The Colors of Ponyo

Ponyo is a popular movie from Studio Ghibli released in 2008. It is a Japanese animation that is inspired from The Little Mermaid and follows a young girl's escape from the ocean. The movie has won several film awards in categories like animation, soundtrack, art direction, and best director. The objective of this composition is to study the various color schemes of the movie. Movies and animation rely heavily on color to help users comprehend the story and convey important themes throughout. It is valuable to acknowledge the use of color in media and the relationship between color and themes. Particularly in Ponyo, I chose a thirty-second scene that an abundance of colors. It is important to note that this thirty-second scene also marks the turning point of the movie and sets the pace for the adventure that the two protagonists have ahead. After identifying five colors from each frame in the thirty-second scene, I categorized the colors into designated palettes. These palettes include warm-tone colors, cool-tone colors, and neutral colors. This exercise was done in order to practice differentiating color tones and find relationships between colors in the scene. Using the colors found in the scene, I applied the different shades to a diagram made in Adobe Illustrator. This method encourages me to practice shading with color and forces me to avoid using grays and blacks as shading colors. By using monochromatic palettes, I found relationships between the colors and how they work alongside one another. This exercise set the foundation of my understanding on color in design and the media.

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