Clothos logo

I was recently commissioned to design the "mascot" logo for a program project at UC Berkeley for their IGem wiki entry website. The Clothos name itself is based upon one of the Greek fates, the one who spun the thread of human life. The name was chosen because the program itself deals with DNA fabrication, in a sense- the very thread of life itself in actuality. Her design was originally based upon the images I found of the Greek fate, but then incorporated was that her hair is strands of DNA and that base bacteria serve as ornamentation on her long flowing dress. Her colors were determined during a live video recording session in which I was drawing and coloring live, and the Berkeley team watched and gave feedback (if you're curious, it's "livestream" www.livestream.com/osirisred I occasionally hold live drawing sessions so people can watch how i draw). The royal red I thought was a strong primary color to base off of, and the gold itself is a standard compliment to dark red dresses. Her golden hair I think was partially based off of Rapunzel's fairytale. The off-color skin was chosen because human skin didn't really give her a "Goddess" feel and when I played with the hues, this light green served as a good compliment, being the opposite color of red on the color wheel. She is adorned with natural items such as flowers and also small bacteria and phage-charms to accentuate her "natural" aspects.

Her original sketch was more so based on the clothos muse herself:


You can see the rest of the mascots and the software's functionality at the completed wiki page here: http://2009.igem.org/Team:Berkeley_Software

Use of Secondary Colors

I had quite the difficult time to choose the color scheme for this drawing:


Darkstar Dragon by =slifertheskydragon on deviantART

The monster itself is "evil" in nature, so to illustrate that I chose a dark background, but had difficulty in choosing its color scheme. In the end i decided upon a dark blue skin accentuated by slightly saturated violet parts of the skin and in contrast, a somewhat bright green. These two colors are part of the secondary colors (purple, green, orange) and because purple and green are more on the "cool" side of the color wheel (being that they share blue as one of the primary colors used to create) I felt that worked better than using say purple with orange because I wanted a "cool" tone to the work. (Purple and orange share red as a primary used to create them, and gave a "warm" feeling to the drawing).

So in addition to the use of secondary colors to create a rather off-beat feeling a designer must consider the "side" of the color wheel that the colors originate/share in their design to create and convey the correct message/emotion.

The banner's image origin - Red

In case anyone is curious about the illustration in my banner- it's from this variant fanart of the yugioh monster "slifer the sky dragon"

+slifer the sky dragon by =slifertheskydragon on deviantART

I felt like i need to talk about it because of how I chose a predominant red theme. My favorite color is red, i'm not too sure why but I think it's the aesthetics of the color- red's association with romance, love, anger, rage, etc. Red is I think, the only color able to achieve such a broad range of emotions. This journal has a red-black theme because I felt it matched better than the dark red-black banner with a white background. Plus, i'm not one for bright screens...

the original design of the dragon can be seen (also drawn by me):

- Slifer the Sky Dragon - by =slifertheskydragon on deviantART

notice how the dragon itself has primary colors (blue: orb,tongue Yellow: eyes (it uses thunder-based attacks, so those are yellow) Red: skin, etc) and coincidentally if you take what i've talked about in the superman-action heroes and colors post, the monster is the main character's key card. In fact, aside from the first time it was introduced, only the main character has used this monster. It seems the strength in the use of the primary triad lies with the overall unity that the colors create, but also accenting a predominant primary (i.e. red in this case) with the other primaries achieves a similar effect.

The use of black/white (sharp contrast) also compliments the contrast given by the primary colors to create more accentuation and brings attention to the "belly" of the dragon with the black/white. The primary colors help to bring attention to the dragon's face.

This dragon shows the use of color to bring attention to key areas- a good idea to keep in mind when thinking about what colors to make your newest creation.

Primary vs Secondary colors in comics

In general, primary colors are reserved for heroes, because they are colors that are basis of all other colors aside from the primaries in the color wheel. They are gestalt within themselves, the "perfect form" of a color. When we see all three together, we also get a sense of unity and our minds are at ease. In the comic book world, the best example?


Superman by ~DocShaner on deviantART

Superman. His costume is nothing but the primary colors. Such bright primary colors that aren't off tone give you the sense that "this guy is the hero and seems like a nice person" especially when combined with his facial expression, he has a "boy scout appearance" There is a sense of unity and harmony in the use of the primary colors, and our eye likes it.

