SM4709 Internship and Practicum

This week I can have chance to take a closer look at the animation production pipeline. Even I worked on my independent animation, I did not realize so many different roles involved. Colleagues in the company are professional and finish the task well so they can have good collaboration with others. Colour Department involves in all the 3 parts in whole animation production: pre-production, production and post-production. In pre-production, we need to design the colour direction for background department to follow. For instances, how greenery the trees are and how the seasons affect the environment change. After the background department completes their works, we need to fine tune the colour and check if the colour direction requires changes. After compositing animation and still background together, we also need to do colour correction and make sure the characters have the consistent colour. It sounds like some trivial jobs and can be done easily. However, when I really execute...

In order to find out how other color artists do their works in other animation company, I read many reference book this week and try to grab the tricks behind color design. The following book is one of the reference I took from my studio. It introduces the color palette the colour designers used for different environment. For example, the combination colour of red and green is used for the situation in danger. I will try to digest the experience other people have and apply the colour representation in the future.

Image from the Internet: https://visual.ly/community/infographic/other/what-colors-mean-different-cultures Feedback: As the above diagram, the same colour can represent different cultural meaning in different countries. Moreover, the colour variety is different from Chinese and Western countries due to the materials made for colour. It was fun to find out that but it is a big challenge for colour design as I need to consider the appropriate cultural color of the audience and help tell the story through colour.

Image from the Internet. Since I did not attend any courses about color during my life, I was not familiar with the color theory and how it works with story in animations. I found a lot of reference from the animation films. For examples, The Incredibles, The Cars and The Dam Keeper. They all have some color direction done in pre-production to follow, like color script and color key. To do color design, the colors should be true to the local object and environment. However, they also need to capture the mood of the characters and the emotion of the audience according to the story flow. I believe there are many things to learn about color design in the coming months. I am so excited.