Christmas lights

Our main focus on the whole Christmas theme was the Christmas AESTHETIC more than anything else, this being the colours red and green, candy cane swirls and fairy lights. We applied this imagery to Exsecula in a rather un-Christmassy way.

We decided that while the planet is travelling from solar system to solar system it would enter a period of hibernation to save energy. This means the core of the planet would darken and many weaker plants would begin to decay while the larger and stronger ones thrived. We decided that many vines would then germinate during this period that glowed vibrant colours – like fairy lights on a Christmas tree – and lit up all the tunnels and forests of Exsecula.

Colour Theory

http://www.colormatters.com/color-and-design/basic-color-theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_theory

http://www.tigercolor.com/color-lab/color-theory/color-theory-intro.htm

Someone anonymously made this little game on Tumblr. (I cannot find the citation, i’ll come back to this) and it’s a really fun way of practicing using different colour schemes. Here are a few I did:

Previous uses of colour

I have been using colour as a form of expression in many of my animations before:

The main colour here is green and it creates an eerie, almost Halloween-y atmosphere.

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Blue was used here to show a ghostly or supernatural presence. (just don’t pay attention to the cut off prevention)

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The firey golds and oranges here echo the colour of the character’s eyes and compliment their colour schemes nicely.

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In my animated book adaptation, “The Rise of Scourge”, I chose a different colour scheme for each location. The house is a loud and unnatural lilac that was similar to that of Tiny’s collar, showing his connection to the house. The “middle-ground”, or the area between the fence and the forest is a dirty maroon, which is somewhere in the middle of the lilac of the house and the red of the forest, The dirtiness of the colour comes from the negative associations with the area including the mocking scorn of the Housecats and when Tiny lies injured and heartbroken by the fence after being attacked. The forest is originally a shining gold, showing how much Tiny treasures the forest. He sees it as the most wonderful thing in the world. The forest then turns harsh red when Tigerpaw attacks representing blood (which is also repeated in Tiny’s collar which gets bloodstained.)

Christmas on EXSECULA

I was moved to a new world, this time is was the plant world Exsecula, a gigantic planet-sized carnivorous organism that travelled the galaxy in search of planets to eat.

This weeks challenge was to add colour to our project, and we were given the theme of Christmas.

The planet from the outside looks like a giant tangle of roots with several longer ones trailing behind it like a comet’s tail. It has one orifice, like a sea urchin, which engulfs its prey (any unsuspecting planet) and harnesses all its energy to power Exsecula on its search for yet more prey.