ID:1825562
 
For a good while now I've enjoyed creating graphics using a limited palette. As you may notice, my avatar picture is composed of a different hues of green. This graphic is composed of only four colors.

I started using the top one actually pretty recently:


I also have a set of four colors that I really enjoy, but don't think they really work together to make a palette that can be used for everything:


With the green colors, I was looking for a palette that would look good for a project I am working on called MicrORPG. Don't worry about the random ASCII characters. That's just HUD testing vomit:




MicrORPG currently uses the bottom green palette. But since I like the top green palette better, I might swap it over. I also turned my windows GUI to the same palette since I actually really like it.
The bottom palette's oversaturated. The top one is a much better choice.
I agree with you. The bottom one just climbs the green component until the last color, which is the same as the top palette's top color as well. What I did was create a proportionate scale off of this color's value (HSV)

Bottom palette's RGB values:
0,   32,    0 (#002000)
0,   100,   0 (#006400)
0,   200,   0 (#00C800)
192, 255, 128 (#C0FF80)


Top palette's RGB values:
19,  25,  13  (#13190D) (10% value)
77,  102, 52  (#4D6634) (40% value)
136, 178, 91  (#88B25B) (70% value)
192, 255, 128 (#C0FF80) (100% value)


That's a pretty cool way to go about building a palette. I might have to try that sometime.

Also. I felt like I was in the matrix for the first minute or two of reading the actual post.


This was the palette I was using for my retro tile work a while back.

Here are some samples of stuff I made with it:



RGB values are:

199, 207, 162
138, 150, 109
77, 81, 60
28, 28, 28

I like highly limited palettes, but keep in mind that they turn some people off.
I really like that. Interesting how your lowest color is straight up gray (28 on all components). The palette looks nice and isn't very saturated.

Limited palettes make it easy to build art. Since there's only so many values you use, this opens some opportunities not usually found in limitless palettes:
  • Mask colors like yours above will always be identifiable and there won't be any errors if using a mask for an image (like seeing odd mask pixels in some places).
  • Limited palettes resort to using patterns for different shades including dithering.
  • Usually there aren't any discrepancies with contrast as the palette you make generally dictates a uniform contrast throughout your entire spritework.
  • When using monochrome palettes, even color blind people won't have problems with it (unless it's a color they can't see).
Oh, another trick you can use to get a fifth color with limited palettes that was common on the GB/GBC/NES hardware.

Flicker your darkest color every other render frame on a tile to achieve a partially-transparent looking shadow.

I can't get a good gif that shows what it looks like, because none of my gif recording software can hit a reasonable and consistent fps, but when you run this project for real, the color looks partially transparent and consistent:



It definitely doesn't look the same in gif format.
There definitely was a lack of transparency in older systems like the NES and Gameboy. The flickering was also used to manage a lot of sprites being rendered at the same time. Most games back then ran at 60Hz (NTSC) and 50Hz (PAL), so flickering a black sprite between visible and not made for a pretty nice transparency.

There's also swapping between dithers, which is also quite effective, but looks absolutely horrible if your frames are skipping: