Narrative

 Animated films as I'm sure you know don't depict reality. They represent narratives and visuals that are works of art and imaginary. When telling a narrative colour is one of many tools that can be used used do this. The importance of it is vital in telling the story. I found this image below which is a colour concept of the film 'Shrek'. It shows how artists might experiment with different colour palettes with a concept to obtain a variety of looks. The first concept has been given a yellow-green colour theme which gives a much less menacing look compared to the red-purple theme. While subtle the differences between the first and second concepts create different moods.

 While conveying mood the concepts could also be used to display time of day, emotion or weather as well as many other things. The bottom concept can be interpreted in many different ways. It could be the end of the day with the sun setting in the sky, It could be representing heat, fire or some form of danger.

I have also included an image from the book 'Bold Visions: The Digital Painting Bible', which compares one image with two colour variations. As you can see the blue variation could help tell the narrative as in a very cold place and the red variation can tell the narrative as in a very hot place. Besides temperature the images can also be compared with levels of danger, the characters you might find in such places or even to evoke the audience in different ways.