Philosophy Sensei | Graphics Tutorials

#3-Colours and Filters

(Character: Ran from BanG Dream)

The render I used doesn't have any hint of blue in it(unless you count the phone screen, but even then it's not that visible). Yet I decided to use blue as I thought at the time that it would be a good addition to the cover to help it look nicer. In the end, going with my gut feeling helped. Thanks to the addition of the colour blue, and the green in the top left corner due to the background I used, the whole cover looks a lot better than if I had not included blue at all. It looks more 'crisp' in a way, or 'fresh'.

Plus, it's hard to go wrong with blue! It's great for light hearted moods, and dark and heavily blended graphics as well. It's usually a go-to colour for me if I find the graphic I'm making seems lacking a little.

By the way, if you wish to experiment more with colours, I recommend taking a look at the cards the BanG Dream game has. Most of them are quite bright and the colours always manage to fit quite seamlessly together. I'll be making a chapter soon that shows you where to save the renders of all the games I noted in my 'General Advice' chapter, but for now just look up 'Bang Dream cards' in Google and you'll find this link.

Just tap on it, and you'll see hundreds of absolutely gorgeous art to take inspiration from. Note carefully of how the colour schemes are for the cards, along with the illustration style. Soon you'll be able to get a better understanding of which colours work better together.

Now, for filters, I use this app called 'Polarr' for them! You can use the app's own filters for your graphics and save them as separate images, or you can go to the featured tab and look at the filters of users who have been, well, featured for the day.

After getting the app, you should be asked to create a profile. After doing so, look to the bottom of your screen to see these options. Click on 'Discover' and you'll see this page.

(I myself just noticed the 'Top this week' tab, you can use it just like the 'Featured' tab!)

Tap on the 'see all' buttons on either tabs to check out how your graphic would look like with a filter!

When you tab on one of the filters, you'll see this page where you'll be asked to save this filter. If you don't want to, you click on the arrow at the top left to go back to looking at other filters. Tap on the save style button if you wish to save it.

If you go to the 'My Styles' page after it, you'll see that the filter you've saved it there. Just tap on the filter again in this page.

You'll be shown this screen where you can see your graphic in the other filters you've saved, but firstly, the one you chose initially. Tap on the check mark on the bottom right.

After doing so, you'll see these tabs on the top of your screen. Tap on the share option(on the left of the question mark).

And this pop-up will show. I usually tap the 'save new photo' option as it would mean I get to keep the original image of how my graphic looks, along with the filtered version. After that, that's how you add a filter to your graphic!

You're able to do it as many times as you want even if you aren't paying for premium services, so don't worry about there being a set number of images you can save every day. Feel free to explore what the app has to offer!

And that's it for this chapter! I hope that it helped!

Thanks for reading this and have a great day/night!