Monochromatic color palette can also tell something about the characters, about their feelings of the character. For example, red can be used to show that a character is in danger or feel angry or has excitement. It can also tell us something about the relationships between the characters. For example, in a gathering that the relationships between the characters are called monochromatic color palette can help. Also, the color palette can help us to tell something about the personality or about the characteristics of the character. Now that we have many reasons to use monochromatic color palette, let's make it a digital one. But before that, I want to show you how to make one with real paints so we can fill it better and then start with Photoshop. Please notice that I chose green just randomly and you can choose whatever color that you like. But also think about its relation with the story. For example, where would you use a monochromatic green color palette? If the color palette reminds us of a young girl, that would be a very good match for a story with lively characters and events. Also, a green color can remind the audience of digital space like Matrix. Here I choose green as the main color. You should choose your own main color regarding to the story. I paint a little tiny square in main color. Now, I want to make tints of green. You might ask, how? That is by adding white color to the main color. Now, I mix a little bit of white with green and paint it on paper. Yes. Add a little bit more white and look how the color gets brighter. Yes. Please notice that as we add more white, we still can see our main color. Or in other terms, the hue of that but brighter. Let's see. Now, in the next row, we will make shades of our main color which is done by adding black. Now paint in a little square with main color. Then let's mix it with different amounts of black and here we make shades of all main color. You see, the hue is still green, but getting darker and darker. Now, it's time for another experiment which is totally different. We are going to make tones of the main color by adding gray to that. Let's make it light gray by adding white and black and then mixing it with green. Continue by making darker shades of gray and adding to the main color. Please pay attention. The more we add gray, the more the hue of the green gets muted. Yes, it gets neutralized. Now, it's time to make a color palette in Photoshop or any other software that you use. Please open that software and let's start. By selecting File, New, I make a new file. For convenience, I want to make the grid Quizlet. Select View and then Create. I click on Selection tool, I hold Shift while dragging and clicking my mouse. Here I have 15 square selection. Let's make a new layer then select your main color. Here, Here choose green, which as you see ready set to zero, green to 255, and blue is set to zero. Choose paint bucket tool, deselect contiguous checkbox to paint all the separate squares simultaneously. Now I have 15 squares and I want to make tints, shades, and tones. Choose Deselect from Select menu. Let's make tints by putting layers on white squares with different opacities. Now I make square selection and painting with white color and play with opacity. You see we have green hue but with different brightness. I set opacity of them to 15, 30, 45, and 60. Let's make a group of these tint layers by selecting the group icon. You can see before and after. For making shades, we do the same, but instead of white color, we use black to paint this selection. Setting opacity to 15, 30, 45, and 60 for each and grouping them together. Now it's time to make tones of green, so I need gray using Gradient tool, I make a rectangle selection painted with gradient of gray. I pick different shades of gray using eye drop tool or by pressing Alt key and clicking. Then paint a square selection as layers on top of the main layer. Now we have the tints, shades, and tones. Now save the palette as an image file. Why do you save the palette? To paint in the same exact colors in different shots made during production phase. Now that we have color palette, open it in a new layer. We're going to start coloring the frame using Eye drop tool and paint bucket. When you choose a proper monochromatic color palette, you get more harmonious and visually cohesive look, which does not draw attention of the audience to itself, but let them focus on the action and the shot. Let me introduce you some tools you can use in your decision-making about colors. You can test different hues by adding a new solid color layer and then changing its properties to overlay. If you are making decisions, these tools can help you to have a preview. For making project of this class as a frame or as a card, also write the story of that in your mind. Here, for example, are right, felt sad comparing its shape to others. Another tool that I want you to get familiar with is hue saturation and the adjustment panel. Go ahead and get familiar with that play with the scrolls. These tools can also help you in the face of concept design and making decisions about colors. In the next lesson, we will make a complementary color palette and don't forget to save the file you made in this lesson. See you in the next lesson.
