Colours part 3 - Using the colour theory in practice
As mentioned in the previous section, designing will always be a question of balancing various parameters. Colour is one of the most important ones, and have many uses both in connection with shape and in it's own right:
Toning down novelty: If you've created a highly unusual design, whose shape alone will confuse the audience sufficiently, you might wish to tone down the colours.
On the other hand, if you're trying to create an especially alien-looking design, you may actually want to go crazy with the colours as well, since aliens generally have bad taste by human standards.
Spicing things up: Even if you just made the zillionth 'pointy-nose starfighter with two wings and an engine', a cool colourscheme can still make it world class.
Creating coherence: Similar colours can also be used to create coherence across a MOC consisting of mulitiple surfaces and building techniques.
Breaking up shapes: If you have a large boring surface somewhere, adding stripes or 'painting' it in two different colours will break it up and link it to other parts of the moc with the same colour.
Highlighting details: Colours can also be used to highlight important details, drawing attention to parts of the design that might otherwise be overlooked - or conversely draw attention away from boring parts of the design.
Camouflaging: If the building techniques you've used for the MOC result in some ugly mess somewhere, you can camouflage this by mirroring the colours of the surroundings - black, for instance, can be a convinient way to create "shadows" if you have an especially messy interiour visible from the outside.
Uniformity: If you're building MOCs for a particular faction, a uniform colourscheme is one of the most effective ways to create coherence across MOCs with varying building techniques, styles, skill-level etc.
Aiding recognition: Retaining the original colourscheme is often very important in case of spacifications or serious modifications of existing designs, because it will ease recognition and often amuse the audience: Why tell people it's an industrial hardsuit, when you can paint like a forklift and put a construction worker inside?
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Next up, I'll give you an example of why limited colours can be a benefit, and how you can use the colour-wheel in practice.