Animations are brilliant storytelling devices. They take something mundane and turn it into something spectacular.
Since humans as a species are kind of into visuals; spectacles like animations invite viewers to appreciate vivid colours, unique graphics, and delightful movements. This engages them at a deeper level with what they are watching. Science animation (or animations in general) helps simplify complex concepts and explain difficult things with subtlety and finesse.
Colours play a crucial role in animations. They set the mood, drive the story forward, explain the context, and introduce effects and highlights that make things look more real and intimate.
But mastering animation-appropriate colours? Now that’s a feat.
Today we will attempt to make it happen. We’ll start with explaining colour theory, terminology, and composition so you know what you are mastering. We’ll use that knowledge to get into the rules that make all the colour magic happen.
Let’s start.
A brief look into colour theory
Colour theory is a mix of both art and science.
Its artistic part discusses the inherent characteristics of colours, how colours interact, and how colours affect human emotion and behaviour (colour psychology).
The science part of colour theory is dedicated to studying the conceptual understanding of colours, how colours are produced and manipulated, and how they guide the selection of all colour schemes.
Animation design relies heavily on colour theory. Since it's all about movement, changes in the colour environment provide viewers with important clues as to where the character is, what they may be feeling at the moment, and what the overall tone of the story is.
Important fact: Nearly 300 million in the world are colour vision deficient. Meaning, that they cannot see certain colours and hence can’t differentiate between them. To make sure your animation travels around the world and reaches every person and delights all of them, choose colour-blind safe colours for all your projects and posters.
Introduction to the colour wheel
You might remember the colour wheel from your elementary school paint mixing exercises. The colour wheel is a visual representation of 6 colours of the rainbow around a disk. The colour wheel works as a tool for designers to combine and match colours to create emotion-driven visuals. This is what it looks like:
As you can see, the wheel is often divided into warm and cool temperature tones. What for?
There’s interesting science behind it.
See, colours are just wavelengths of light. The longer the wavelength, the more light that colour has. The more light it has, the less colour, and thus it has a cooler and whiter temperature, resulting in colours like green, blue and purple!
Flip that around, and we get warm colours. These colours have more colour in them and shorter (lesser) light wavelengths. That’s why they produce rich, dark, and warm colours – like red, orange and yellow!
Fun fact: The colour wheel was invented by Sir Isaac Newton in 1666 during one of his white light experiments. He rotated the prims a certain way and discovered that light split into a spectrum of unique colours. He wrapped those colours around a rotating disk and that’s how we got the colour wheel.
Another fun fact: When you spin the colour wheel very fast, you only see white light as a combination of all these colours. Try now!
Colour classification
Temperature is not the only way colours are classified. The more mainstream way for designers to treat colours is to think of them in terms of primary or secondary colours.
Primary colours: Colours that are pure or original. Red, blue, and yellow. These colours exist on their own and need no mixing or manipulation to produce them.
Secondary colours: Secondary colours are orange, green, and violet. You get these colours by mixing the primary colours. Speaking of primary, any of this giving you primary school déjà vu? Standing around a table with your friends and mixing colours?
Tertiary colours: Primary and secondary colours come together to create tertiary hues. These are blue-green, red-orange, and yellow-green etc.
As a motion designer or an animator artist, understanding the colour wheel and how these colours interact with each other allows you to create the most effective and purposeful colour schemes for your work.
Colour components
All colours are made of three core components: hue, value, and saturation.
Hue: This is colour at its purest with no light, shade, or colour added to it.
Value: The amount of light in a colour/hue. The value determines if the colour looks pale or bright.
Saturation: The intensity of colour. High-saturated colours are vivid while low-saturated colours are grey and muted.
Why do you need to know about colour components?
The knowledge will help you adjust these components to influence the overall mood and tone of your animation. You can also use them to influence how much a colour speaks, what it speaks when it speaks, and to what effect.
Colour mixing terminologies
If you already weren’t confused enough about colours, here are a few other terminologies to remember.
Tints: Pure hues mixed with white. Tints go from pure hues to palest pastels.
Tones: Pure hues mixed with grey. Tones go from pure hues to their dullest versions.
Shades: Pure hues mixed with black. Shades travel from pure colour to the richest darks.
A colour palette typically contains one or more of these as secondary or accent colours. Finalizing your tints, tones, and shades early on allows you to apply them consistently across your animation without feeling lost or confused.
Do you need all these colours in your animation?
You kind of do. But not all colours in all animations. Different times call for different colours, and here’s why.
Depending on your story’s narrative scope, a wider range of colours allows you to tell the tale effectively. When you know the exact value or tone of a colour, you exercise complete control over your audience’s emotions at a particular moment in the story.
With fewer colours, sure, your mind stays saner, but your animation may suffer as you’ll have to make colour compromises.
And if you are creating a science animation for digital learners, getting your colours right becomes that much more important. Vibrant colours help you colour-code specific moments or elements and communicate the knowledge more effectively. For example, noting down the code of a specific tone of green you use for your fig leaves versus apple leaves helps you consistently differentiate the two throughout the animation.
