Yeah, a lot of racist refuse to acknowledge the fact Starfire has been to designed with afro-centric features before. She's even had braids one of her official designs.
but its a fictional character though. its just skin color though. so who cares? Why do you care so much if its just fictional characters? why the fragility and outrage? Isnt this the justification blacks have when you want to blackwash white characters? that its "just skin color and a fictional character." so why do you care if a fan artists change the skin color of a FICTIONAL character? make it make sense and unpack your black hypocrisy and racism.
What I noticed is that fan artists would leave black male characters dark skinned, while black female characters are the only exception to this rule. People want the unambiguous black men… but for black women we’re always made lighter skinned or biracial, and it’s so infuriating to see another black queen made into a light skinned girl MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!!!
Black male characters get whitewashed too ,Raihan from Pokémon Sword and Shield being an example ,however that being said Nessa from the same game got the worse treatment of two in comparison.
Its the exact same way in tv shows. The dad and son will be 100% black and have all of the common black features, but the mother and daughter will be biracial with loose hair and almost white passing. Pushes the narrative that darker skin is maculine. People suck
Don’t forget about the featurism attached. Many fan art of Dolores and Camilo with straighter their hair. Same with Amanda the Adventurer. She has afro-puffs but so much fan art gives her straight hair.
Fr, I've never seen any white washed fan art of Tiana, I agree, it's always insufferable seeing artist on Insta, Twitter, Tumblr, etc white washing a dark skinned character but whenever someone decides to make a head cannon of a light skinned character people start loosing their shit, it's also sad that a lot of artist, rarely decide to draw dark skinned character.
You realize that doesn’t always work sometimes An artist Was trying to draw the new Ariel and tried to color pick the skin tone she had in the trailer and still got accused for “”white washing her” even tho they literally showed they color picked what it gave him from the screenshot So in a way no, the eye drop tool doesn’t always work and there’s sadly not many tutorials for dark skin tones so it’s very limiting
As an artist, it really depends on the reference picture. For me, it’s easier to color pick for fan art of 2D anime and cartoons because there are more flat colors so it’s easier to get accurate colors. However, 3D animation and real people tend to have a lot of shading, rendering, and lighting, just lots of lack of flat colors. As of now, I’ve only done one fan art where my reference photo was a real person (Chrissy from Stranger Things) and man, it was very frustrating getting a natural looking palette that wasn’t super grey looking. It can be difficult to translate colors to your art style. That being said, don’t use this as an excuse to whitewash. Just try your best to match the colors of the character/person you’re drawing.
The fact that it should go without saying that making a dark skinned character lighter is colorist/racist but people would defend this just goes to show how much fandom still reeks with colorism, and that's if they care about the characters of color at all since they often get ignored in favor of light skinned characters.
It always bothered me when somebody would take a dark-skinned character and make them lighter and say they're "fixing them" or making them "look better".
@@chrispambo1539 it really isnt. Black cartoon/anime edits are a way for us black people to get equal representation in the media since 90% of leads in fictional media are white or fair skinned.
@chris pambo So imagine having a little representation and a small amount characters that look like you being whitewashed because colorism, European Beauty Standards, and anti-blackness.
EXACTLY LIKE... it's not that difficult WHAT 😭as a fanartist it is actually ridiculous to me that people think it's hard. the only exception is if it is traditional and you don't have the materials/colours for it. however for the digital there is absolutely NO EXCUSE, like you can colour drop and shit
What it's infuriating, is that if the half-white characters are drawn canonically and originally dark skin/tan skin, most artists will use excuses like "It's not whitewashing if they're half-white." No. IT STILL IS. Because that's how they were originally drawn as by their creators and using the half-white excuse won't cover up your bs. Admit you hate to draw them dark skin/tan skin (as they are presented in canon), and you prefer to draw them as white skin like their white mom or dad and move on. 😭 Sometimes, people are forgetting that even people who are half-white can have darker or tan skin, exist.
Excellent point! One of my cousins is wasian and is as tan/brown as his Filipino mom. A former coworker of mine is wasian and is as brown as his Indian dad.
THANK YOU as someone who is half white half black I agree and its annoying. One of my older sisters( who is white ) was helping me write some papers and when it came to it asking for my race she just put WHITE........ I NEVER LOOKED AT MY ARM TO CHECK MY SKIN COLOR SO FAST lol I just looked at her and said " so you think I'm just white?" it was quiet and awkward after that
@@whatever5401 a darker PINK is not “dark”. And the ones who do have super dark brown skin is because of sun DAMAGE for intentionally being in the sun for too long. Which is why their skin is LEATHERY
so using your OWN logic, it makes sense for white fictional characters to remain white. because they were originally drawn as white by their creators. and according to you, that shouldn't change. see how black hypocrisy works?
