[Amnesia] Screenshot criticism thread

[MyRedNeptune]

Aha, but it is also orange/blue as well, not just coolness/warmth, which is why the last image looks slightly superior to the first, if only marginally - though this may be a matter of opinion.

But the complementary for blue is yellow, silly.

I feel in a way, the combination of colors can be down to personal preference however from the vast majority of posters and cases etc I have seen as well as environmental art there are certain color combinations that just tend to look better - when done properly - than regular cool/warm. Games such as Bioshock Infinite tend to use a lot of complimentary colors and it's praised as one of the best looking games made. Diablo also uses complimentary colors, and it also looks fantastic.

Though it is a matter of preference a fair amount of the time, there are cases that have been observed where they are used and have been seen to benefit the aesthetic.

You seem to not be sticking to your own words. You had a problem with the sky being cyan, not cerulean or whatever color you consider to be the complementary for orange, which means that you find this small difference in hue significant. But then you said that red can be many different things, including red-orange. So which one is it?

The reason I'm asking is because people will call anything complementary if it looks pretty. I've seen many different colors being labeled as the complementary for orange, including turquoise, cyan, azure, cerulean, cobalt and indigo. Not to mention that said "orange" itself ranged from brick red to golden. The only reason we notice complementary colors in beautiful art is because we have a name for them and our definition of a certain color is broad enough to cover a large spectrum of hues. And I bet that if we take a good look at Bioshock or Diablo, that is exactly what we will find.

The problem is that with such inconsistency, the word "complementary" becomes essentially useless, a pseudo-artistic synonym for "good looking" in most cases. In reality, impactful color combinations are vague enough to be roughly summed up by three factors: difference in warmth, difference in hue, and difference in brightness.