Noel di Vanucci WIP - Shifting Colors and the Other Eye

GenreChowderStudios
Feb 26, 2019
2 min read

Hmm. She sort of matches the Mozilla Firefox icon. Not exactly, but... *shrugs*

Shading with the Multiply filter is pretty standard. But here's the rub. Multiply sort of combines the colors together, so if blue and its compliment orange collapse into each other, they become greyish. I chose blue to shade orange specifically because they compliment each other, but I needed that striking pop of color they make together, not some weirdly gross shading. Normal shading keeps the clean local color, so there you go.

Now, my original idea was to have Noel's other eye be plain white. Haven't checked it, but the effect might work better in black and white. Here, it's just jarring. While it's meant to be in a sense, it's supposed to be cohesive, which is why it might work with just the two values. There's no true white in the image (I hadn't finished the backdrop at that point), so it just looks like a mistake.

In addition to keeping it visible for a visual representation of her two-faced nature, I want it because it has the potential to look threatening. Noel is a villain, after all. Since the story she's from is in black and white (no greys), a black eye on a white background is just standard. But a white eye on a black background is stark and piercing. But the visual is distracting as represented here.

So, I compromised by making it a brown. A brown that's visible but not as sharp as, say, the pale color for her mouth. You kinda have to look long enough to see it.

Also added some tweaks to the colors. The blue's far more purplish, and the orange is super peachy now. Mostly did that because the previous colors were a bit too strong. This scheme is more cohesive since the orange has cool undertones. Whether or not I'll stay with these colors for her "official" color scheme is another matter. For the purposes of this illustration, they are very well serviceable.