Creating Character Color Palettes: Tips and Techniques for Animators

In fact, great character design is almost inseparable from its color palette: take your favorite character, change the colors, and it’s as if you have an entirely different character.

How do animators come up with great color palettes, then? There are a few principles to follow, and the rest is creative genius. Only experience can bring the latter, but we can learn about the former today: in this article, we explore color theory and best practices to help you easily develop character color palettes.

First, let’s understand what color theory is.

What is Color Theory?

Color theory studies how colors interact, how they can be combined, and how they affect emotions and perceptions.

At its core, color theory encompasses concepts such as the color wheel, color harmony, and the psychological effects of color. The color wheel organizes hues to demonstrate their relationships, including primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. This foundational tool allows animators to select colors that complement each other or create contrast, guiding the viewer's emotional response.

Let's say we pick a color palette for a heroic knight. Our primary colors could be blue and gold: blue for trust, loyalty, and calmness, and gold for wealth, success, and optimism. This combination suggests strength and reliability, positioning the knight as a noble character.

Why Characters Need A Color Palette

Color plays a significant role in conveying emotions and themes: it sets the tone for a character's personality and helps the audience quickly identify their emotional state. It's a fundamental aspect of character design.

A character designed with cool, muted tones might suggest melancholy or introspection.

A character experiencing growth could start with darker colors and gradually transition to lighter, more vibrant hues to represent their development.

A distinctive color palette makes characters more recognizable and memorable to the audience. Iconic palettes, like Naruto's orange, yellow, and blue, create strong associations.

In animation, color palettes also serve as a tool for world-building: they reflect the tone and style of the world in which the characters exist. For example, in Avatar: The Last Airbender, the colors associated with each Nation (Earth, Water, Fire, Air) not only represent the elements but also reflect their cultural identities.

1. Copy What Works

One of the easiest ways to develop character color palettes is to study successful characters from existing media—be it animations, video games, or films—to understand how their color choices enhance their personality, role, and story. Many established characters already apply principles of color theory like harmony, contrast, and complementary colors. Learning from these examples helps you apply these concepts effectively in your own palette.

1. Define your character - Write a detailed list of bullet points that describe your character: role/archetype (hero, mentor, sidekick, antagonist), occupation (mage, warrior, scientist, merchant), age (child, young adult, middle-aged, elder), skills (powers, combat abilities, intelligence, charm) and core attributes (heroic or villainous, joyful or melancholic).
2. Research reference material - Use platforms like Pinterest or art databases to find character designs that align with your list. Search specifically for color palettes used in similar roles or archetypes (old wise man, queen, warrior, joker, etc.): James Bond is typically clothed in neutral and dark colors to signal sophistication and authority, while characters like Mario use bright primary colors to convey energy and friendliness.
3. Analyze and adapt - Consider what color schemes are most prevalent among characters that fill similar roles or share traits with your character. Choose hues that resonate with your character's traits while modifying them to create something original. For example, if you notice wise mentors have earthy tones, but your character has an adventurous edge, you could pair deep greens with vibrant golds to create a more dynamic palette.
4. Create a cohesive palette - Outline a color palette that reflects your character's description while ensuring visual harmony with primary, secondary, and highlight colors for details. A guardian character could have, for example, a palette of deep blue (trust), silver (wisdom), and bright gold (valor).

2. Use Color Symbolism

Color symbolism is using colors to represent certain ideas, emotions, or values within the context of storytelling and character design.

Each color can trigger specific feelings or imply particular traits and roles. Red is often associated with passion, danger, or power. Blue usually signifies calmness, trustworthiness, or sadness.

1. Character roles and relationships - Consider your characters' status and relevance within the story. They often symbolize specific archetypes, so their color palettes should reflect their roles. A princess might wear soft pastels or rich jewel tones to indicate elegance and status. This differentiation in the palette is not arbitrary―it supports the narrative by cueing the audience about character dynamics. If you wish to create a more nuanced character, like a general with a surprisingly gentle side, you could play with lighter shades or softer tones in their palette to highlight these hidden traits.
2. Socioeconomic indicators - Color also codifies socioeconomic status. In many stories, characters from privileged backgrounds wear brighter, high-contrast colors to signify wealth, while those from less affluent backgrounds wear more monochromatic hues to reflect their struggles. This visual disparity immediately communicates their respective social standings.
3. Cultural and religious associations - Colors often carry specific, sometimes different, meanings across different cultures and religions, and these associations provide depth to your character design. In Western cultures, white symbolizes purity, often linked to weddings, while in some Eastern cultures, it may represent mourning. Incorporating these cultural nuances enriches a character's background and ties in beautifully with your world-building. In a fantasy world, you can create your own fictitious meanings. For example, suppose your animation features a culture that reveres nature. In that case, green tones might symbolize nobility, while earth tones could indicate a character who is more grounded or of lesser status.
4. Break the rules - Don't be afraid to experiment with color combinations. Start with a basic palette and then adjust based on the evolving narrative. You could have a villain disguised as a pure white knight (e.g., Griffith from the Berserk anime). Queen Elza from Frozen has a cold, icy color palette despite being portrayed as deeply caring and self-sacrificing.

