Speech Bubble Colors

[Jelly Jellybean]

Tom is pretty consistent with the color palettes he uses for each character.  He uses a unique speech bubble color for some characters.  There are some variations on different pages and over time, but the speech bubble colors are consistent enough to sometimes tell who is speaking even when the speaker is off panel.  It is also interesting to see who has a unique color and who does not.

All characters unless specified below = White, H0, R255, G255, B255.  This includes: humans, Lindsey, Bud, Folley students including Red and Blue after becoming human, Mort, Psychopomps, ROTD spirits, forest creatures/monsters

All robots = Green, the speech bubble is usually an irregular hexagon, H117, R238, G255, B237

Characters with unique speech bubble colors:
Annie = Pink, H314, R255, G242, B252
Kat = Blue, H224, R222, G229, B248
Reynard (Wolf and Toy forms) = Yellow, H51, R250, G247, B230
Jack = Green, H117, R231, G248, B230
Zimmy = Purple, H272, R232, G218, B244
Gamma = Purple, H271, R244, G232, B255
Smitty = Yellow, H48, R242, G241, B237
Parley = Aqua, H180, R239, G255, B255
Shadow = Blue, H249, R244, G242, B255
Jones = Orange, H28, R254, G244, B235
Coyote = Red, H0/360, R253, G235, B235
Ysengrin = Orange, H23, R244, G231, B223
Muut = Red (looks grey), H0/360, R231, G231, B231

EDIT:
Tea - Aqua, H198, R199, G235, B251

[Jelly Jellybean]

If you wanted to know...

Color data obtained by saving the comic pages (JPG files), opening them in GIMP, selecting the color with the Color Picker Tool, and then looking at foreground color data.

H=Hue, R=Red, G=Green, B=Blue.

All speech bubbles colors use very light colors (very low saturation [5 to 10]) that are sometimes hard to distinguish from one another. The color (blue, purple, pink, etc) is based on what it would appear with high saturation.

[Jelly Jellybean]

Interesting exceptions to their normal color speech bubble colors include:

Red and Blue as faeries = Purple, H300, R255, G245, B255

Winsberry and Janet are usually white, but was Winsbury green and Janet was yellow on page 938 while telling their story in Faraway Morning. This page did not use speech bubble pointers, so it looks like Tom included the colors to let the reader know who was saying what.

EDIT:
Speech bubble colors started back in chapter 1, but thing were a little different back then:
Annie = Red, H353, R252, G243, B244
Robot = Green, H115, R231, G255, B229

Eglamore is now white, but he was initially green, H115, R228, G238, B227

EDIT - Part 2
The Headmaster started out with a brownish/orange speech bubble on page 270: H33, R231, G218, B202, e7daca
But on page 1511, he is sporting a white speech bubble.

EDIT 3
When Robot returns from the forest on page 114.  He has a unique purple speech bubble on top of the regular robot speech bubble.  The purple appears to be a unique color (R215, G204, B220).

[Jelly Jellybean]

Ninja'd by keef

Dec 28, 2014 16:51:30 GMT keef said:

The first I thought when I saw this page was there were only five seraphs left, but looking back there is not much reason to think so; Jenny burned two, but even they may have survived. It's weird they get away with this so easy.

Bubble colours:
All robots: green
Annie: pink
Kat: blue
Rey: yellow
Jack: green
Zimmy: what do you call that: purpleish?
Ysengrin: yellow?
Probably somebody already made a nice list, but I never saw it.

[Gotolei]

Nice to have an index of these. Only thing I'd suggest is maybe putting the hex codes as well because that's the direct feedback from most pickers I've seen.

Just to make it a bit easier, the 'change foreground color' picker works on any part of the screen. Just have that dialog on top of said window, and booyah. Firefox has a built-in eyedropper and for linux, gcolor2 is nifty to have around.

[Jelly Jellybean]

Dec 28, 2014 17:48:46 GMT Gotolei said:

Nice to have an index of these. Only thing I'd suggest is maybe putting the hex codes as well because that's the direct feedback from most pickers I've seen.

Just to make it a bit easier, the 'change foreground color' picker works on any part of the screen. Just have that dialog on top of said window, and booyah. Firefox has a built-in eyedropper and for linux, gcolor2 is nifty to have around.

I thought about the hex codes, but I didn't include them because it looked like small variances between pages might change the hex codes too much for me to follow.  Personally I think the hue value is the most useful for distinguishing the different character's colors.  I only included the RGB data because some characters (Zimmy and Gamma) have almost identical hues with different RGB values.

