When I first started working on City, I had been playing quite a bit of Metroid Prime, and one of the things I wanted to use was an idea that was directly inspired by such action based games. In a lot of platformers and the like, each world is presented with a unique colour scheme which, aside from giving each world their own theme, also helps to break up the monotony that comes with 2d side scrolling graphics.
As you can see above, I planned to give each of my different areas a different colour scheme. The style I created for the graphics is an extremely simple one in terms of colour palette - I use a single base colour (dark purple) to start with, then work with 2 different highlight colours to paint the scene. It's a 3 colour palette, blended together to create the scene. This still allows plenty of opportunity for different ambient and focal lights, while allowing me to keep the scenes of each area looking very consistent.
When I went back to look at the game after over half a year, however, the first thing that I decided needed to go was this idea, and for several reasons. Firstly, it's hard to get a colour palette balanced just right, especially if you're trying to match it with older scenes. That means that I was spending ages each time I wanted to sketch out a new area just to get the colours right.
Secondly, I based my user interface graphics around the colour palette from the first area. This means that it looks great and matches everything in that area, but as soon as you go to the next area it looks quite out of place. Having an interface that matches the rest of the game stylistically is important, and so this was an issue for me.
The final problem was that it didn't feel exactly like going to a part of the same city, and I really want to keep a consistent feel between areas. There will be a bunch of different areas, but I very much want them all to feel like a part of the whole city.
This means that I'm back to painting backgrounds with a mere 3 colours. I still feel that there is plenty of potential for variety in the scenes - how successful I am with this remains to be seen.
3 comments:
I guess since it IS the future, they must have brightly coloured LEDs in all colours of the rainbow installed in their city.
I think sticking to the single palette is reasonable in this case, because it's a relatively small part of the world. Palette changes are great for strong shifts in the mood - the classic example beign getting washed ashore the tropical island. :)
It's a great trick to break the huge world into smaller, contrasting chunks.
Also, the problem here is that your art is quite simplistic and uses the minimum to a great effect. And changing even one colour makes too big a difference to keep the backgrounds consistent. I guess you'll have to think of some way around it in the future, but for now - it's beautiful the way it is. :)
And the the sky-blue/yellow palette is the prettiest one anyway :P
Anonymous: It is how the future *should* be :)
Ilyich: I agree, it is a great way to change the mood, but I think my 3 colour palette will be enough to support reasonable mood changes anyway. Because I can choose from 2 different primary light source colours, or use them both as primary or use very little primary lighting, I should be able to work this in with changes in architecture and environmental detail in order to get any mood shifts I require, hopefully.
I've actually changed how I paint since I started City, and am going back and actually doing it with the old method simply because it's quick, but these days I paint quite differently, and it's a lot easier to have subtler palette changes. This works for now, though.
Glad to hear the one I'm sticking with is the best though (I too love the combination of azure and gold :) )
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