Is This A Good Background-Panel Color Scheme?

[BLTX]

Okay, so typiccly depending the scenerio, I like to create a different background-panel color scheme for my pages. It usually comes out well with little trouble, but for my next episode, I need to create a new one, and am having trouble deciding on a look. I won't spoil anything, so I'll just say it's being designed with the theme of "memory" in mind.

This is what I've come up with so far. Does it look good in terms of theme, visibility, etc. Or do I need to make some changes?

DISCLAIMER: As to avoid spoilers, the page below is a slightly altered page from a previous episode, but is set in roughly the same location as the actual page

Important note: For the purpose of transition, I'm really trying to avoid the panel and background colors from being too similar to the originals. Basically, there's going to be a point in the episode where the special sequence ends, and will transition to the usual... "world" (for lack of a better term,) and if not done right, it could be very confusing and jaring to suddenly see things go from the sequence, to going to back to normal.

For comparison, here's the original colors

Again, I'm trying to make the color change very obvious.

[Lensing]

The thing I would change or look into is the value/contrast.
The pages are too dark, it makes it hard to look at it, the panels would be too dark by itself,
the dark background doesn´t help.
I would look into some contrast/value videos on youtube, there are really good explainations
how to check the value and how to make it better

[Kelheor]

Took me some time to understand the only difference is the color of gutters, and they still both very dark colors. If you want something drastically different, maybe go for something bright or light (now that would be a contrast).
Also, I don't really understand what this transition should mean, but maybe it would be nice to actually change the look (color palette or whatever) of the actual panels, not just gutters, if you want to get an effect that's particularly different from your normal panels.

[BLTX]

Yeah. That's pretty much what I was worried about.

@Kelheor I definitely get that, but making the colors too bright looks kind of weird to me. Technically, I've already used a color scheme for this very situation, but it was for a much short amount of time, and a very different looking page, and it just didn't transition well into what I'm trying to do.

I'm gonna say right now, I am considering some other transition design options, and in fact there is a chance I might abandon the color change, at least partially.

The problem is that what I'm trying to do is make a past - future transition, but the way it works is that it ends with a character entering a room in the past, and the next panel is one of the future, in that same room, without a super clear indication of the time change. That's essentially what I'm dealing with here.

[darthmongoose]

You might want to look at artists who have very dark looking comics but maintain readability for inspiration on how to keep that dark look you want. Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics (coloured by Dave Stewart) are a good example.

Notice how they yse desaturated, but not too dark colours, contrasted with a few that realy pop like reds and oranges or bright highlights with all that rich black and white panel borders to create an overall dark feel but that's very readable? (Hngggh this comic looks so good I could rave about it for hours hahaha. Darkest Dungeon was totally inspired by this aesthetic).

Another great example of a dark but very readable comic is of course, the classic, Watchmen:

Notice how again we see Gibbons (and colourist Higgins) use contrast of both very strong light and pure black with contrast of highly saturated and desaturated colours to create an unsettlingly lurid feeling that puts you on edge? Fantastic!

Both of these examples use white borders, but maintain a dark overall impression because the borders are more like a design element like speech bubbles. Maybe worth a try using white borders but keeping them relatively skinny, especially on panels going horisontally?

[Lensing]

I love the Watchmen example

[system]

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