4. Complementary Palette: Welcome back to this lesson. In this lesson, we will talk about complementary color palette. But before I tell you anything about complementary colors, let me show you an example. This is from the animation called Your Name. We have two characters and these shots and in front of each other. What about colors? What concepts do the colors give us? Completing, pairing, in fronting? Yes. Colors complete narration. To better understand a complementary color palette, we need to be familiar with the concept that is called color wheel. The idea of mapping colors on a circular diagram was invented by Isaac Newton in 1666. Later on, various different other diagrams were invented. In this class, we will use a color wheel that is called RGB color wheel, which is used for TV, computer, or online programs. Now, I have a question for you. In the previous lesson, we talked about monochromatic color palette. Consider a color wheel. If you want to show a monochromatic colors on that, what shape would it be? Yes, that would be a piece of a color wheel. I asked you to guess if you want to show complementary color palette. Guess what shape it could be? Please look at the color wheel and tell me what color is in complementary with blue. That is orange. Colors that are completing each other. That would be another piece that is exactly on the other side of the wheel. I mean, 180-degree rotation. Have you notice the color correction in some movies, and changing the colors to blue and orange. Sometimes good and sometimes not. Please notice that before choosing a color palette for your movie, always consider that scene's feeling, mood, location. Does it help the narration? Does it make it appealing for the audience? If not, do not just use colors because of the trend, that is like filling a bucket of paint and then splashing it all over the frame. That's why I don't give you just one single frame and tell you, okay now paint it with monochromatic color palette. Again, now paint it with complementary color palette and other palettes. I want your mind to be engaged and think about the story, the mood, the feeling, the narration. Always think about these topics and concepts because painting is not what matters for us. Choosing the right colors is what is important for us, according to the story. But in animation, you have more freedom and the audience are more open to accept the colors. In fact, since animation is about imagination and exaggeration, so you are creating a new world in the mind of the audience, so you can define the colors of that world. For example, in an animated series called Hilda, the colors are not realistic, but they are so much appealing and lovely. The colors so well represent the world that Hilda lives in. It's now time to choose a frame and paint it with complementary color palette. But what shots are proper for complementary color palette? When to use complementary color palette? Complementary colors can show maximum contrast and maximum stability. For example, the purple color of the orchids and the green color of the leaves. Complementary colors can show pairing, completing, or clashing. Complementary colors can also show a conflict between inside and outside. To color your frame with complementary color palette, there is an important point that you should be cautious about, and that is, when you choose two complementary colors, do not use both of them as dominant colors in the frame, both of them saturated and both of them next to each other. Because this we'll make the eyes tired. Instead, use one of them in less proportion and use the other in various different saturation. Also, try to separate them by putting some neutral colors, light gray in between. Now you want to choose colors from the wheel. You can choose by yourself or there are some extensions and websites that help. Let's look at one of them. For example, this side can help you. You choose their main color and it gives you the complementary color. I don't want you to leave this lesson without applying a complementary color palette to your frame. If you are still hesitant about what colors to choose, I have a solution for you. Recall the movie that you like. Remember a shot of it that has complementary colors in that. Then ask yourself, what if my frame was a frame of that movie? Then start colorizing that. Before we move on to the next lesson, I have a case study for you. Please choose one of these two animations, Your Name or Hilda. If you choose Your Name, watch it carefully, think about lighting and colors in that. If you choose Hilda, watch it and think about the colors they used to show day, night, and dusk. After you've finished coloring your frame with complementary color palette and watching the case study movies, then come to the next lesson. In the next lesson, we will talk about triadic color palette. See you on the next lesson.
5. Triadic Palette: 1, 2, and now 3. In the previous lessons, we picked one or two colors from the color wheel. Now we want to pick three colors from the color wheel to form a triadic color palette. A question, if we pick three colors from anywhere on the wheel, does that form a triadic color palette? No. For making a triadic color palette, we should pick three colors that are evenly spaced on the color wheel. For example, red, green, and blue from the RGB color wheel. For example, look at this poster from Aladdin, the colors using that are triadic colors. What are the features of triadic color palette? A triadic color palette has both colors from warm colors, for example, red and orange and has also colors from cool colors like green or blue. It forms and it tends to be so vibrant and uplifting, even if the colors are not saturated and the colors are pale. What are the best uses of triadic color palette? The best uses for triadic color palette are in cartoons or surreal scenes. Surreal is an art style that I recommend you to search about it. I also refer to that in my previous class about morphing in animation. Now let's talk about how to apply a triadic color palette onto your frame. That pulls off that's difficult, but if you do that successfully, the result is so pleasant. The important about this is to let one color dominate and use two other colors as accent colors. If you want to train your eyes to distinguish triadic color palettes, here, another website that I can show you, coolors.co. Here from the menu we select triadic palette, and by pressing "Space", you can see different palettes. If you want, you can lock one color and then by pressing the space, the other colors change. For making project of this class, now that you know about color wheel and also you are familiar with names of some of the color palettes, let's use the template that I have made for you. Here, you can select the type of color palette that you are using, and here there is an empty 12 part color wheel. Please feel the colors that you have selected. Here put their frame that you have worked on, and here write the lines of the story that your frame is about. 1, 2, 3, and then 4. In the next lesson, we will talk about tetradic color palette.
