Backwards and inside out
Today’s comic features recourse to the red-green gradient, the most forbidden of colour schemes. When I first started as a designer, some PC software found the notion of this gradient so abhorrent that instead of a muddy brown in the middle, it would manifest purest white. Of course, times have changed since 1998, we have quantum computing and iPhone 12, and a red-green gradient can finally be perceived by the human eye.
It’s kind of the opposite of the Movie Poster orange/blue that is so pervasive these days.
A friend of mine’s daughter is studying to be a film editor. We pointed that out to her a year or so ago and now she’s mad at us because she can’t un-see it.
Orange/Blue drives me nuts!
I blame the original Blade Runner – it’s full of O/B contrasts.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. The original Blade Runner poster isn’t like that at all. (It’s a classic poster.) Blade Runner 2049 is the one that goes extreme orange/blue.
Now the original Blade Runner does have that scene where Deckard gives Rachel a Voight-Kampff test that is very orange, but the scene is supposed to be at sunset in a high building looking west. It makes sense from a stylistic point of view. The rest of the movie, although colorful, has a distinctly sepia undertone. It is techno-noir of course.
I think that Maxfield Parish, or maybe N. C. Wyeth, was about the first to be extravagant with O/B.
The real gift they are giving to Mrs. Clovis is the opportunity to engage in her favorite activity: shaming! Arriving hung over, bringing terrible snacks and shoddy presents are all excellent opportunities for Mrs. C. to practice her craft.
Good point! And I’m sure they’ll supply a lot more for her to shame them for before the evening’s done.
That’s actually a very nice cottage. Mrs Clovis has good taste in mobiles. I love her and energy!
Reminds me of the student house I rented in cheery and sunny Birmingham. Though I’m sure Mrs Clovis takes better care of it than the countless students who had rented my temporary lodgings in the years before.
Loved my dose of computer-assisted design history with today’s strip. We’re living in the future, man! Where no color combination is illegal.
It is a rule of the holidays that at least one guest must have their sweater back to front and inside out.
Am I the only one who carefully scanned each panel looking for you-know-who?
Nope.
I am still half convinced he’s hiding the tangle of branches in panel one.
hiding *in
Plot twist: The “Mrs. Clovis” we see here is actually the mustachioed stalker in an elaborate costume. The real Mrs. Clovis is locked in the closet.
Prediction: Sesh Gremlin will turn out to be Mrs. Clovis’ nephew, and will be dropping by for dinner with his Christmas cans in tow.
Having recently been coated with highly-flammable air freshener, Billie had best step away from that stove.
And you say, hooooOOoOOoooow appropriate.
Fun fact: if you run this comic through a red/green colourblindness simulator, it looks like pea soup. Or, presumably, if you are genuinely colourblind.
Don’t worry, later pages in the story use a palette that resembles red/green colourblindness applied to these red-green pages almost exactly, so protanopians will not suffer any undue inconvenience, only a consistent peasoupery.
Tongue out for chopping concentration? Or in annoyance at the Mrs Clovis judgement?
Turning one’s clothes inside-out used to be a way, specifically in the British Isles, of discouraging the “little people” from kidnapping one to the Færie Realm or of otherwise warding off evil influences. See “stray sod.”
I had assumed she was wearing it inside-out to put the less-dirty surface on the outside, as an emergency alternative to washing it.
As I understand it, that gradient is bad because UI design forbids it – red-green colorblindness is the most common kind (this is why the internet is boringly blue.)
So, red-green is the lambada of color gradients?
Now I’m nostalgic for the days when you’d stick around to void a transaction and try over again, instead of settling for whatever you just bought and getting the hell out of there before the virus sees you.