INT-252: Color and Story

Color & Story teaches foundation skills in color theory and applies them to visual narratives. The term's first half concentrates on weekly exercises to focus on specific color usage problems, and the term ends with a large story-based project. Most work is digital and Photoshop painting skills are assumed for students entering the class. Critiques are concerned with composition, use of light and emotional engagement. Class time is spent entirely on lecture, demo and critique. Color & Story is a why class in a how school. Subjects covered include history of color systems, overview of harmonies and contrasts, how we see, histories and sources of pigments and dyes, working with limited palettes, color scripts for animation, simultaneous contrast, varieties of natural light, how cinema uses cool & warm light, narrative uses of color, color palettes through history and current use, optical color mixing, effects of light on various surfaces, advantages of using colored line, overview of golden age of children's book illustrators, how cinema uses color "tags" and saturation, story structure, how color is used symbolically in culture and in animation, how we respond to color, how colored light differs from pigment color, history of color in film, color in architecture, correcting color images in Photoshop.