Visual OC design help

[Quinch 1,119]

I could use some help ponifying my human OC, if anyone's willing to lend a hand. This is his human self for reference;

And this is what I have for a 3D version on PonyLumen.

{I also plan to keep the pink-and-lime rocket boots because reasons}

I already had to lighten his coat - using the main shirt color as it was turned out a bit too dark - but he still seems too, well, gloomy. I tried lightening the colors, but then he just ends up looking bleached. The brown hair color also definitely doesn't suit the body, and I'm not locked into the brown, but I can't seem to find a color that seems does suit him. I might make the wings smaller as well, they don't need to be his dominant feature.

I dunno. Any thoughts? Visual design is really not my forte, so any feedback, be it positive or negative, is welcome.

Edit: Also, attached the model file - might be useful.

QuinchPGPony.json

Edited November 21, 2018 by Quinch

[Kevin Tang 2,422]

Try to give it some contrast? A brighter color?

Edited November 21, 2018 by Kevin Tang

[SharpWit 2,472]

Alrighty here's your problem and don't take this the wrong way. Overall it's too dark, the only exception is the cutie mark which sticks out like a sore thumb. Next, you've got four colors in use if we ignore the cutie mark, and they're not being coordinated at all. Generally I for three colors that will be the defining ones of my OC. You get your main body color, for the mane get something that contrasts, and all the other areas you usually go for a lighter version of that contrasting color. Let's examine a pony from the show.

Here we have Starlight Glimmer! She's got a pink lavender body which contrasts well with her mane which when you think about is a much much darker version of her coat. Then there's that nice little highlight in there as well and it stands out but isn't overbearing. Her Cutie mark of a sort of star and swoosh trail work in representing her magical talent, and their colors align closely with the others on her. Her eyes are somewhat unique I think in that they sort of blend all of the colors together slightly but not quite in their cool bluish appearance.

The hard part with making Pony OCs from human characters is you have to think of what colors would correspond with them and fit their personality and all that meaningful stuff, while also maintaining the ability to be recognizeable.

Having four colors as is your case currently isn't bad but they need to pair nicely together. Try looking at a color wheel, look at colors in a similar range along with one's that don't necessarily oppose them but are clearly different and if you were to mark those colors locations then turn the wheel you might see a pattern emerge of other color combinations.

Good luck.

[Quinch 1,119]

@SharpWit

I took your advice to heart {as well as Automatree from the Poniverse discord who explained color theory a bit} and made some color tweaks accordingly. I tried to make the body a bit more pastel-like, even though it's still kinda muted - although that's intentional. The overall first impression I want to give with him is "unfriendly but not outright hostile" - so hopefully this helps strike a balance against the "nonthreatening and approachable" standard without veering all the way into the Edgelord McDarky, King-Prince Of The Angstlands.

The cutie mark... sticks out a bit, but I think that might be a necessary sacrifice, it's one of the bits of the original OC I want to carry over verbatim, but I figure if I change the coat to complement that, I stick too far out of the original color scheme so... I'll have to deal with whatever comes of that.

This version incorporates the blue pants color of the original, but on the other hand, but I'm not sure that they're that much of a noticeable element, or at least enough to matter, especially at the tradeoff of adding extra colors into the mix.

This one incorporates the shirt's sleeve colors into the mane and tail, with a bit of value-drop in the highlights for the sake of shading. I'm not sure if this one looks better or not - something looks a bit off, but I'm also maybe looking for imperfections where I don't know what perfect should look like.

[Ganaram Inukshuk 3,680]

If you'd like, I'd like to give you my thoughts on colour usage, but I have travel plans in the morning so it'll be delayed at best.

[Quinch 1,119]

8 hours ago, Ganaram Inukshuk said:

If you'd like, I'd like to give you my thoughts on colour usage, but I have travel plans in the morning so it'll be delayed at best.

Hey, whenever's convenient. When it comes to favors, I ain't picky.

[Ganaram Inukshuk 3,680]

Sorry for the lengthy and delayed reply...

It helps to have an RGB colour wheel; I've not touched RYB for years and I've worked with RGB for so many years that it's easier to work with it directly. I'll be referencing this wheel directly and its colour names for primary (red, green, blue), secondary (cyan, magenta, yellow), and tertiary colours (orange, chartreuse, spring, azure, violet, rose). (Personally, I use a different wheel that uses different names and has 14 colours instead of 12, but don't worry about it just yet.)

Side note: this can't be expressed as a colour wheel without distortion from the colour cube that it actually is; due to how colours of light mix, red, green and blue are closer to black whereas cyan, magenta, and yellow are closer to light; when two primary colours of light mix, the resulting colour becomes brighter.

It also helps to how mixing black and white does to a colour; this is for pigments but it's the same thing with HSL:

In fact, I highly recommend these vids since it introduces two more colour concepts: dark vs light and warm vs cool:

With all the theory (hopefully) out of the way, here are the colours I would've gone had this been a request (I can only find three colours that work the best):

Methodology:

• Regarding the use of magenta (coat): when working with dark colours, I will almost always desaturate them; if, for example, it was magenta, I'll not only desaturate it, but also pick a hue closer to violet instead of staying with magenta. (Also, magenta hasn't really worked so I swapped it out entirely for violet; traditional pinks lie in between magenta and red but with white mixed in)
• Regarding the use of red and yellow (cutie mark): I rarely work with pure hues, so when given a pure hue, I'll lighten it. Also, red and yellow on their own work perfectly fine as analogous colours.
• I still got nothing on what to use for the mane or hooves; I have an untested suggestion in the upcoming bullet point...
• Colour coordination: admittedly, this is something I still struggle with; there's another vid on this (this one uses RYB but the principles apply no matter what colour wheel you use, only the colours are paired with different colours)
  • I'm personally leaning towards a double-complementary colour scheme (two pairs of complementary colours OR analogous colours with their respective complements), but instead of being pure complements, they're instead (what I call) near-miss complements; consider orange and its analogous colours red and yellow; its complement would be azure (with analogous colour blue and cyan) but its near-miss complement would be blue (with analogous colours purple and azure).
  • 
  • I'm personally not too fond with the colour names that Wikipedia suggested, so I came up with my own that supports two quaternary colours; colour names aren't universal anyway, not between cultures and not even between any two persons:
  • 

What colour pairs already work? Here are the ones that I would suggest:

• Red and yellow; used in many places (especially marketing) and already present in cutie mark
• Yellow and purple; purple is used for royalty and the traditional RYB colour wheel pairs the two as complements anyway; purple on yellow provides contrast and makes the cutie mark readily visible
• Some sort of blue? I'll leave this as a toss-up, but the use of cyan suggests the use of blue, but it cannot be pure cyan because that's far too saturated.
• I'm not sure if you still want pink to be added (and I'm honestly unsure of how to make it work).