Color
Our understanding of color begins with black and white or dark and light. The next color to be identified is red. From there different cultures react to and identify colors in different ways. Understanding color requires a scheme that is useful for the communicator as well as the user and in the digital age it requires a scheme that can be easily understood by the computer.
The subtractive primaries are red, yellow and blue. They are subtractive because when you add them to each other they become black. They are seen by the fact that their particular color of light reflects off of them. Thus when they are combined then all of the light is absorbed and no color is apparent. They are used for painting and printing. The subtractive secondaries are orange, green and purple (violet). These are understood in the digital realm as CMYK or four process color. C-cyan, M-Magenta, Y-Yellow and K-Black. They are expressed in color finders as the percentage of each element present in the color you are using.
The additive primaries are red, green and blue. They are additive because when you add them together they combine to create white. These are radiant and not reflective colors. They come from a light generating source. We see these divisions in a rainbow as the white light of the sun is divided into its color elements by passing through drops of water. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet are the colors we can identify in this division but it only requires red, green and blue to combine and create white light. These are understood in the digital realm as RGB colors. They are expressed in the amount of each color in a number from 0-255 or 8 bit color. This is actually 256 different colors event though I said in class that it is 255.
Munsell's scheme involves a color solid that provides the three dimensions of color: Hue, Saturation and Brightness. Hue is the identification of the "color" or "chroma" and all possible hues exist on a 360 degree circle. Saturation is the amount of hue in the color and it is considered as a percentage from 0-100% where 0 means no hue is present and color appears as its underlying white, gray or black and 100% means pure hue and the color is the most intense that it can be. Brightness is the amount of Black, Gray or White in the color and it is expressed in a percentage with White being 100% brightness, Black being 0% brightness and Gray being anything in between. This conceptualization of color makes it possible for the human and the computer to understand exactly what color they are both dealing with and to build color schemes through mathematical variations in any of the three elements.
Check Munsell's Color Form to see these different combinations that can be built mathematically.
Typography
Looking at The Anatomy of Type you will get the fundamentals for understanding the differences and similarities between the different type faces used in design and the different typefaces we will review through history. Printing technology created the opportunity for creating typefaces and it became an area of dramatic creativity within the first 100 years of the western invention of the moveable type and the printing press. It is still an absolutely important area of creative endeavor and invention.
Movies
Comedy is probably the most universal of the film themes and motifs. The first group of comedy films we have looked at express the very physical forms of comedy. In silent films this was necessary because there was no sound to create witty discussions and jokes. The jokes all had to be visual. But this carries on even with the inclusion of sound and it is something that can still make us LOL. But making people laugh can be very cultural and it requires a great deal of practice. The Marx Brothers practiced their bits in public to see what was funny long before they put it on film.
We also looked at Sergei Eisenstein and his sequence "The Odessa Steps" from "Battleship Potemkin." Eisenstein is credited with creating the grammar of the moving image where there is variation in the Field of View: wide shots, medium shots, close ups--and angle of view. He was the first film maker to use the medium to create the sense of a three-dimensional space rather than use the camera as a simple observer of what could be done on a stage in a theatre. We then saw two homages to the Odessa steps, one that is very violent and a second that is very short and funny.
Any questions?
- Dr. W -
No comments:
Post a Comment