Contrast this to a character whose wardrobe is based on secondary colors (and his face clashes)-

Joker by ~luli44 on deviantART
The Joker. His wardrobe is an off-green and purple, two secondary colors, and purple, if placed on a monochromatic scale, is a "dark" color, green is "neutral" but because of its contrast with the Joker's red smile, such contrast, like Christmas colors create discord for our eyes. His manic sickly yellow (note how i associated "sickly" with yellow) and pale white face show us this person isn't healthy, and the fact that he carries a gun makes him an immediate "villain" archetype.

The use of predominant primary colors in comics is generally reserved for heroes, a short list-
DC: Superman, Old school Batman (he was blue/yellow), wonder woman (primary), the Flash (red/yellow), Static Shock (blue/yellow)
Marvel: Spiderman (red/blue), Wolverine (yellow/blue), Cyclops (yellow/blue)
Japanese comics: Yugioh (red/yellow hair, blue clothes), Ash Ketchum + Pikachu (red hat, blue clothes, yellow pet)

The use of predominant secondary colors in comics is generally reserved for villains, though these colors are usually off-color, resulting in a pale or "washed out" color scheme-
DC: the Joker, Lex Luthor (purple/green)
Marvel: Magneto (magenta/purple)

From the above list we can see that such use of the primary and secondary colors helps divide the "good and evil" characters apart, and makes it a "standard" so that we can almost immediately categorize characters by color alone.

Your color, choose a side

When you see the color red, what do you think of?
Love? Roses? Blood?
What about blue?
Sadness? Blue? Water?

Why do we associate colors with emotions or objects immediately?

Our minds try to find reason, truth, and when it does it feels good, content.

We use such associations for colors in design to convey emotions, or perhaps trigger memories of a place, person, or thing. This is a psychological compensation called "color constancy" where we think that grass must be green and the sky must be blue.

In the comic book world, colors are used to help "determine your side"- Hero or Villain.

An excellent use of the color spectrum, combined with facial expressions can be seen in DC's "Green Lantern" series:

BlackestNight: Tales by `Bakanekonei on deviantART

In this case, the colors of the person (and subsequent corps) reflect an emotion:
"In DC Comics, the emotional spectrum is divided into the seven colors of the rainbow, with each color corresponding to a different emotion:
rage (red),
avarice (orange),
fear (yellow),
willpower (green),
hope (blue),
compassion (indigo),
and love (violet)." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_spectrum)

The "warm" colors are considered the villains and the "cool" colors are "heroes". Green is the "middle ground" though in general is a "hero" group.

Why is this?

I think it is because warm colors have a kind of "life" in them, they excite our eye, give off a kind of "energy", where as "cool" colors try to calm us, they "bring us down" instead of "excite" us. In this sense, the colors tied with their respective emotion is based on this, and our already conceived view of that color. Though yellow if we think about it, usually represents happiness, or the sun, but in WWI, it represented fear and death (the mustard "yellow" gas) and also represents sickness (decay, like in rotting teeth). It is in this context that we must be careful to choose our colors wisely, and use them alongside the context from where they are placed to communicate through design properly.

You know when you've watched too much anime when...

You actually recognize what this

is.

If you've never watched a single anime (short for Japanese Animation) you probably wouldn't understand or know what the heck the above picture is supposed to represent or be nonetheless.

You are supposed to recognize the colors above as the main robot from the anime series "Evangelion" :
(c) Gainax

That was actually the first one I had recognized off the bat, there's a great deal of others that took me a while to distinguish because of the colors. Much like how we recognize characters like Mickey Mouse () by the distinctive "H2O" molecule silhouette, anime fans on a Japanese message board came to together to create over 50 of these "color mind tricks" to test your obsession with certain popular anime series. It's not only the colors but the very spacing of the colors that made anime fans associate the first image with Evangelion, because purple is the primary predominant color, while there is only hints of green.

This ties down to the basis of color theory, in which by use of certain colors the audience will immediate associate an idea or in this case, anime series/character with the use of colors. A western equivalent would be red and blue (with hints of yellow) as representative of DC comic's Superman or black (blue) and yellow representative of DC comic's Batman. In the western case, they used primary colors to distinguish their "hero" character from villains who have off-primary colors, such as DC comic's Joker, who is distinguished by purple and green.

Creators do this so we associate color schemes and patterns with characters and also to in a way show their "sides" of either villain or hero. Such a strong presence of color scheme creating such an imprint is representative of the gestalt, in which our minds find unity in being able to successfully associate the picture with the idea.

You can find more of these "mind tricks of obsession" over at http://en.gigazine.net/index.php?/news/comments/20091102_otaku_proof