Color Key

Here is my interpretation of the midday color key. I'm trying to keep it from looking too much like a unicorn exploded across the screen....but its a carnival. It kinda comes with the territory.

Important - the point is not to show the design/complexity of the objects. Obviously this is not what our cart is going to look like - in form or texture. It's the overall color scheme we are trying to nail down. Likewise, this isn't necessarily the time of day for the opening shot. This is more so we know what the colors should be without the pollution from colored light.

If you want to mess with the colors to see what looks good on screen - feel free. Everything is chopped into awesomely named folders with awesomely named layers (for the most part). At the top of each hierarchy within a folder (or "layer set" as Adobe calls them) should be a Hue/Sat adjustment layer for that element in the painting. Just play with hue/sat/lightness layer to change the colors.

The file is located in /u/viza627/projects/Example/awesome/reference/colorkey_midday.psd for Adobe Photoshop CS4.

I also treated this as a lookdev kind of thing. Thus - the shadows have increased saturation, occlusion has increased saturation, and "god rays" are across the screen.