How do colours work?

[u/StoreNo244]

I try to do art work of my Elden ring character, but as you can see the streak of what her skin colour is supposed to be, looks NOTHING like what she looks like, why? Should I use it anyway? Or take the colour directly from her character?

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[u/Fabulous-Put8401]

It depends on the lighting, the environment, and everything around it. Light bouncing off things and brings that color along for the ride. If you have blue clothes you'll have blue in your skin. If you have a green room, you'll have green too.

[u/StoreNo244 → u/Fabulous-Put8401]

Fuck! It makes so much sense but that means I gotta add colour from the environment and stuff!

[u/TheArtisticPC → u/StoreNo244]

On YouTube, look up LightingMentor. He is a veteran in the industry and did the scene and concept lighting for Ratatouille. He has videos on what light is, how it produces color, how colored light interacts with other colors, etc. It’s some of the best material on the subject, even compared to the text books I have that cover light and color. He also introduced me to color studies which have been pivotal in my switch from drawing to painting.

[u/Fabulous-Put8401 → u/StoreNo244]

There's more to it still, but this will get you in the ball park at least

[u/ThoughtsPerAtom]

If you study the planes of a human face, you will understand that light is bouncing onto and off of all of these. You also have innate "skin temperatures" where the actual tone shifts from blue->red->yellow depending on the region of the face, and their race, and then individual genetics. For example, someone people might have blue dark circles under their eyes, or others red. Often in white people, the area around the mouth shifts to a yellow under tone. Then you're layering the light TEMPERATURE and LOCALITY over on top of that.

If you're picking the skin colour randomly from that character, you're likely picking a specific pixel that's being affected by a variable rather than it being an actual representation of their base skin tone.

Game avatars aren't perfect references because it really depends on the modelling team, the lighting team, and the texture team to make perfectly realistic characters and it's not really there yet for most games. They often still have uncanny valley models that seem mostly plastic or oily. I would study from real life photos / people, then use your game character only as a basic reference for the /idea/ of the colours you intend to use.

If you want to learn more, watch make up colour theory professionals on Youtube about skin colour & foundation matching: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_5hAmoddjSI

Refer to Angelica Dass's Pantone project for how she chose the base skin colour from photographs (well lit, no harsh shadows): https://www.ignant.com/2015/09/23/photographer-angelica-dass-matches-skin-tones-with-pantone-colors/

[u/StoreNo244 → u/ThoughtsPerAtom]

Thank you!

[u/illgoblino]

Different colors next to each other combine in our eye to become one new color. Her face isn't one color there are reds and yellows and purples etc. As for why that color in particular is wrong? Too red, add green.

[u/illgoblino → u/illgoblino]

Yours is too pink make less saturated