Additive Color

Because I work with computers all the time, the concept of additive color has been explained to me before. Subtractive color is what we learn in school. The primary colors are red, yellow, and blue (or magenta, yellow, cyan if you're using a printer). Mixing these colors give you new colors (red + yellow = orange) but as you add more colors, the more the colors turn to black. Additive colors work in reverse. The primary colors are red, green, and blue (as in an RGB computer monitor). As you mix the primary colors of light, the color fades closer to white.

I just came to understand this last night. I was so excited about this, that I made a color-wheel in Photoshop to illustrate the concept.

Then I realized it looks like a beach ball.

But anyway, there are several things that became clear. One, if I intend to make an unusual shader that appears yellow with green undertones, throwing red into the mix might create some interesting colors. Two, what my art teacher was saying the other day about blue and red being complements (rather than red and green) now makes a whole lot more sense. On an additive color wheel, red and cyan are indeed complementary (and will also create a wild vibrating edge when put next to each other).

Catch-Up

So I haven't posted for a while. Journals and logs have never been my forte. I like to keep moving on to the next activity. Nonetheless, I have been asked to return to Penguins with Jet Packs for the sake of my future career. How can I refuse?

First things first. Animation 3 is long over and here are the results:

In other news, I am having loads of fun playing with Maya again. Parkland has recently obtained Maya 2011, and it is slick. Takes some getting used to, yes, but the new graphite color-scheme was a good design choice, and the new button defaults are nice too. I don't remember if there was a "select camera" button on the window before, but it's there now, and I will be using it.

Using this new version of Maya, I have begun to model a tiger-swallowtail butterfly. Yes, a butterfly. They're actually quite fluffy, and I'm excited to learn about the fur tool later in the semester. A classmate also suggested modifying the colors on the butterfly to create The Butterfly Of Doom. I'm thinking red eyes and a black body and wings with white, red, yellow-green, and purples thrown in. I'll need to try a few designs first.