Here the list sorted by hue:

Coyote = Red, H0/360, R253, G235, B235
Muut = Red (looks grey), H0/360, R231, G231, B231
Ysengrin = Orange, H23, R244, G231, B223
Jones = Orange, H28, R254, G244, B235
Smitty = Yellow, H48, R242, G241, B237
Reynard (Wolf and Toy forms) = Yellow, H51, R250, G247, B230
Robots = Green (irregular hexagon), H117, R238, G255, B237
Jack = Green, H117, R231, G248, B230
Parley = Aqua, H180, R239, G255, B255
Kat = Blue, H224, R222, G229, B248
Shadow = Blue, H249, R244, G242, B255
Gamma = Purple, H271, R244, G232, B255
Zimmy = Purple, H272, R232, G218, B244
Annie = Pink, H314, R255, G242, B252
Muut = Red (looks grey), H0/360, R231, G231, B231
Coyote = Red, H0/360, R253, G235, B235

[fanofts]

Dec 28, 2014 17:55:56 GMT Jelly Jellybean said:

Dec 28, 2014 17:48:46 GMT Gotolei said:

...
Just to make it a bit easier, the 'change foreground color' picker works on any part of the screen. Just have that dialog on top of said window, and booyah. Firefox has a built-in eyedropper and for linux, gcolor2 is nifty to have around.

...
Here the list sorted by hue:

Coyote = Red, H0/360, R253, G235, B235
Muut = Red (looks grey), H0/360, R231, G231, B231
Ysengrin = Orange, H23, R244, G231, B223
Jones = Orange, H28, R254, G244, B235
Smitty = Yellow, H48, R242, G241, B237
Reynard (Wolf and Toy forms) = Yellow, H51, R250, G247, B230
Robots = Green (irregular hexagon), H117, R238, G255, B237
Jack = Green, H117, R231, G248, B230
Parley = Aqua, H180, R239, G255, B255
Kat = Blue, H224, R222, G229, B248
Shadow = Blue, H249, R244, G242, B255
Gamma = Purple, H271, R244, G232, B255
Zimmy = Purple, H272, R232, G218, B244
Annie = Pink, H314, R255, G242, B252
Muut = Red (looks grey), H0/360, R231, G231, B231
Coyote = Red, H0/360, R253, G235, B235

I tried to show the dialog colours on this wikia page: gunnerkrigg.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Characters - it's missing Jenny, and some of the robot text hues vary considerably. Here is just the student colours, showing exaggerated gradients for clarity:

[QuotePilgrim]

Dec 28, 2014 17:40:15 GMT Jelly Jellybean said:

Muut = Red (looks grey), H0/360, R231, G231, B231

Actually, it is grey. Look at the numbers; red, green, and blue all have the same value. The value for "hue" will always be zero for colors with no saturation. At least that is the behavior of all image editors I ever used.

There is no need to inform the hue, though, as it can be calculated from the RGB values. If you are going to list the hue, why not list saturation and value, too?

Anyway, I am not here (just) to complain. I really appreciate what you did, and actually I am going to do something useful, and list all of the hex numbers for those colors. I think it is useful because if one wants to use a certain color, they can just copypaste its number into the "HTML notation" field in GIMP, or a similarly named field on other editors, which is easier than using the RGB values.

Robots = #eeffed

Annie = #fff2fc
Kat = #dee5f8
Reynard = #faf7e6
Jack = #e7f8e6
Zimmy = #e8daf4
Gamma = #f4e8ff
Smitty = #f2f1ed
Parley = #efffff
Shadow = #f4f2ff
Jones = #fef4eb
Coyote = #fdebeb
Ysengrin = #f4e7df
Muut = #e7e7e7


Now, I noticed another thing. Some colors have two RGB values that are really close to each other like, say, R242 and G244. I assume they were actually meant to be the same in those cases, but due to JPEG compression artifacts, the colors were slightly changed. You can actually see that the color values will change in the same speech bubble, depending on where inside it you pick the color from. The colors are more distorted close tho the text or the outline of a speech bubble.

[Jelly Jellybean]

Gotolei

I use Safari on a Mac. It doesn't appear to have a color picker. Do you know of an plug-in color picker for Safari?

QuotePilgrim

I noticed the color values deviated slightly. Usually over chapters not pages. I figure that if it +/-3, then it is probably just a normal variance. But I did notice that the Jack seemed to vary more than any other character with a speech bubble color.

