Hi guys,

I want to create a small scale game in Unity and do the art in Qubicle. Do you have any tips for choosing a color plate? I have been doing design for years in Photoshop where only 4-6 colors are needed in a plate for what I do. However, games have buildings, trees, roads and I want to make it seem like it's all cut from the same cloth.

My game is a mobile game and I want it to seem bright, light and life-giving without it being childish. I have a few colors in mind but I am not sure how to extrapolate those colors out in a way that brings everything together.

Hello. I like this quote:

Since I'm a graphic designer, I create visual signatures for games. Making styleguides is a large part of my job, once I've figured out a vision.

It's interesting that your approach was very technical (HSV and percentages). As mentioned above, you'll find a lot of color theory things for areas like branding through graphic design but for video games there are like 3 styleguides online. It's pretty bad. I'm building a GDC talk on something which may shed some light on to the process for selecting something like color.

When choosing a colour palette I am very aware of color symbolism, their meanings and how they connect, how they compliment each other and even how they contrast one another.

It's very easy to just pick colors which you feel work well when designing a single character(or icon, fx, logo, lighting a scene). However, when you suddenly need to create a line-up, or opposing teams, or multiple factions - that is where a styleguide with distinctive colors becomes essential, not only for the art director, and not only for the wider team - but for anyone who plays the game.

The topic is so massive because of how it applies to everything within a game. From the colors used in your logo, to your menu & interface, your signs & feedback, your lighting, characters, architecture, the list goes on and on and it all adds up to create a unique feeling to your game.

I am curious how many people have access to something (styleguide,powerpoint,word doc) which describes the reasoning behind the visuals for games they're working on?

From http://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2382804/

I also like that popular character art guide from Valve for Dota 2:
http://media.steampowered.com/apps/dota2/workshop/Dota2CharacterArtGuide.pdf

Write down all keywords that you find (i.e "complementary", "triadic" etc.) and expand your research with them.