Color Theory in Games

INTRO

Got a few requests from people to write about how to effectively use colors in games, so here we go... I'll go through some basic concepts of color theory and tell you how to apply them to your games.

I took a class in college, which was helpful, but it's not necessary for anyone.  The information about how to use colors is out everywhere on the internet so paying a ton of money to do a few exercises and take lectures isn't worth it.  I got better with colors just by following the basic things about color theory.

(This is not a full tutorial.  I will teach a few things here and other stuff I will leave out for future tutorials).

THE BASICS

The first thing you see in a color theory class is the color wheel.  Most artists have probably seen this before and it's straight forward: a rainbow wheel of all the colors you can imagine.

fun fact - the mantis shrimp can see a ton of colors that humans can't.

Thanksgiving - Tofurkey

Thanksgiving is coming up, and since I'm mostly vegan, here's a tutorial on drawing a Tofurkey.

Halloween - Ghost, Pumpkin & Zombie

Second tutorial for Halloween 2014.  I took a request from someone to make some faces, but since it's a special month, I'll make some common ghouls.  Also taking some advice and making more detailed steps.

Halloween - Spell Book, Skull & Tombstone

Halloween is coming up, so here's a special How to Draw edition on a few things you might find during this day.  Will do some more generic stuff like pumpkins, ghosts and bats next.

How to Draw - Potions

Making a few different shapes and colors, but in general they look the same and have the same steps. A few common things I use in this tutorial:

• Expand/Inset - This is a shortcut to make an outline.  Like in the 4th step, I copy the 3rd step, expand that a few pixels, paste in place what I copied and inset that a few pixels.
• Gradients - I like to use this in subtle ways because you can get overboard and make things look tacky.