Colour palettes

Colour palettes for the aliens completed. Top one is for the more purple/blue-ish areas, bottom is for the grottos.

Colour theory for aliens attempt 2

Had another fiddle with colour theory. Since we're using a lot of purple/blue in our area, the complementary colour to that would be yellow/orange. May try adding in some orange later. Concept used is just for testing the colours.

Plasma Colour Research & Spire Surge

When designing the weaponry for Blackout, we discussed what colour the weapons should produce in terms of energy and what type of ammunition the weapons should fire, we settled on a plasma type of energy since it's re-occurring across the sci-fi genre. We started considering the colour during the design of the plasma sword, since we'd already carried out colour research that spans across the entire game we needed to also see what colour real plasma produces and what/why it produces certain colours, we ideally wanted to find a type of plasma that fit in with the colours we chose across the entire game. We'd already decided as a team that orange and purple were going to be primary colours, we decided on the weapons having a orange aura about them with a grey pixel styled casing, one of the connotations we came across was that orange means energy so we thought it felt nicely with the weapons producing alot of energy and it relates the alien planet in Blackout being organic. We wanted either a lifeforce/poisoning type of energy surging across the alien planet, like the planet was breathing or slowly dying so we wanted to use purple for that, it represented both power and toxicity and it also works well with orange as you can see in the following images, here are some research on plasma colours and orange and purple relativity:

Gas that produces certain coloured Plasma

Gas that produces certain coloured Plasma

We looked at the official colour wheel showing tertiary and secondary colours, on the colour wheel the opposing colours compliment eachother, here are multiple takes on the official colour wheel showing complimentary colours and how purple relates to both yellow and orange, purples primary complimentary colour is yellow, however its also shares relativity with orange as its opposite it on the colour wheel:

Here are some official Science forums illustrating what gases produces certain colours for both display and physical uses, we liked an orange/redish colour for the plasma blade/guns and since most plasma cutting tools are used for precision it works in tandem with our guns/melee weapon being precision instruments, here is an article on an official welding webpage demonstrating how a industry plasma cutter works, you'll also see that the cutting plasma emits an orange aura:

Sci-Fi Colour Schemes - Theory/Research [Weapons]

After looking at existing concepts and Sci-Fi games/films, we decided on using some of our favourite firearm references for colour and create schemes from them to get a feel for what colours we'd like to use in our weapons design, these colours could possibly rub off on our games environment and assets later on. We came to discover that various shades of beige, orange, blue and grey were re-occurring across alot of different Sci-Fi palettes and platforms. As the team mutually agreed that the use of orange and purples would be primary throughout some of the guns and creatures (Due to favourability and its relativity to heat and power) we tried picking out references that had similar colours. We looked at colour connotation wheels to get what certain colours mean:

Here are some palettes we create for the different guns, we're going to decide on one singular palette that we liked best and work in tandem with the chosen palette so all the guns feel like they're loosely part of a set or atleast of the same world. We liked the handgun colour scheme the best so by tweaking that singular palette and adding purple we came up with a solid scheme, some of the emissive panels on the guns shall change colour due to different ammunition:

Adobe Kuler Logo

Finished Weapon Palettes

Grey Reference Palette

Colour Theory/Colour Schemes

After discussion with the team about what images of the mood board they liked and why ,we came up with the 4 main colours in our minds that our game was going to include for colour scheme. The following colours the group picked and talked about were: Green- which would mostly be for any foliage that would be used, Brown- for any of the rock formations etc , Purple-for the blood of the enemies and following that Orange for possible lights on the weapons that were going to be used in the game. While I originally tried using Adobe Kuler to create my own colour palettes the results were not turning out nearly as I would've liked so instead I took the main 5 images from the inspiration/mood board that the group had spoke about and used Kuler to come up with 5 possible colour palettes that we can have a look at to see if any of them are what we are going for in our game.

Brown:-

Purple:-

Green:-

Orange:-

Green:-