3. Leverage Color Palette Generators

A color palette generator helps users create harmonious color combinations. With appropriate layers in your digital content creation software, generators allow you to explore various color schemes quickly.

You can also use generators to keep track of your chosen colors and keep your designs consistent:

Popular tools like Adobe Color, Coolors, and Paletton work similarly:

1. Start with a base color - Use your character's primary trait to determine a base color. Input this color into the palette generator to create a foundational palette.
2. Explore different color schemes - Use the various options provided by the generator to explore different color schemes: experiment with complementary colors that sit opposite each other on the color wheel to create visual tension or analogous colors that sit beside each other for a more harmonious look.
3. Test the palette in context - Once you've generated a few palettes, apply them to test sketches of your character. This contextual application reveals how the colors interact with one another in practice.
4. Document your palette: Document your chosen palette with HEX, RGB, HSL, or CMYK values for easy reference during the animation process.

4. Find Inspiration From Around You

Finding inspiration from the environment around you means observing nature, architecture, fashion, and everyday life to extract colors that resonate with your characters.

It adds a sense of realism and relatability to your designs, grounding them in a world that audiences connect with: the real world is rich with color variations to create unique and nuanced palettes rather than relying solely on common tropes.

1. Photo to color palette - Try finding or taking photos of striking color combinations that catch your eye―anything from a vibrant street mural to the subtle shades of a sunset. Make a library of your favorite photographs and organize them based on themes or emotions to serve as a quick reference when you need inspiration.
2. Study nature and surroundings - Spend time outdoors and observe how colors interact in various environments. Notice how greens in a forest differ in shade and hue depending on the time of day or weather conditions. Recording these observations helps you understand how to mix colors effectively. You can also create mood boards by selecting images from magazines, online sources, or your own photography.
3. Pay attention to fashion and interior design - Examine current fashion trends or interior design palettes. Designers often draw color choices based on cultural influences, seasonal changes, or emotional themes. Analyze why certain combinations work and how they convey feelings.

5. Don't Forget Lighting

In animation, lighting is a fundamental element that dictates visibility, mood, atmosphere, and visual storytelling. It includes dealing with natural light, artificial sources, and their interplay with color and shadows.

Colors can appear different based on lighting conditions. A character's vibrant hue may look muted in a darkened room under bright daylight. The type of lighting can evoke various emotional responses, and selecting your character's color palette with this emotional context in mind helps reinforce the intended mood of a scene. Strategic lighting enhances or diminishes aspects of a character's design, allowing you to guide the viewer's eye toward crucial features or away from unnecessary details.

1. Experiment with color temperature - Start by determining the color temperature that reflects your character's mood. Create a few sketches using warm, cool, and neutral light palettes. Observe how these choices influence the perception of your character's colors. For example, use soft, golden lighting for a romantic or nostalgic character and bright, icy blue for a more aloof or mysterious persona.
2. Use color grading tools - Digital animation software often includes color grading tools that allow you to adjust lighting effects virtually to see how colors react to different lighting scenarios.
3. Test your palette in diverse lighting scenarios - Create a set of character designs using your preliminary color palette, and then render these designs with different lighting setups to identify how your color choices hold up in varied environments. You might find vibrant hues in one light setting muted or clash in another, prompting necessary revisions.
4. Incorporate shadows and highlights - Light and shadow create depth in your character designs, so choose colors that can be lightened or darkened effectively.

6. Account For The Environment

Consider the environment in which your characters will exist: the colors you choose for your characters must work with the backgrounds and other elements of your animation.

The environment encompasses everything from background scenery to other characters. Each element has its own color palette, which can complement or clash with your character designs.

If you select colors in isolation, you risk creating a disjointed visual experience that detracts from your storytelling. By designing your character colors with their environment in mind, you can better establish the visual hierarchy within your scenes: main characters should stand out. In contrast, secondary characters or background elements can be subtler, creating a dynamic yet balanced composition.

1. Design in context - Always incorporate your character designs within their intended environments and avoid designing characters in isolation. Draft color schemes while clearly viewing the backdrop and other elements that will appear alongside your characters.
2. Establish character roles - Consider the role of each character. For example, the main player character should have the most eye-catching colors, using bold shades and contrasts that naturally draw attention. Secondary characters would have slightly muted tones, while background characters wear even more subdued colors.
3. Use visual references - Create a montage of your character variations in your preferred graphics editor. Take a background illustration and overlay the different character designs on top to provide a visual reference.
4. Test contrast and readability - Make sure your character designs are easily distinguishable from the background. An effective way to do this is to test your designs against monochrome background variations. If a character blends into the scenery, adjust the palette until it stands out sufficiently while maintaining the desired aesthetic harmony.

It's not uncommon to change character clothes and accessories to match a new environment or a different group of characters in the same scene:

Conclusion

In animation, the thoughtful selection and application of color transcend artistic preference; it’s a key narrative pillar.

By understanding and leveraging color theory, tapping into established palettes, using color symbolism, and drawing inspiration from the world around us, animators can build characters that resonate deeply with audiences. Integrating tools like palette generators alongside considerations for lighting and environment ensures that a character’s colors not only captivate the viewer but also enhance the impact of their story.