Hue Shifting in Pixel Art (Color Tutorial)

Selecting colors for your pixel art can be tricky, but there's a fundamental principle that can give your work more vibrancy and appeal, and it's called “Hue Shifting”! In this video we break down what Hue Shifting is and how to use it to your advantage when making color selections!
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I commissioned the music in this video from these fantastic artists:

Title sequence theme music by Failpositive:

All other background music by mcguy215:

[masterfreakgames]

I studied Graphic design for two years, and work as illustrator for other three years, and i can say that this tutorial is so Mind Blowing, really the best tutorial for shading and lighting i never seen before, sorry for my bad english, but i just want to say, Incredible work

[King_O_Light]

Next video request: a video about fonts in pixel art

[domainofscience]

Mind blown, I learned so much from this. I don't do pixel art, but this is very broadly applicable. Thanks!

[isaacsteen]

I remember when I discovered Hue Shifting for the first time, and the inner workings of it.
"Oh my god. Orange is just dark yellow."

[Anilmky]

"I wanna be smacked on the face by a rainbow when i look at my art."
-Brandom James

[flimsyflame]

This is actually a common problem with any digital art, and probably traditional as well. It’s why a lot of artists immediately go “DON’T SHADE WITH BLACK” Unfortunately, most of them don’t give more advice beyond that, and it leaves people confused, so thanks a ton for the tutorial!!

[CKTDanny]

Excellent tutorial! I experimented with hue shifting on my last project but never really understood the logic behind it besides "it looks nice". Your example with the sun makes so much sense!

[rh]

Been doing art for years and I NEVER understood this until now. Color theory explanations are usually all so convoluted while this is so heckin simple. I really love it.

[Joxlol]

It took like 20 videos to end up here and I finally understood it. Took a short page of notes here and damn, it changed everything. Thx a lot. Very well done and presented.

[Sanpaku-san]

As a digital artist I've found that literally no one has taught this in most of the tutorials I've seen and only the pixel art tutorials mention it

[moduntilitbreaks]

Holy crap, literally took screenshots to my notes.

[Arthur_url]

Dude, thank you! I've just recently started practicing pixel art, and was already previously an average digital artist, and these tips actually helped me with both! I had already heard several artists talking about how shadows and lights tend to shift the hue and etc, but this was the most clear and direct explanation I've seen. The little animations do help a lot with that xD . Love your channel, keep up the good work! ♥

[bloodypommelstudios]

For people who like a more physics based explanation for why hue shifting works start by asking yourself why are shadows not completely black? It's because of ambient light.


Picture a very simple scene, a person standing on a flat surface with the Sun projecting a shadow. There's actually two light sources. The Sun is the obvious one but the blue light of the sky itself also lights the scene. The Sun puts out far more total light so on lit surfaces the sky's blue light isn't noticeable but in shadows the sky is the main light source so shadows will appear to have a noticeably bluer hue.


There's a lot more to shadow than just this, different skys will result in different results for example a planet with no atmosphere would have shadows which are almost completely black since the sky isn't supplying any light, you've also got reflected light from other objects in the scene which also changes shadow colours and ambient occlusion etc which are worth looking in to if you want to get serious about technical details.

[queenburbz]

I almost never comment on videos but this was such a great tutorial on hue shifting theory. I myself have fallen into the monotone palette trap, becoming frustrated at how my colours always turned out looking flat. The level of detail you used to explain how to create a palette using hue-shifting and how to refine a palette was immensely helpful to me. Thank you so much!

[Jay-qow]

It's the most clean explanation of color theory.

[TomHermans]

I really like how this hue shifting technique is also applied here and demonstrates very well the effect it has vs the monotonous shades you see so often.

[mygills]

I like to think of hue shifting like this: if you want something to be darker/lighter, you should have it look like it already was. Darker shades are natural for cooler colors, so if you want to find something good for shading, look to purple! Lighter things tend to be more reflective (in a sense), and as a result it is harder to make out the exact hue, so a decrease in saturation would easily mimic that!

[bushrabensasi]

your explanation and approach to this is incredible! I have never been able to understand how light and darkness affect color till now. I REALLY appreciated this video!

[TheNeonCaster]

This is something that really sat in my brain from my teenage years hanging out on spriting message boards. Hue shifting for colour depth can turn out great results on any graphic design project!

[BlocPanda]

Man. Its great watching this video for a fourth time and still getting useful info out of it.