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you folks patiently suffered through my struggles with the composition of a scene, including my usual tedious whining and weeping about color.
I wanted to update you with the following experiment. It might prove helpful when you need to harmonize character colors with the ambient color temperature.
( If the BIG picture doesn't show, Reload your browser )
This is an attempt to generate color keys for both the background and the character. As you recall from our last whiny episode, I had a breakthrough once I got enough sense to choose realistic colors for candlelight (whale-oil light, actually). (Let's face it, gold and black is a pretty elegant color scheme.)
Now, let's try to see what the character should look like in the room. The first thing to understand is that you need to be doing this kind of work in a paint program, not a vector program. So open the one you use.
It's hard to believe, in this setting, but there may actually be lighting conditions under which the original scheme A would work. (... I think ... !)
I started by copying A to a layer B. I add a translucent layer C which has been colorized at the room's color temperature -- orange. Then, with layers B and C overlapped, I keep adjusting the brightness and contrast of B and C until I feel the character belongs in the room.
As I said previously, I suspect that you have balance two opposing principles: the character needs to be higher contrast and more saturated than the background, but he also needs to be in harmony with the room.
The result is D, except that the hair was too brown, so I desaturated it. (The original color was F.)
The last experiment was to try to light the character by altering the inklines of the hair, as shown.
I hope this is helpful when you need to do this kind of thing, but I'm not sure I found the right colors yet. If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears.