6. Tetradic Palette: Tetradic color palette. It is also called double complementary palette. Can you guess how many colors does it have? Yes. It has four colors. It consists of a pair of complementary palette. On a color wheel, they form a rectangle and in case of that, they form a square. It is also called a square color palette. For example, orange, yellow, green, light blue, and purple form a tetradic color palettes. The project that I have chosen for this lesson is a photo because an animation might be produced in stop-motion technique. A photo is another project that you can consider for this class. Designing on the colors before production can brings you benefits in money that you want to expand to buy materials to make this thing and also in time to decrease the time you spend on post-production and changing colors. Inside Out is a great example for tetradic color palette because it consists of characters that each of them use a separate color to represent that feeling. Anger red, disgust green, joy yellow, purple fear, sad blue. Applying a tetradic color palette to a frame might be difficult, but if you do it successfully then the result is satisfying. The important tip about applying tetradic color palette is never use 25 percent of each color. Instead, let one color dominate and change the proportion of other colors. Also be careful about warm colors and cool colors. Warm colors will appear to advance, to go forward and cool colors will appear to recede, to go backward. Notice this point and try to have them in balance. We have four colors. The best use for tetradic color palette is for foreground and background. For example, in the project of this class, look at the mountains in the back. Do you think when something is far in the back, we see more contrast in the colors or less contrast? Yes, you can use less contrast to pretend something is in far background. Now let's work on the project. I have put that in the resources section of this class so if you want you can download it and use that. I have separated that into layers to make it easier for you to apply your palette on that. Here I make a new layer as the color layer over each part. I want this color layer only be applied to the layer beneath it. I press Alt and click on the border between two layers. You can play with properties of the layer to achieve the color that you want. Change it to vivid light, soft light color, multiply and other options. I start using brush and applying the color on the layer. Also, you can use opacity option to achieve the color that you want. Now let's put the project in the template. I say like tetradic color palette, put photo here. Fill the colors and that's how used and I write the sentences that tells the story about this frame. Before, we talked about colors that are evenly spaced on the color wheel. What if we picked three colors that are not evenly spaced on the color wheel? In the next lesson, I will answer this question.
7. Analogous Palette: If we pick three colors that are adjacent to each other and they are side-by-side, then they form an analogous color palette. For example, yellow-green, yellow, and yellow-orange can form an analogous color palette. A very good example for analogous color palette is this chart from Nemo. The color you see are rose, red, and orange. Look at this poster from Kung Fu Panda, it also has an analogous color palette. What are the characteristics of an analogous color palette? Unlike the complimentary color palette that has two colors on each side of the wheel, and it might feel striking, an analogous color palette consists of three colors that are side-by-side. It's comfortable for the eye, it feels peaceful, and it is seen in nature. Remember that nature is a very great inspiration to find palettes for your artworks. Now we want to apply an analogous color palette to a project in this lesson, and we want to use Color Picker. Here, I have a tip for you. Imagine you have picked this color, and you want to add another color to your palette, instead of changing just horizontally and vertically, imagine a curve like this. Now, if you want to choose another color, move in this curve and pick another color on this curve. Or if you want to pick another color with a different hue, change the hue, and also again, choose the color on this curve. This technique will give you colors with different saturation and brightness. It will provide you with a color palette that has more versatile colors. Let's put our project in the template, choose analogous color, fill the three colors that we have chosen, and write the sentence for their frame. As we learned, triadic color palette consists of three colors that are evenly spaced on the wheel. Analogous color palette consists of three colors that are side-by-side. Is there any other color palette that has three colors? Yes. In the next lesson, I will tell you about split complementary color palette.
