This video demonstrates how to create several different color palettes for one character design.
- 1 min. short (blue light glasses)
- 1 min. short (Cintiq vs. iPad)
- 1 min. short (6B brush)
- 1 min. short (action poses)
- 1 min. short (Photoshop vs. Procreate)
- 1 min. short (Jordan’s steps)
- 41 min. video (creating palettes)
- 80 min. video (draw along)
- Color Area
- Character Design playlist
Explained is how color can be used to establish a specific mood or personality in a character and how to group colors to work effectively with each other.
Demo led by Teaching Artists Cat Huang and Jordan McCracken-Foster.
Video Walkthrough
- Determining a character’s clothing based on their story.
- Basing a character on someone you know in real life.
- Showing different emotions in the same character.
- Starting the coloring process with the skin tone.
- How to fill shapes with color in Procreate.
- In comics and illustration the final product is not the physical artwork.
- Most comics and illustration work is a reproduction, like a page in a magazine, or a poster.
- Coloring digitally vs. traditionally.
- How to choose a name for your character (babynames.com)
- Do your coloring in a separate layer when working digitally.
- Traditional ink supplies.
- Use the psychology of color when creating color palettes.
- Example: Red often represents anger in characters.
- Gradient maps in Procreate.
- Sometimes creating color palettes is just a matter of trial and error.
- Considering the balance of warm and cool colors.
- A lot of the process is intuition, play, and experimentation.
- Color schemes in films are very helpful to observe.
Art Supplies mentioned
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