Animation Paints-Lupin & other anime Part 1

 I'm obsessed with high contrasting colors and there's no better example than Lupin III.

It's time I changed gears and use different subject for my segment on animation paints instead of DOUG. 

As much as I would like to use DOUG as an example of color theory, it's use is a mixed bag.

Season 1's palette was all over the place and sort of had a violet tint,

Season 2 used pastels which drowned out the purple but made things too fuzzy for my taste.

It wasn't until Season 3 and 4 that the colors became more natural and high contrast enough for my tastes.

Then the series was sold to Disney and they demanded that the color palette be highly saturated both foreground and background. Sure it's saturated but maybe that high saturation was caused it to plummet both in the ratings and with critics. The movie fixed those colors but....

Anyhow, back to Lupin. As far as anime goes, Lupin is also another example of Color Theory.

For those who are curious, Color Theory is a subject used to handle color palettes, combinations etc. All to help the artist make sure their character reads clearly on screen.

Unlike show examples like DOUG where I separate based on seasons, Lupin examples will be based upon series based on what Jacket he's wearing.

For example, What I like about the earlier green jacket series was the high contrasting colors.

It made many characters easily readable on screen when compared to later installments.

Example includes this still from when Zenigata has Lupin behind bars. His skintone and coat really do make him very readable.

As much as I rib on 70s animation, the Japanese side of animation really knew their homework and proved that cartoons are not limited to children. Lupin was a very adult manga from the start and the anime adaptations have proved that if you can write an adult manga, you can translate that to adult oriented anime.

Of course, most people who talk about classic Lupin will of course talk more about the Red Jacket series of the late 70s.

The image of Jigen above still looks highly saturated though.

I have more Lupin related stuff to talk about in terms of Color Theory but issues relating to a certain USB Stick and files left on my other computers force me to split these posts in parts.