8. Split Complementary Palette: This lesson is about split complimentary color palette. It so similar to complimentary color palette, but with a difference, and that is, we substitute one color of the complimentary color palette at one end, with the two colors adjacent to that color. Look at this image from the character Aladdin, the colors we see our orange, cyan and rose. They form a split complimentary color palette. Can you tell me the characteristics of the split complimentary color palette? Yes. The same as complimentary color palette, it has a strong visual contrast, but with less tension. It is lively and joyous. How to apply this palette, the split complimentary color palette gives you creative freedom, so that they say it's the best for the beginners because it is so difficult to mess up. Project time, and this is another palette that you can have your project done with that. How do you feel now? Do you agree that the world of colors and storytelling is so amazing? In the next lesson, I will tell you further steps you can take in future about the role of colors. Also, I will sum up what we have learned in this course, See you in the next lesson.
9. Class Project: Welcome to this class. Let's warm-up and talk about the project of this class. On my opinion, watching a class is like opening the doors of a garden and take a look at that. But doing the project is like entering the garden, knowing the places of that, and having the confidence to enter that again and again. Colors are essential part of visual storytelling. The same as a spice can make or break a dish, colors can add emotions to story. They can direct how the audience should feel. Color scripting means to choose about the colors and changes of them during all frames of a movie. For a project of this class, I have chosen to work on a single frame. That's because to focus and make it simple and learn it completely before going for a large, massive, and giant project. For project of this class, first, let's choose our frame. It can be an illustration or you can choose a 3D rendered CGI. Also, you can choose a photo. The slide of a presentation can also be a frame, and you can choose a gift card as your project. After that, as we go through the lessons, please have some possible stories for that frame in your mind. Label a story, for example, about two or three sentences. Then decide whether that story is suitable for that combination of colors and color palette. If yes, then apply that color palette on your frame based on the tips and tricks that are explained to you. To make a layout of your colored frame, the story, and the colors you have chosen, I have put a template in the resources section. You can use that to make your project and post it in the project gallery. I try to explain everything simple, so [inaudible] is necessary. Just if you know a software about how to apply your text or apply color to an image, that will speed your project. Please open that software, open a web browser, have some paint and a paper close to your hand. Thinking about your favorite movies and the colors used in them, let's go to their first lesson.
10. Final Thoughts: Thank you for being with me and congrats that now you are here. From now on you will work on your artworks and see their world from a new perspective. Thinking about the colors, the story they might tell, and the effects they might have. There are many other beautiful steps that you can take along this journey. Transitional color palette is another topic that you can learn. Transitional palette is a technique that used to tell a story about changes in this story. For example, [inaudible] there were no green color until the plant was discovered, so the green color in that moment attracts the audience attention. Also if you're interested, you can study color theory. Learning about cognitive and psychological effects of colors is another step that you can take. In this class we talked about choosing a color palette and applying that to a frame as a step for color scripting. We talked about monochromatic color palette. After that we talked about a color palette that consists of two colors, a complimentary color palette. Then we have studied a triadic color palette. A color wheel that has three colors evenly spaced on the wheel. Then we increased the numbers and we studied tetradic color palette that uses four colors from the color wheel. After that, we questions about what if the colors are not evenly spaced on the wheel? We learned about analogous color palette that has two colors side-by-side on the wheel. After that we talked about a split complimentary color palettes. Discussion board is a great place for you to talk about your favorite palette and ask your questions. Also please post your project in the project gallery. The more you work with colors, the more your mind gets familiar with their effect and its relation with story. Here I want to sincerely thank my friend Gabriela Goulart with her patients and kind feedbacks. Also I would like to thank Skillshare for providing this chance for me. If you liked this class and you're interested about cinematography and animation, please hit the Follow button on my profile so I can send you discussions, also I can notify you about my future classes. Thank you. Wish you all the best and hope to see you soon.
Hadis Malekie
