Perhaps the most important thing that did come out of Moose River Regular was the idea of using two different colors for the comic, each one determining different states. Hopefully the use of colors is obvious enough, but I will admit that I also tried to ensure that they would not be necessary to understand in order to still fully enjoy the story (seeing as my printed comics remained in black-and-white). In any case, the use of the two colors began with Moose River Regular and remains in use to this day.

I legitimately forget what prompted me to choose these two specific colors—sea green and tan—for the comic. They aren’t default colors in Photoshop’s swatches, and they don’t seem to have any particular obvious relationship with one another (ie complementary colors, etc). I THINK they were two colors I had just happen to choose and use for ANOTHER art project, and they just happened to be loaded in my color palette, so I just used it in the comics as well.

I’m glad I did, because I really like these colors. They’re not too bold or heavy or bright… they’re easy on the eyes and they also contrast against one another.

Now in case you wanted to know what the colors actually represent… I think I might have mentioned it somewhere before, but I’ll still share it here:

• • SEA GREEN: These scenes represent “reality”. In a sense they depict what you would see with your own eyes, so you can trust that what is being depicted is something that is factual and actual and real and undeniable.
• • TAN: Anything colored tan MIGHT be “real”, it MIGHT have “happened”… but honestly, you have no way to prove it. Like I could tell you a story about my grandmother, and it probably did happen the way I told it… you TRUST I’m being honest, you have FAITH that I have no reason to lie to you… but in the end you ultimately have no way to actually prove anything I said, only because you were not there to witness it with your own eyes.

The fact that a story could have these two different elements gives me some wiggleroom to play with. If they’re green, I promise that it’s not a lie and that it’ll be referenced later without it being retconned. But if it’s tan… well, it’s fair game. Tan elements cover photographs—which could’ve been photoshopped, imaginary characters—which exist only in the mind’s eye, tales told by someone—which may need to be taken with a grain of salt… in the end it’s up to you, the reader, to determine what is real or not.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 3rd, 2004 at 13:48 and is filed under Moose River Regular. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.