[Gotolei]

Dec 31, 2014 1:31:34 GMT Jelly Jellybean said:

Gotolei

I use Safari on a Mac. It doesn't appear to have a color picker. Do you know of an plug-in color picker for Safari?

@quote Pilgrim

I noticed the color values deviated slightly. Usually over chapters not pages. I figure that if it +/-3, then it is probably just a normal variance. But I did notice that the Jack seemed to vary more than any other character with a speech bubble color.

No idea, only safari I've used was on a mobile and for just a few minutes at that. Most every browser worth using (even IE) has had developer tools baked-in for a few years now, so it might be worth poking around?

Also possibly worth noting that the comics themselves are jpeg so even within the same bubble it changes.
Generally I click+drag the color picker a bit until the numbers stabilize.

[Daedalus]

Dec 31, 2014 1:31:34 GMT Jelly Jellybean said:

Gotolei

I use Safari on a Mac. It doesn't appear to have a color picker. Do you know of an plug-in color picker for Safari?

All Macs have the program DigitalColor Meter (under Utilities). It should do what you want without needing a browser plugin.

[Covalent]

Is it sad that I never noticed this?

[Jelly Jellybean]

Dec 31, 2014 3:36:13 GMT Daedalus said:

Dec 31, 2014 1:31:34 GMT Jelly Jellybean said:

Gotolei

I use Safari on a Mac. It doesn't appear to have a color picker. Do you know of an plug-in color picker for Safari?

All Macs have the program DigitalColor Meter (under Utilities). It should do what you want without needing a browser plugin.

Thank You!  It is pretty basic, but even i can understand and use it.

[Eversist]

Hom... Parley/Smitty (and Parley's friends) aren't on that wiki page for students. Putting this out there in case someone else would like to jump on it before I get to it.

Edit: Oh yeah, and Jenny like mentioned above. fanofts, for some reason your image is too small to see on the wiki.

[fanofts]

Jan 5, 2015 17:37:18 GMT Eversist said:

...
Edit: Oh yeah, and Jenny like mentioned above. fanofts, for some reason your image is too small to see on the wiki.

That was strange: the image uploaded at 340 pixels high but the proboards server was displaying it first downscaled to 200 and then re-upscaled to 340! That made it all blurry. The workaround I stumbled upon was: (1) on the image page click Edit and click Refresh (that fixed that page but not my post); (2) make a null edit to my post (I replaced it with the same BBCode (that appears to have triggered the server to use the "refreshed" image).

Thanks for pointing it out.

[keef]

I never saw these questions before. Interesting. Specially Surma and Annie having the same speech bubble colour.
In a chapter like Broken Glass, Annie's/Surma's pink is a lot less bright than in some other places.

[Jelly Jellybean]

Sept 19, 2015 12:48:07 GMT keef said:

I never saw these questions before. Interesting. Specially Surma and Annie having the same speech bubble colour.
In a chapter like Broken Glass, Annie's/Surma's pink is a lot less bright than in some other places.

You made me look to see if Annie's speech bubble color remained the same even after cutting her hair.  It did not change.  The Fire Elemental hasn't spoken, so that remains an unknown.

[sheepy]

I have a Theory.

The color of each character relates to how connected to the ether you are.

Muut and Coyote are both red, and they are both very etherial beings
Kat are shadow are Blue, and they do not use the ether at all
Annie and Ysengrin are pink and orange, respectively, and they both use the ether, but have a limited connection. Their colors are slightly red, but not very red. Kat's color is not red at all, and the most etherial beings have a red color. Zimmy and Gamma also have a limited connection to the ether and a slightly reddish color.

[keef]

Sept 27, 2015 20:18:55 GMT sheepy said:

I have a Theory.
The color of each character relates to how connected to the ether you are.

Welcome to the forum, I think your theory is a bit shaky, but who knows...

Dec 28, 2014 17:40:15 GMT Jelly Jellybean said:

Tom is pretty consistent with the color palettes he uses for each character.
....
Zimmy = Purple, H272, R232, G218, B244
Gamma = Purple, H271, R244, G232, B255

I'm cleaning the bubbles of "Dobranoc, Gamma" at the moment. I don't actually see any difference between Gamma and Zimmy here, so unless Tom commands differently, I'll take the purplish from the first speech bubble for both that chapter.

