#visual contrast

I let my shoes rest on a rock so my spirit can rest; the most important paths are the ones we walk without a map or a heel.

At the same time however, the fact that the two can stand side-by-side with each other also reflects how much the two Phantom Thieves have in common as socially awkward & ostracized autistic-coded young women who are fighting against societal injustice!

Lost in Melanin

The dark and light values are constantly fighting for visual dominance, thus making the overall focus points weaker.

He may have contradictions and an attention-diverting nature in his very personality, but carrying all this onto his visual image makes it hard to focus, thus distracting the viewer’s attention from his face.

.

Genshin Impact has no problem making detailed designs, but when the whole character is cluttered with detail, nothing is brought into focus. Everyone have different tastes in style and design, but I believe a good character design should be easily read from up-close and from afar.

Kaeya’s design (specifically the front of his outfit), from a character design perspective, is unclear in terms of values and contrast, in my opinion.

Now, his skin is a warm tone which contrasts his very cool-toned outfit thus making us drawn to his face, especially when he’s against a dark, cool-toned background (as shown in these visuals of the manga). That’s not a problem.

But his upper body? I’m sure artists (myself included) who have drawn his full outfit find it very complicated with all the layers. And are all the details even necessary? Aside from the warm colours of his face (and chest), and the large light-coloured shape of his feather boa, where am I supposed to be looking at?

Kaeya has a lot of dark colours in his design, especially around his torso where his strand of hair falls. His hair, the lapel colour, and the purple banner-looking thing (what is that? Is that necessary?) draping down from his shoulder…

From afar, they all blur together despite having slightly different hues. It just looks like something is interrupting the lapel’s gold lining (which actually does a good job on emphasizing the lapel’s shape). Looking at these thumbnails at this size, it’s hard to pick out the aforementioned layers on his clothing.

What’s curious, however, is that as though the character designers know there are too many dark-blues and blacks on his front side, they put a white gradient at the ends of his lapel for sake of contrast. Now this stands out against the blur of navy-blues, but it’s even brighter than his skin tone, thus drawing the eye to his waist instead of his own face, and for what reason? I don’t know.

His backside is actually much more simple and clear in comparison, which I like. The cape and feather boa have the lightest values, then the mid tones at his vest and banner/piece of fabric, and finally the darkest tones in his corset (?) and pants, with his dark hair colour contrasting the white/pale blue of the feather boa. (Of course it also helps that his cool tones stand out against the warm tones in the environment, and the gold metal pushes even more contrast against the rest of the blue-dominant outfit.)

I learned in a graphic design course that when it comes to typography and font choice, less is more. By using, say—

Four or

more

different

fonts

(four or more different fonts)

—at a similar size in a single text poster, you draw attention to all their differences, and thus nothing is emphasized.

To me, there are constantly areas of visual contrast at the front of Kaeya’s outfit, thus making it hard for the eyes to rest on a certain spot. E.g. hair vs face, black vs gold on lapels vs inner lavender vest, black sleeve cuffs vs skin tone vs gold edge vs white.

Every time my eyes want to look at a low-contrast area to rest, the bright band of gold pops out, upping the contrast again. The dark and light values are constantly fighting for visual dominance, thus making the overall focus points weaker.

He may have contradictions and an attention-diverting nature in his very personality, but carrying all this onto his visual image makes it hard to focus, thus distracting the viewer’s attention from his face.

This is why I’m never quite sure where to put his strand of hair. Back in this exercise, I tried to use very minimal values (pure white / light grey / dark grey) to block out shapes in Kaeya but there’s still too much contrast in the lapels and stars. Diluc, meanwhile, is clearly divided with the black coat and the white shirt/inner vest, so much that I only need to use two values to distinguish the shapes (even if the grey should be similar to Kaeya’s dark grey here).

Don’t get me wrong. I love Kaeya, and his outfit makes him look cool and powerful, but the design choices made about his outfit in terms of contrast in values (and the lack thereof) is really rather questionable.

Post -821 -Gautam Shah Contrasts with architectural elements are more physical, than sensorial. The contrasts reveal the scale, size, structure, performance and ethos. The contrasting effects occur as juxtaposition, simultaneity, realization, past experiences and as separators in time and space. When the architectural exposures are real and current, they relate to a position in a space. And as a…