Colourful Locations

Its time for more colour.

 

COLOUR LOCATIONS

I initially searched through my Pinterest colour board and found a selection of colourful locations.

From the imagery it made me realise there is different ways colour can be added into the environment such as:

• Block colours
• Gradients of colour
• Colours on just the walls of buildings or colours on the floor
• Areas of colour defined by the environment – on each individual brick
• Or areas that are refined by the painter – Stripes of colour

 

Discussion with Bobbie and Jess

I had a discussion with Bobbie and Jess about trying to find colourful environments to see if they knew about any places I could look into. Luckily they did know some and they gave me links to locations which are below.

Danxia Rock Formation

 

Thoughts

• Striped colours
• Muted colours
• Looks like they’ve been painted or there is a screen projected over the rocks to give them this colourful striped affect.
• How is this formed?
• Is it natural?

 

75 Colour Places

A selection of the location images from the website.

Thoughts

• There are colourful locations in both urban and rural areas – Do I have a preferance?
• Amazed by the clarity in colour of these places as most would become dirty over time and maybe they are now, but the pictures make the colours look so vivid and fresh. – Giving such a jolly happy vibe.
• The Morning Glory Pool looks like some sort remnants from an attack from an alien ship, the garish blend of colours certainly makes it look extraterritorial or nuclear, but definitely not naturally from this world. – This pool could be the base for a game narrative – How was the pool created? Who created it?
• Multiple bright colours in one locations 

 

 

Rainbow Village Taichung

Donna is a traveller and has her own travel blog where she posts information and photos of her travels. The post I looked into was about the colourful Taiwan village where,

“with no prior artist experience the Rainbow Grandpa decorated the surfaces with primitive style paintings of children, cats, spirits, aliens, monkeys, patterns, stripes and swirls to save the village from demolition”.

I thought it was a fascinating concept that colour was the reason the village was saved, as this is something that never normally happens and makes me question what else could colour save. 

I find the sheer amount of detail breath-taking as everywhere is painted even the floor and all areas are unique with it being fully hand painted. Its just incredible that someone would try to make their village beautiful to try to preserve it.

The village brings up the idea of a story being recorded in a location through colour and shapes. I have this image of memories from the land being printed onto the environment, creating it into a memorial of colour and wonder.

 

Bluebell Woods

Bluebells grow through English woods and create a blue blanket across them, shown below.

Thoughts

• This is a different way of looking at colourful environments, by the colour being made by plants growing and dying, forming a change in colour throughout the seasons, showing that colour can be temporary. I find this concept interesting because it isn’t something I had considered before, assuming all colour in locations would be permanent. However I think it could make for an interesting mechanic by adding a time pressure to a game, with players having to complete a task before the colour changes. – Something to consider later on.
• The bluebell forests also differs from the other imagery I have gained as it is a single colour, whereas all the others have been a mixture of colours within one location. This use of monochrome I feel creates a more natural and calming mood, because the

 

Overall Thoughts

My overall thoughts on this research post is that it did help me to think about the different ways a location can be colourful whether it is painted on or colourful plants grow there, whether a mix of vivid colours are used or a single one and so on. Helping me to broaden my understand of what a colourful location is, giving me more environmental design options later on in the project when I start create game ideas.

When looking into bluebell forests it dawned on me that not all colours will be permanent as when colour is created by plants it is only there until the plants die. Which I thought would make an interesting mechanic within the game by the world changing colour, which could cause pressure in players if tasks rely on certain colours, and so this is something I will take forward and remember when producing game ideas.

Though I had looked into specific locations, non of them had a huge impact on me in terms of wanting to use them to base a game world off of. I believe this was the case because I still feel more interested in an abstracted world made up of shapes, colour and the structure of the Gamblin system, seen within my previous drawings. With the Gamblin system having a feeling of the unreal, I didn’t think realistic landscapes would suit the world and thus the main reason I didn’t want take any of these specific locations forward and use them in game ideas.

 

Key Points

• Natural or man-made colour locations? – Plants create colour or paint
• Colour in certain locations in temporary and others it is permanent – Temporary mainly caused by growing plants that have a distinctive colour to them – Growing colour

 

Plan

• Research in more depth into colour mapping systems.