Composition Palette Guide

HunnyBudders

Ah yes, nothing like a good explosion for the evening ^^

Tracy Butler

She lives life on the edge!

Vespora

This is fabulous to see! Thank you!

GoobyGnarp

get her off that ledge, what are you doin!!

Classical Salamander

Wow... I *never* thought about this stuff when I was animating 2D in college... which is probably why I barely passed those classes! I'm so happy to setup my lights and let the computer do the work in 3D. ;p

Ava

Thank you so much for your reply! Gosh, that's unbelievably intensive... For what it's worth, the end result of the guide looks wonderful, a testament to the quality of the art. I have only a basic grasp of colour theory, so the whole process you have outlined sounds mind-boggling, but I am glad you have reached a final set! (which is why I was curious to know how you got to the final palettes - it used to take me forever just to get a single five-colour scheme, let alone the nuances you, Fable, and Frog have put into figuring out the minutiae for each scenario!).

Tracy Butler

It's a bit tricky, yes. You don't want everyone to look completely desaturated, and you have to be mindful of values. When adding shadows as multiply layers on top of already dark colors, you can accidentally end up with solid blacks that would look unnatural in this situation, or you can lose lines and details to the darkness (especially for a character as dark overall as Mordecai). Bright colors like Freckle's paler colored fur can pose a problem too, where the value discrepancies may look correct in daylight, they look too high contrast for a nighttime scene. A lot of the process boils down to starting with a concept for the look you want to achieve, using your artistic sensibilities to lay down some initial color choices, and then experimenting with blend layer combinations and fussing incrementally with sliders for brightness, contrast, levels, hue, saturation, and color balance until eventually you land on what you want. ...Then you have to organize that mess into a guide that another crew member can interpret and recreate.

akrasia

Animation is one of those rare subjects where people who like it SHOULD watch it being made. I wonder how this compares to the old school Disney hand animation process.

Ava

As someone who knows next to nothing about animation, it is absolutely fascinating and mesmerising to see this all come together, and the amount of labor and effort required and that you are all putting in is astounding. Thank you for sharing your process with us along the way, it is endlessly insightful and impressive! I am curious (as previously stated, everything I know about animation has been watching the progress on this film, so apologies for the ignorance of this question!), has the night-time setting provided more challenges with making the characters "pop" on screen? Because everything looks so clear in this composition palette guide, I am just wondering how this was achieved :)

Oh no! She's standing on the window ledge! Lol just being silly fyi but looks good, looking forward to seeing it :)