[silicondream]

Today in Trans* Psychophysics:

Holy the eff, y'all. I just experienced color vision.

Haha! I suddenly got terrified because Winsbury and Janet had invisible faces! No they don't, that's just what white looks like.... I have a white point now!

Earlier this week I realized my voice didn't die at puberty, it just broke so low I couldn't hear it anymore. Like, literally. On the frequency scale. I'm a bass! Bass is a thing! I am 41 stupid years old and I always believed I could not shout nor sing, but I'm just a bass!

Properly prescribed and responsibly medicated female hormones are awesome. Thanks, estrogen!

[madjack]

Now this is a thread necro!

[silicondream]

Sorry, is there a more recent color-themed thread? I just did a two-second forum search on "color" to find somewhere to brag.

[philman]

Jun 4, 2021 5:53:54 GMT silicondream said:

Sorry, is there a more recent color-themed thread? I just did a two-second forum search on "color" to find somewhere to brag.

No no, feel free, 6 year old threads are always fun to revisit!

And I never realised colour vision could change just via hormones?! That's pretty cool, so did you not see any colour before? Or just different ones?

[saardvark]

Sept 27, 2015 20:18:55 GMT sheepy said:

I have a Theory.

The color of each character relates to how connected to the ether you are.

Muut and Coyote are both red, and they are both very etherial beings
Kat are shadow are Blue, and they do not use the ether at all
Annie and Ysengrin are pink and orange, respectively, and they both use the ether, but have a limited connection. Their colors are slightly red, but not very red. Kat's color is not red at all, and the most etherial beings have a red color. Zimmy and Gamma also have a limited connection to the ether and a slightly reddish color.

but Jones is orange (red + yellow) but has no contact with the ether....
how about a variant on your idea - 
color indicates the amount of transhuman power a being has - how "god-like" they are, at least on the red end of the spectrum.  Hues close to 0/360 on either side.
the only full god - Coyote - is red.  Demi-gods Ys and Jones are orange.  Rey would be too, but we've never seen him in his original body and/or he's always been under Annie's "supervision" so he is demoted to yellow.  Semi-demi-god Muut is grey, which is equally everything, so has some red as well.  Annie is half fire elements, so she is red + white = pink. Zimms and Gamms both have some interesting powers of a different sort (especially the Zimmster), so they are red + blue = purple.  Smits can warp probability, so he is yellow (seems a bit of a high rank, compared to Rey though).  Parley doesnt fit well, as she can teleport, but is furthest from Coyote in hue. Eggs should maybe have a color with some "towards red" hue as well- unless, since his abilities are learned, trained or artificially added (wards), they don't count in this scheme.  

So this sort of fits a lot of characters, but there are some bugs.  Haven't quite worked out the variations far from red though... e.g., differences between greens and blues.

[Gotolei]

Jun 4, 2021 5:53:54 GMT silicondream said:

Sorry, is there a more recent color-themed thread? I just did a two-second forum search on "color" to find somewhere to brag.

Dunno about a color-specific one, but there is the thread asking about maybe opening a general discussion board that basically just became a general discussion thread itself.

But yeah it is interesting to see old threads randomly pop up now and then. Fun fact, the first of my posts in this thread was one of the last things I did on that 1366x768 laptop, got a new one the next day after.
(Don't miss it a bit, inspirons and their designed-to-fail chargers (at least as of ~2015) really aren't anything to write home about)

[silicondream]

Jun 4, 2021 8:41:09 GMT @philman said:

And I never realised colour vision could change just via hormones?! That's pretty cool, so did you not see any colour before? Or just different ones?

I saw colors, they just weren't nearly as finely distinguished. It's like going from old-monitor 256 colors to millions. I wasn't aware of skin tone differences between most of the white GC characters, for instance. I probably could have detected them if you told me to, but they didn't, like, jump out at me.

I've heard a few transmasc people report the opposite effect, with their senses seeming duller once they were on testosterone. (Although "duller's" probably the wrong word, because for them it was more like turning down the volume on a lot of unnecessary detail.) One exception is in emotional processing; testosterone tends to make people more sensitive to signs of fear and anger in others, but react with less fear themselves. Hence the common transmasc "second puberty" where you spend a few months feeling like a West Side Story extra, cocky and spoiling for a fight.

Most of these sensory effects have been observed in cis folks too, but I would imagine they're more obvious in trans* folks, since 1) we're usually taking higher doses of the relevant hormones, and 2) transition usually improves our mood and general attention to new experiences.