Color & Light - Design Inspiration from Musee d'Orsay
With game designers, it varies where new game ideas come from...other games, a dream, something you saw, a story you heard. Whatever the source, once a concept is accepted, often designers become focused on the formal, dramatic and system elements needed to make the idea a functional reality. But while many designers may get in the weeds of game mechanics and UI, I believe a lot of benefits to the game design are lost regarding the optimal use of color and light.
While visiting the Musee d'Orsay in Paris recently, I toured their renowned collection of Impressionist paintings and found much inspiration there that could benefit a game designer. Impressionism is a 19th art movement that focused on depicting the impression of an object, person or scene while focusing on the effects of light and color on it. With limited space to reveal your game (if players are using a tablet or phone), and competing distractions for your player's attention, a designer needs to use every design element available to quickly draw their player into their digital environment, and keep them there. The effective use of color and light in game design can help.
In the painting below, by placing the lightest light next to the darkest dark in the painting, it pulls the eye into the scene while instantly establishing the landscape boundaries of land and water. Such use of light to design a game environment will help focus a player's attention and guide them into the game. Designers should consider the direction of the light source in their environment, and the elements placed in them, to help both distinguish important or interactive items from their background, and call attention to them among all the other elements / items in the game. Highlights and shadows from effectively used light can enhance the dramatic feel of a game while assisting to focus a player's attention.
Color helps set the tone of painting, or digital game, and can effectively guide players to earn the currency, build their inventory or complete actions by helping focus the eye on what is important. In the painting below, the simplistic use of the primary color yellow in the road against a neutral gray palette used in the landscape drives the eye, and the player's attention, down to the road to the next interaction. Designers can use such colors contrasts on floors, sidewalks, walls, etc. to distinguish viable paths for a player, or use vibrant colors contrast to identify a key object or tool from a busy, detailed background.
Lastly, the variety of color can also distinguish either unique, or similar items that a player might need to find or collect, while also distinguishing characters like game avatars, or defining various areas in the game environment. In the painting below, Paul Gauguin uses blocks of primary colors to define his landscape environment: a shaded green foreground, a red middle pathway and a bright green hill. A benefit of using color effectively in a game environment is that when you add items of dark or light, like the Tahitian woman in the white gown, they become much more easily recognizable. In short, while a successful game must have a solid concept, and well design formal, dramatic and system elements, be sure that your game design team includes someone with an artist's eye who knows how to effectively use color and light in the design to maximize ease of use, enhance dramatic appeal and facilitate player enjoyment in your game.
While visiting the Musee d'Orsay in Paris recently, I toured their renowned collection of Impressionist paintings and found much inspiration there that could benefit a game designer. Impressionism is a 19th art movement that focused on depicting the impression of an object, person or scene while focusing on the effects of light and color on it. With limited space to reveal your game (if players are using a tablet or phone), and competing distractions for your player's attention, a designer needs to use every design element available to quickly draw their player into their digital environment, and keep them there. The effective use of color and light in game design can help.
In the painting below, by placing the lightest light next to the darkest dark in the painting, it pulls the eye into the scene while instantly establishing the landscape boundaries of land and water. Such use of light to design a game environment will help focus a player's attention and guide them into the game. Designers should consider the direction of the light source in their environment, and the elements placed in them, to help both distinguish important or interactive items from their background, and call attention to them among all the other elements / items in the game. Highlights and shadows from effectively used light can enhance the dramatic feel of a game while assisting to focus a player's attention.
Color helps set the tone of painting, or digital game, and can effectively guide players to earn the currency, build their inventory or complete actions by helping focus the eye on what is important. In the painting below, the simplistic use of the primary color yellow in the road against a neutral gray palette used in the landscape drives the eye, and the player's attention, down to the road to the next interaction. Designers can use such colors contrasts on floors, sidewalks, walls, etc. to distinguish viable paths for a player, or use vibrant colors contrast to identify a key object or tool from a busy, detailed background.
Lastly, the variety of color can also distinguish either unique, or similar items that a player might need to find or collect, while also distinguishing characters like game avatars, or defining various areas in the game environment. In the painting below, Paul Gauguin uses blocks of primary colors to define his landscape environment: a shaded green foreground, a red middle pathway and a bright green hill. A benefit of using color effectively in a game environment is that when you add items of dark or light, like the Tahitian woman in the white gown, they become much more easily recognizable. In short, while a successful game must have a solid concept, and well design formal, dramatic and system elements, be sure that your game design team includes someone with an artist's eye who knows how to effectively use color and light in the design to maximize ease of use, enhance dramatic appeal and facilitate player enjoyment in your game.
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