So, note all the colour values down as you plan your colour palette and colour script so you know the exact colour codes for each moment of animation to carry the story forward impeccably.
Dos and Don’ts of colour in animation and motion graphic
Rules are for breaking. But not these rules. Stick to these colour best practices for motion design that experts have perfected over the years. Once you have mastered the basics and achieved expertise, smash the rules and build anew on their ashes.
1. The right palette for animation
Not all colour schemes are going to be suitable for animation. Your characters are going to move around a lot and they will express emotions. Give them the perfect stage, colour-wise, so they can do that effectively.
Pale and pastel colours usually don’t work in animation. The graphics will feel washed out and unappealing. So, what do you do?
Do: Bright, vivid, and bold colours suit animations as they attract the eye and supplement the energy of the design.
Don’t: Don’t choose pastel colours as your base for the palette. They may dampen the effect of the animation and even communicate hesitation on your part.
2. Target audience research
Who are the people you’ll address via this particular animation? How old are they? Where do they live? What are they searching for? Audience research helps you answer pertinent questions through your story. You remain focused and thus able to communicate your message well.
Do: Employ multiple tools to study your demographics. What colours do they respond to the most? What cultural significance do your chosen colours hold with that audience? Through surveys or focus group studies, try to get to the bottom of what they feel when they interact with certain colours.
Don’t: Don’t choose animation colours based on personal choice. Whether you are a scientist creating your first animation or a science communicator helping a researcher, never pick colours randomly. Unless your colour choices are rooted in exact investigation, you are bound to pick colours that don’t do much for your message.
3. The emotional temperature of your animation
Like humans, colours are emotional beings too. Warm colours — red, yellow, and orange — are often understood as high-energy colours with loud and active personalities. Cooler colours, conversely, are comforting, serene, and sophisticated.
The mood of your animation design will be centred on the overall emotional temperature your colour palette generates. How can you maintain that throughout the story?
Do: Decide what your overall message is. Is your science animation telling a story, asking a question, or dropping a knowledge nuke? How do you want your audience to feel when they engage with the story? Cool colours in dark shades often signal melancholy. High-contrast colours display high energy – whereas sunny colours with lots of light are often the carriers of joyous emotions. So, clock onto the emotions you want to convey and find the right colours that represent those to a T.
Don’t: Don’t delay setting the emotional stage of the story. Take a page from Hollywood movies and immediately set your colour tone from the first scene. Failing to do that confuses the audience as to the right emotion they must be feeling. Use the right colours and guide them to the emotional zone you want.
4. Colour script for your animation
Depending on the length or scope of your animation, you will be working with a large colour palette with many secondary and accent colours. How do you make sure you choose the exact tint or shade for a particular character look or story moment as you go through the entire script?
Do: Create a colour script for your animation. Note all the HEX codes for your colours and colour-code all your scenes, characters, and important story moments. If you use a certain value of purple for a flash effect in a scene, the colour script will ensure that the same purple value is used throughout the animation every time that flash lights up the screen.
Don’t: Don’t think you’ll remember all the colours even if you’re working with a minimal colour palette. Colour scripting gives you greater control over your animation. If you don’t codify your colour palette, even subtle things like the colour of begonia leaves may change from one scene to another in your story. It not only looks unprofessional — unprofessional academics aren’t the most popular looks — but may also look poorly executed, harming your core message.
5. Colour contrast in animation
Contrasts are necessary tools in visual design. Colour contrasts allow critical elements to pop, be more visible, and be more understandable. Messed-up contrast can affect the readability of a design piece and may even overwhelm or frustrate the audience.
Do: Choose complementary colours — colours that sit on opposite ends of the colour wheel — for the most proper contrast in your design. These highly contrasting colours are natural opposites and therefore don’t look extreme or garish.
Don’t: Don’t pair colours with equal values or saturations as they usually create the poorest contrast. Also, don’t use pure hues when introducing contrast. Temper the colours slightly as purest hues are vivid and intense and may prove tricky for people with colour and visual deficiencies.
Revv up your science communication with animation
Most human beings learn visually and there are a ton of complex scientific concepts out there that people would love to know more about. If you have a great scientific breakthrough to share or an easier way to explain a particularly challenging concept, arm your knowledge with animation!
Animations are riveting and engaging tools that people of all ages and backgrounds love.
Instead of a long documentary that people may use as white noise for their early morning exam preparation, why not use fun graphics and engaging storytelling to share what you have learned?
Use us as your science communication partners and Animate Your Science so it reaches more people and delights more minds. Connect with us here to find out how we help you do that.
Author Bio:
Karla is an accomplished writer and blogger with a degree in marketing. With over 5 years of experience in writing strategic content, she has worked with startups and founders, helping them to develop and execute effective content strategies that deliver results. Karla is known for her ability to craft compelling content that resonates with readers and drives engagement. She has a keen understanding of the power of storytelling and how it can be used to build brands and connect with audiences.
In her free time, Karla enjoys reading and knitting. She also has two pet cats called Salt and Pepper, who keep her company while she works on her latest writing projects. With a passion for all things creative and a dedication to excellence, Karla is committed to helping others achieve their goals through the power of effective content marketing.
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