Color schemes and the memories that come with them (Part 1)
Initially I wanted to make this journal entry’s intro a bit Twenty-One-Pilots-ish but I can’t find the words to fit this so-called attitude.
To keep it brief I like being presented two things of the same kind in different colors. It doesn’t have to be two, the more the merrier. Different colored shirts or watches of the same kind, anything, and they seem to sorta show up everywhere. Scratch that extra baggage, let’s talk color schemes and combinations.
People might not get why I pay attention to some color schemes, they only think I like how those two or more colors appear together. To be honest some color combinations triggered glimpses of certain periods of time in my creative process, where it brings bitter memories but sweet sensations, usually peppered with different fandoms & the usual copying and envy vicious cycle. Sometimes I wish I could re-live those moments but I want to change the storyline completely, eliminating embarrassing mistakes and maximizing the strength of those color bombs in my head but it seems like on their own, said color bombs are already strong enough to poison my brain from time to time.
Back when I was 8 I liked reading those Letterland books, and my favorite character just happened to be Golden Girl, a blonde wearing all green who goes on a G-shaped go-kart. I then decided to make a version of myself similar to her, all red going on an R-shaped Racekart and from there, fanfictions started. ()
If there are three teams the third team would be yellow because it’s the only primary color left, but so far everyone seemed to be in favor of red and blue more than yellow.
For me, these primary colors don’t really trigger much memories when combined, except the time when my siblings and I were little, my brother (who is the same age as me) would always pick blue and I’d always pick red. Our little sister who was at that time still a baby, was left with yellow and together the three of us acted like some sort of Power Rangers/Sailor Moon hybrid superheroes. Those were our silly days & sadly we can’t relive them cuz our favorite colors have already changed. Oh and we’ve grown up but let’s not talk about growing up cuz it sucks.
Honestly if I were to pick green, it would still be just as cliche as blue. Thinking back makes me wanna change my color choice to orange, or purple, or something less mainstream. Moreover, the animal choice is just as cliche, I mean cat? What happened to my love for rabbits? The thing is I loved cats and rabbits equally back then but during the brainstorm my mind was completely blank and seeing that nobody has taken a big blue cat idea yet at that time, I snatched the opportunity and made Heelward. I ended up not talking about Heelward the Big Blue Cat much in my life, and he ended up as a parody TV show I kinda snuck in in some comics I’ve worked on, like Fruit Bomb and .
These were the colors of me and my two best friends back in grade school, also known as ARM team. Sadly we drifted apart until then and I dont wanna talk about this any further because of the overly shitty memories it left me and the bad impression I left my friends with. Moving on.
Now I’m gonna lay a big fat BUT here, cuz my memory’s far from shoujo anime, cuz the anime involved here is Digimon. A pretty gender-neutral show guaranteed to give kids feels in the end due to all that blab about friendship. Knowing Digimon there’s gonna be loads of battling, action and digivolving (since it’s pretty much based on a game) but back then, when I was 10, I wasn’t paying attention to all that.
Most of my grade school friends have taken a liking to one of the characters, Kari Kamiya (probably cuz she’s like, the cute one besides Takeru ‘TK’ Takaishi, and her signature color is pink, that’s why) and at that time I was still best friends with someone named Maj, cuz I was always drawing her in my comics. Maj likes Kari too during her peak of Digimon fandom, and for some reason I always draw comics about Maj copying Kari like it’s a routine and that means in these comics I’m basically putting Kari in her daily life, sometimes including Gatomon, and excluding all that battling and leaving out all her friends. And guess what I used for Maj’s signature color? Blue. I didn’t know why she ended up with blue. If I remember correctly she initially liked yellow, then pink, then blue… and at the end of the year it’s either she changed her favorite color to teal or she doesn’t care about favorite colors anymore. I pretty much drifted away from her, and from everyone in my class since crap happened.
Eventually I just decided that I’d use blue as Maj’s signature color, and made comics of her watching Kari on TV making something pink in her secret lab with the help of Gatomon (yes, she has a secret lab), Maj will then rush down to her secret lab (yes she also has a secret lab) and make blue versions out of it with the help of a few of her digimons (I couldn’t decide which one would be her usual pal that time). And since this was from an 11-yr-old’s perception, the TV can be used to monitor someone’s every move, even cartoon characters like the characters in Digimon. Oh and digimon can appear in real life too if they’re being summoned through a computer. That was what happened with Maj in my old comics. Apparently the story got weird and our world merged with the digimon world, and at that point I say SCREW THIS COMIC SERIES, I WANNA START FRESH.
And that’s when I created MRMF, with the addition of two friends Dk Musfirah and Farah Aina who were our juniors. I still included some of the elements from my old comics into MRMF, like how Maj usually copies Kari and her pink stuff with all her blue stuff, but this time making her more reluctant to copy, and some cases forced, cuz clearly she doesn’t like copying. At that phase, DK, Farah and I were still in the copycat phase but those two have grown out of it now, probably.
I really don’t wanna discuss all the shitty memories from back in the days, but for some reason they keep coming back whenever I see something pink next to something blue of the same kind.
And you’ve guessed it, these are the two main colors that are basically the backbone of (which I created in 5th grade). I get that there are 4 characters, which means 4 signature colors for each (the other being ultramarine for Tarina and amber for Petie) but the very beginning of the comic only involved Kree and Julie, so teal and cerise were quite prominent.
Almost half of the old BFFL strips revolve around Kree showing off her oh-so-pretty blue green stuff, Julie getting envious and eventually copying Kree’s stuff by getting red pink versions of them.As the story progresses the storyline got weirder and weirder to the point that I actually gotten sick of continuing it, and had to write a new plotline for this story in which I’m still working on the comic. The embarrassing part of this memory is my overused plotline of showing off > envy > copying > winning. And the fact that the characters gained superpowers in the end while it’s only intended to be a normal slice-of-life story about schoolgirls. And also the fact that the characters need more racial diversity. But the bright side is, it was the first time I’ve ever developed distinct personalities on my characters. I also drew and designed everyday objects in two color schemes (blue, aqua, green and red, reddish pink, pink) and hey that’s some creativity coming from a 10-year old.Pink n purple played a small role too in this category, cuz I had a similar story like BFFL only with kids slightly older. The main character’s name is Violet Ultramarine and her favorite colors are her namesake. She’s got a best friend Karen Caramel (signature colors orange & amber) and Violet constantly gets bullied by this girl named Fuschiarose “Rose” (signature color: rosy pink) and the story’s pretty much the same; envy, copying, shove-it-in-yo-face.
The only comic I did with these characters was on paper on 2003 which I gave to my friend. I never put them online, except for a short story I wrote in 2006 (probably) called It’s Really Magic… Psych! Where Violet finds a spoon that changed her life briefly, and yeah this spoon acts like a copycat dickwad, copying every moment of Rose’s lucky life and granting similar luck to Violet.
Picture (c) [DISCLAIMER: Some of the images I used here are mine and some aren't. To make things safe I've trackbacked the links and they'll be redirected when the images are clicked.]
Status
Living with your grandparents can be quite depressing at times, because sure they have many friends but one by one, if not a few at a time, they’re starting to fall sick and die off so you’ll hear them telling you that they have funerals to attend to and hospital to visit their sick and/or dying friends.
In a way I’m