Color Theory Study - Idea Factory + palate associations

Questions, skill improvement, and respectful critique involving art assets.
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CatXBird
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Color Theory Study - Idea Factory + palate associations

#1 Post by CatXBird »

I've been studying applied color theory (+ fashion) trying to design my characters/menus, and I just did a quick-and-loose color study of Collar X Malice (+ a quick comparing glance at Code: Realize) that I thought might be helpful for folks looking for inspiration.

For some reason, I had it in my head that there were only three paths; I've added the missing path characters + menus to my analysis below (reuploaded: Krita cut off part of Onamoto's text for some reason):
Idea Factory color combos 2.0
Idea Factory color combos 2.0
(EDIT 3: In the cross compare with Code: Realize, I just realized after posting that actually Shiraishi (CxM) is more of a dead-ringer for Victor's (C:R) color scheme; also I didn't note it, but both C:R and CxM tend to use gold accents to unify the aesthetic across characters on things like buckles, medals, pins, and buttons.)

Also, in doing research on otome games in general, I found a Japanese study that analyzed player emotional evaluations of character color palates from popular VNs and found some interesting overall clusters of association. My Nihongo wa dame desu so I Google-translated as best I could:
otome color palette study
otome color palette study
So, if we were to interpret our Collar X Malice characters against these associations, we might say:
-- Yanagi - Classic, Tasteful, Traditional; slightly Warmer and Harder than neutral
-- Takeru - Natural, Fresh, Youthful; much Cooler and Softer than the other two
-- Enomoto - Energetic and Dynamic; Warmest and Hardest of the bunch
-- Kei - Elegant, Feminine, Messy; slightly Softer in tint
-- Shiraishi - hard to pin down... looks more like a Natural, Leisurely, Easygoing tint, but there's some Lively, Wild hue factors in there as well (just not that dark)

Every culture has its own color connotations so there might be some differences here and there, but I think most of the study's associations gel with what a Western audience would find?


EDIT: Oh yeah, I guess I could have posted pics of the characters I'm referencing too:
Collar x Malice cast
Collar x Malice cast
Code: Realize cast
Code: Realize cast

EDIT 2: Color palettes were made using Paletton with hex codes pulled from Krita + eyedropper tool:
https://paletton.com/
Last edited by CatXBird on Thu May 20, 2021 1:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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mavyxdawn
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Re: Color Theory Study - Idea Factory + palate associations

#2 Post by mavyxdawn »

I'm a fan of otomate games and I love this! Thank you very much!
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nelephant
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Re: Color Theory Study - Idea Factory + palate associations

#3 Post by nelephant »

A very interesting post/study. I've been thinking about color palette a lot as I'm trying to determine some limitations for a game I'm working on. Interesting to see that a lot of the palettes overlap or are very similar. Makes me think they are working from an overall palette...

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