4 Game Asset Coloring Mistakes Beginners Make

1. Oversaturated Colors

I think this is the most common one. People like to crank the saturation up to 100%. After that, any 2D/3D model can look very hard to look at, especially if you have a lot of those objects in the scene.

Try to use lighter colors – less Saturation than 90% should be good to go. There are no perfect values, but it works for the most part.
Here is the same pine tree with desaturated colors. You can easily look at it, and it won’t hurt your eyes.

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2. Too Dark Colors

I see this a lot on the internet when beginners post images where they show off their assets with very dark colors in a light scene. It looks dull and not realistic. Even darker than this palm tree! And if it’s in the dark scene, you can’t see it at all.

Don’t do that! Try to use lighter and more vibrant colors, so your object looks more natural and appealing to the eye. Make it stand out more, especially if it’s the main character of the game. Just think this way that your asset needs to look right in any lighting conditions. Test it in the day and night scenes to find the perfect values.

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3. Too Light Colors

Sometimes colors can be so light that your asset won’t look interesting at all. Colors look washed out and boring. It isn’t good, especially if you want to attract the viewer’s attention to this object when it’s used in the game environment.

You can fix that by increasing the Contrast a bit. Now it looks more appealing to the eye.

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4. Inconsistent Colors

Using different contrast and brightness values of the color on one asset can ruin the overall look. For example, here is a very dark box with a very bright saturated cloth on top. It looks strange.

And here is the same box with cloth but using different color values. Box and cloth colors are very similar at brightness and saturation. Colors are much more consistent, and it looks much more appealing to the eye.

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So there are no perfect color values for coloring game assets. It can be very different because of the game art style, but in general, using light (but not too light) and vibrant (but not oversaturated) color values should look nice in most cases.
I usually use Brightness values between 5%-90%. Saturation values between 0%-90%. This applies to all kinds of asset syles and scene lighting.