Is Elfquest hot or cool? Yes!

I was talking to Wendy Pini today and she said it was okay for me to discuss this in a public forum. In a way, it’s a sneak preview of the Elfquest: Final Quest books I have been coloring for her (hitting the stands on the 22nd, YES!)

It is a preview of color concepts.

For those of you who have seen Dragonball Z you may have noticed a neat little coloring trick they used when they went to planet Namek. It looks exactly like Earth except for one small color change. The sky and grass switch colors. There’s a green sky over blue grass on that crazy planet. That subtle difference gives you a feeling of being on another world. What does this have to do with Elfquest, you ask?

Well, generally in color theory you use warm colors to signify safety, warmth and happiness. You use cool colors to depict danger, cold, apprehension. But I noticed in Elfquest, because the elves are nocturnal and generally live in the woods, the exact opposite is true. The cool colors represent safety and home whereas the warm colors represent daylight, exposure and the fires of man.

When I realized this I started pushing this concept even more. I told Wendy about it and she loved the observation and started pushing the scenes even more so in that direction giving me more opportunities to express this non-tradition color dichotomy.

So there’s your preview and, in a sense, a bit of a spoiler.