Cooked Colour

One of the advantages of us re-embracing the Everyone Will Make a Narrative concept for second year students in 2008 is that I hope to have more opportunities to meddle. One thing I plan to be watching like a hawk is how you use colour.

Maybe you will consider something like this piece from one of my favourite bloggers Alan Cook. He calls it a colour script (color with the US spelling to be precise) which is a new piece of terminology to me. In the past I've herd them referred to as mood boards or colour guides, but I like colour script better (and plan to steal it for future use).

Anyhooo, its basically a plan for how you intend to use colour throughout your film, the drawings are NOT detailed, just blocks of (you guessed it) colour. This gives you the opportunity to give colour the respect it deserves and spend a bit of time thinking about it without any other distractions. Usually good constructive questions follow, "Why did you use those colours for that scene?" "Why do the colours changed between this part of the story and that part?" etc.

Maybe you should make a colour script for your second year major project. Maybe we should make you. :P

9 comments:

Lisa said...

i guess you see this sort of thing quite a bit through the Incredibles DVD, ...there's lots of shots in the 'making of' shorts that refer or show the 'color scripts' in use....those blocky storyboards with awesome colours

Ian said...

I used to have one for Little Mirmaid 2 that I shall we say liberated from Disney. But I havn't seen it for ages, I think some of these things end up in students backpacks I'm afraid :(

Still I should keep a closer eye on em.

Anonymous said...

Pages 94 to 116 of the PIXAR 20 Years of Animation exhibition catalogue is all colour scripts.

I particularly like the underwater 'Nemo' ones done in oil pastels. There's also examples from 'Cars', 'Monsters Inc', 'The Incredibles' and 'Toy Story'.

It's a good reference for what Ian's posted.

Sam said...

Yah, Lou Romano (aka Linguini) from Pixar is the king of these. His blog is chock full of colour goodness: http://louromano.blogspot.com/

And Adobe's Kuler is a great resource for colour inspiration, so many yummy combinations: http://kuler.adobe.com/

Sam said...

Edit, now with 100% more clickable links:

http://louromano.blogspot.com/

http://kuler.adobe.com/

Lisa said...

sam, fully agree about the Kuler site, it's awesome for combining colours and getting a feel for what can go with what. You can also save off your combinations, name them, and come back to them later.

Ian said...

WOW I only just got around to playing with the Kuler site. AMAZING. Thats the coolest thing ever Sam thanks heaps for pointing that out.

Cookedart said...

Hey wow, thanks for the plug...

Ya the term color script is definitely a lift from Pixar - at least, that's the first time I remember it being called that.

As mentioned, Lou Romano did a great job, as well as some of Bill Cone's and a few others... The wall-e color script is looking amazing too!

Now I just have to learn how to use colors properly!

Ian said...

Hey Alan.

No worries on the plug, you deserve it.

As a teacher its great to be able to point to people who are showing intiative and getting stuck in.

Half the battle I face is getting student into the right frame of mind. As an authority figure I think my direct advice is easy to blow off, but thanks to the wibbly wobbly web and good people like yourself who are willing to share their experiences I can point to others and say, "SEE!"

Love your work :)