Using and
selecting the correct colours to use for your IPA piece is one of the most
important aspects of the overall work. Having a bright toxic green house
with purple highlights isn't the best thing anyone would want to look at.
Just imagine your building or scene, as it would look if you were standing
right there. Whether it be bright plastic style, or mid-tone natural colours,
it's still your choice. The only thing you have to consider is making the
right choice of colours to suit your piece. Using an example of my work
below, you can see that I don't really like to use bright colours all that
much. Although the colours aren't the prettiest, I think it adds to the
overall theme and feel of the piece. If I were to say, create a fun game
scene or children's style piece, I would opt for the brighter and happier
colours. Remember, if you are unsure about your colour selection, divide
the palette sheet in MSPaint into thirds. Then pick your colours from the
middle third. This way, they won't have too much contrast or too little.
Lighting
Next up is
lighting. Without a light source or lights your work isn't going to be all
that great to look at. If you were to place your building into the real
world, it would be pitch black. All your wonderful colour choices would
be lost. Of course we are working in a 2D medium so creating real light
sources isn't as easy as placing them around our object, ala if we were
working in a 3D environment. To create a light source for your picture first
choose a place where either your sun or misc light source would be coming
from. You can see how I have done it below; my sun has been placed in the
top left corner of the scene. Placing your light source behind or directly
infront of your building or object doens't really work that well. Because
the light is shining either directly from the front or directly from behind
(where it would be blocked out by your object), the amount of light is either
too much or too little. Shading these types of light sources wouldn't be
worth it. You could try it if you want just to experiment, but for now we'll
stick to either left or right light sources.
Figure
3.4
As we did in our cube tutorial, we'll place the light source at the top
left corner. Now, imagine your object as if it was in a 3D environment.
If you have a box and desklamp lying around it would help as well. Now place
your box so one of the corners is facing you. Now place the lamp facing
the left hand side of the box that is facing you (see example). Now you
can see how we are going to shade this thing? One side (the one directly
facing the light) is the brightest, the second brightest is the top of the
box (because the light is coming from above) and the last side is the darkest.
Shading your objects using this method will almost guarantee a fake 3D look,
which is what we're aiming for in an isometrical work.
Outlines & Highlighting
Outlining
and giving your buildings and objects highlights makes them stand out more,
and gives them a polished look. Black outlines help people to distinguish
objects from the background and tend to make the object look more cartoonish
than say if the outlines were simply darker versions of the objects color.
Highlights on the other hand, round off the corners of sharp objects and
help the pseudo 3D appearance. If you shine a light onto a square object
you can sometimes notice that the very edges shine in the light and appear
brighter than the side which has the most light shining on it.
Different Styles Of Outlines
Choosing
what type of outlines to use is basically when you decide on the style you
are aiming for. As I said before, black outlines usually give your scenes
a cartoonish feel (combined with bright happy colours ^_^). The other type
of outline needs a bit of explaining. Basically what you do is grab the
colour of the object you're outlining and darken it until its in the middle
of the original colour but not too darkened. About 2 or 3 times as dark
as the original colour was. See example below.
