‘A New Hue’ was a CG animation I made during my undergraduate degree with two others, Stephen Tucker and George Rigby.
As one of my roles on the project was to deal with the texture and colouring, I thought it relevant to discuss my own personal approach to colour.
Below are a selection of stills from the short film, as you can see the majority of the film is colourless until Lily, our protagonist meets an adorable blob of ink, Blot, who colours in her world.
Even in the white scenes, we’ve used subtle blues and pinks to create the feeling of warmth, otherwise the paper felt to uninviting and grey.
fig.01
In the final scene the world becomes empowered with colour, when preparing to create this scene I made a colour inventory, fig.02, unlike traditional blocked colour palettes, using a colour inventory in my work allows me to determine how much of each colour should be used in the scene, to try to create a balance.
fig.02
fig.03
fig.03 is the final scene render, which you can compare to the colour inventory to establish it’s successfulness. My pastelic but bright colour choices were to me representing Lily’s soft, kind personality, while reflecting Blot’s boisterousness through the way they were dotted around the environment. The colours in this piece connect Lily and Blot, they are a key part of the storytelling, Lily is able to see a new way of life through the colour, she comes out of her shell to an unknown change.
Another interesting thing to note about this scene is how I’ve sectioned the colour, the pink is in one area, the blues are in another area, the yellows are symmetrical. Nothing is too instrusive on another element, I sectioned them like this to allow the scene to be readable. Although the scene is busy and colourful we still need to be focusing on what the main characters are doing.
The colours in A New Hue were well received and tend to be what the film is remembered for; it is a short film about colour after all.
You can read more about A New Hue and watch the film on my website: http://www.jennifer-hardy.com/fashion
Hardy, J. (2015) Jhardy. Available at: http://www.jennifer-hardy.com/fashion (Accessed: 10 December 2016).
Colour Theory in Moving Image 