Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

Blackset Night, Writer Geoff Johns, Penciler Ivan Reis

Well hello Hal. This week for color I though what would be more perfect than picking though some Lantern Corps comics? Nothing. But let’s look at the wonderful colors here! So we are working with a lot of primary and secondary colors. The red, blue, and yellow lanterns are all primary colors. While the green, purple, and orange are secondary colors. Leaving the tertiary colors of pink left. Not in this comic the colors are represented of the respective lantern corps; green is willpower, red is rage, orange is avarice, etc. Each lantern is highlighted with the shade of the dark background.

The way the colors interact as beings is different that we see on the page. To me it looks like the designer took great care in making each lantern encapsulated in their respective color. Green Lantern is covered in electric green, same with Pink Lantern, and Blue Lantern. We can see in interactions of the colors in how they are layered. We see the Red Lantern more because it is against the Green Lantern verse if it was between pink and purple, red would be lost because they are close in value and intensity but different in hue.

Charles M. Schultz’s comic series “The Classic Peanuts” 

Color has become a major component in design processes and choices. The use of color helps influence the audience on how to feel or interpret a certain piece as well as what to focus on. Color can describe mood, reality or codify information while also make things stand out or disappear. The basic color theory states that colors sitting close to each other on the color wheel are analogs. There is minimal color contrast together and innate harmony with these colors. Also stated by this theory is the idea of compliment colors or colors on the opposite end of the color wheel. There are primary colors (red, yellow and blue), secondary colors (orange, purple and green), and also tertiary colors (mix of primary and secondary colors, ie. red-orange). Along with the basic color theory there are certain aspects of color such as hue, intensity, value, shade, tint and saturation. Each of these modes help describe the attributes of a color and provides the wide range of colors we see.

For this post I decided to use one of my favorite comics, the Classic Peanuts, by Charles M. Schultz. Growing up I always loved reading about the adventures of Snoopy and the simple use of color in these comics. Looking at this comic strip in particular, there is a common theme of the use of primary colors in each of the frames. Schultz keeps it simple by sticking to the red, yellow and blue of primary colors. However, this doesn’t mean that is his only use of color. He also incorporates the use of secondary colors such as green and purple. I feel like by using a select number of colors the focus still remains on the characters and dialog while also creating a pleasant background. By creating a mainly blue and green background, the author utilizes the color theory of compliment colors to make the red dog house pop in the image. Red and green are compliment colors on the color wheel, according to the basic color theory, and thus creates a bolder statement for the well known Snoopy dog house. I think the two frames that have a solid colored background, such as the yellow and purple one, help set the mood of the characters that are speaking. For example, the girl in the yellow frame is talking about how the day is sunny and bright which is usually associated with the color yellow. By creating an all yellow background the mood of the scene is positive and happy. In contrast to this, the purple background creates an almost sullen feeling. By using a light purple, Schultz is able to portray the girls initial response to Snoopy completely doing the opposite of what she suggested. Using a light purple still keeps the comic feeling light hearted but the cool color is able to portray more of a disappointed feeling to it. I think this is a really great example of how color can illustrate emotions and also make things stand out or fade to the background.

The purpose of color in illustration is to differentiate and connect, as well as to highlight and hide. The mixture of different hues and intensities bring modern media to life. We perceive colors in relation to one another, and therefore, it remains a shifting phenomenon.

In one of Bill Wattersons famous Calvin and Hobbes comic strips, Watterson sets a good example of how color can be used properly to highlight certain elements.

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson.

For example, the contrasting red against white, highlights Calvin in a way that he is able to stand out, since our eye is immediately drawn to him at the beginning of this comic. We then see the use of analogous colors in the box where the background appears a desaturated blue against the saturated blue of the balloon. These two colors has related color temperature, and are therefore able to soften and create a certain energy and mood (in this case, surprised).

The next box contains a fully saturated green background, and since green compliments red, this is typically the first thing you look at when you pick up this comic strip. The rest of the background is white, so this really stands out. Watterson chose to use mostly primary colors to fill in his illustration, but the slightly hued colors of pink/purple and blue bring the uniqueness and importance to this particular comic.

Page 2, Garfields Monday Madness

This week we were supposed to read about color and how color gives meaning to certain things in a comic/graphic novel, which is why F\for this blog post I chose a page from the graphic novel Garfield’s Monday Madness created by Andrew24. This page is supposed to be a calendar of the week, displaying how bad Garfield “Can’t Wait for the Weekend”. The way color gives meaning to this calendar is first off assigning these two complimentary colors, red and green, as monday and sunday. These are not only opposite colors in shade, but by assigning red to monday which is supposed to be the more stress-filled day, and green to sunday which is the more calm, relaxed day. In between are the different shades of these two colors, leading up to one another coordinating with each day. For example, Tuesday is orange, wednesday is a lighter shade of orange, thursday is yellow, friday light green, all leading up to the dark, calm, green used for sunday. In a way these colors are used as mood indicators. Seeing as how monday is stressful and hectic, they gave it the bright red which we usually see used in emergency for ambulance or cop lights, and as the days go by the colors lighten up, just like your mood would. And finally, incase you didn’t pick up on any of these color cues, Garfield is gladly demonstrating how he feels on each of those days.