007: Week 8 Application (Blog) Exercise: Tone and Color

Figure 1. Screencap from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker featuring Link (character in green clothing) holding a boomerang.

image taken from: http://www.lazygamer.net/what-is-the-problem-with-cell-shading/

Figure 2. Link experiencing a massive explosion.

image taken from: http://www.wikipedia.org/

Here is a screencap from the Nintendo GameCube game: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker released in 2002 in Japan and 2003 in America. I am very interested in the field of game design and hope to pursue it sometime in the future. This game implements the use of cel-shading, which heavily relies on tone and color for its visuals.

Cel-shading, as defined by wikipedia: "is a type of non-photorealistic rendering designed to make computer graphics appear to be hand-drawn." Tone, provides the foundation for this game, as seen with the simplistic lighting on Link (figure 1) and in the smoke in different shades as a result of an explosion (figure 2). If we were to see these images in complete monochrome, we can easily distinguish the intensity of darkness or lightness, such as the light source coming from the upper right (figure 1) and the impact of the explosion in the center due to its brightness with the darker shade indicating the smoke dissipating. Every bit of shading is straight-forward and with a purpose.

Tone here, interacts completely with dimension. It is what gives each of these shapes depth such as the boomerang (figure 1) with only the indication of being three dimensional is how it has an edge that faces light. The same goes for Link himself and the slime creature "ChuChu" that have shadows that follow them in whichever environment they're in. In figure 2, the light lines of the water show that its not a solid ground, but something that provides waves and has depth. There is the shadowing of the ledge as well, showing it rises up and there's a face that you can run into as seen here with Link rolling against it instead of over it.

Color, is an incredibly important aspect of this game's graphics. For one, the bright hues and saturations provide the tone of the game. It takes advantage of how the human brain has "learned" colors and sets a mood of simplicity and cheeriness to an extent, creating an entirely new world to explore. It emits a more positive emotion. The same level of brightness provides harmony, so that each part of the game is being interacted the same way. As shown in figure 2, color and tone is highly dependent on context, the setting was within a cavern-like area where there is little light and upon exploding a series of bombs, the impact is defined by the bright colors and tones.

Color in this game is involved with defining shapes. Aside from the informational aspect (life, buttons, etc.) here are no black outlines to define shape but rather, color along with tone. Different hues are used (figure 1) to represent each thing from Link himself, the approaching ChuChu, the tall blades of grass and other vegetation, which all are green. Also, in figure 2, the color makes distinctions among similar shapes. Each of the explosive smokes are of different bright levels of orange, to give each part of the smoke an emotional punch.

I would highly recommend anyone with access to a GameCube or wii to get a wonderful taste of this tonal and colorful experience.