When I watched Mojo97 video and she talks about how they didn’t have any black people to model for her art class… It’s really sad how black/brown people aren’t added in drawing programs. It’s important for people to learn how to draw and especially color brown/black people.
Amphibia finally represented Asians, let alone SE Asians that don't default to fair skin and straight hair and mfs in the fandom do this shit :/ like come on
As a SEAsian (specifically Vietnamese), it's so rare seeing a character with the same complexion as me since almost every Asian character I saw growing up was pale and when there's finally an Asian character with darker skin, people in the fandom whitewash them in every fanart
I'll be honest, I didnt consider Starfire a dark skinned girl. To me she was orange, but it does make sense for her to be played by black ladies. Also, to me, color theory is only an excuse if youre new to art or bad at coloring and youre learning. After a while, its an empty excuse
Yeah I agree I mean she's essentially an alien and I always thought she was orange so I never really saw her as a "person of color" but again I do understand the annoyance with coloring characters lighter than they're supposed to be
It bothers me when MGA always whitewashed Sasha’s skin tone on her artworks. I haven’t forgotten they did the same thing to Flora and Aisha on Winx Club in the later seasons.
n when they whitewashed flora or ~~terra~~ by casting a white person omjfjdjdjfif uuughhh im glad aisha was still portrayed by a dark skinned person but they changed her to the mammy archetype whiCH NOOO
Doesn’t help they lightwashed Pepa compared to her initial designs. Because of course we need a reason for Dolores, the only confirmed Afro latina in the family, to be lighter than her youngest brother and father. Yes the fact she isn’t allowed to be darkskinned is colorism
I've seen a few videos on that subject from Columbians, and they said it was a good call to give Pepa light skin to break the stigma that there's only one skin shade for people of color. I'm not too involved with the community myself, but I've seen comments that gatekeep people from it for being "too white", so I'm inclined to agree with them. Not sure about Dolores though.
Oh my god I can't believe you're all still bitching about Pepa's skin color it's been almost a fucking year, is it a crime for her to b light-skinned? A latin-american white woman in a latin-american family is colorism? I have never in my entire life seen people more obsessed with skin colors than gringos, at this point you guys are delusional it's insane. Let me explain this real quick and simple, she is light-skinned because latino is not a goddamn skin color, latinos are a mix of absolutely everything, we can have light skin, dark skin, brown eyes, green eyes, east-asian features, black hair, curly hair, blonde hair, straight hair. In Peru for example, there's a lot of people with east-asian features because they descend from Chinese or Japanese immigrants, in Argentina there's a lot of light-skinned people because they descend from Italian or German immigrants, and the most well known source of white skin in Latin America: Spanish and Portuguese. The only ones offended with Pepa's skin color are you gringos, us latinos couldn't care less about that because it's so fucking normal and irrelevant to us, it should be even more irrelevant to y'all so stop trying to talk for a culture that's not even yours.
@@kiwikarp9509 Were they from Afro Colombians though? Because one thing the Latino community hates talking about is the antiBlack racism With every “if you look too white you aren’t considered Latino/a” there’s about 10x the amount of antiBlack/darkskinned comments waiting to come around the corner. You go to any Latin American country, you will most likely see White or white passing models and actors everywhere. And if not? Skin bleaching products All my life I have never seen people complain about White Latine people. They are very much praised in the community and it is encouraged to marry them to water down Black and/or indigenous features of a family tree. So it always astounds me whenever we talk about Afro Latino representation, somehow that means White Latine people never get represented in media when that is far from the truth Want to include a White/white passing Latine person in the family? Go ahead. Don’t whitewash two of the characters in the process when you could have just made another family member
Remember, everyone: using references while drawing is like using recipes while cooking. It's not cheating, it's a guide, especially when it's unfamiliar. Personally, I want to learn how to draw box braids, so I favorited a UA-cam tutorial on how to do one's own hair into box braids so I could see the structure of them. And I can never get enough of gazing lovingly at photos of Sacha Dhawan--just to get his skin tone right, of course! ;) Btw I recall asking in a server how blushing works when people have darker skin, as I am a light-skinned wasian who blushes pink visibly. I'd love it if people weighed in with their personal experiences of how blushing shows up, but I'll copy-paste what one person said: So blushing, in its essence, is nothing more than a nervous/vascular phenomenon where blood rushes to the face, neck, and chest. As you’ve stated, this looks different for every skin tone. Whereas [light-skinned characters] might blush a rather dark red color, [medium/brown-skinned characters] might appear slightly rosy, or their complexions might darken. In [dark-skinned character]’s case, you might even describe him as shiny, bc the rush of blood plumps up the skin making it smoother, and the extra color darkens the skin- smooth + dark = more reflective
So in a way, they're glowing... I'd love to see that! It's so beautiful seeing such a huge variety of skin colors and seeing how they interact with the environment and stimuli. We need more blushing black and dark-skinned people of color in general! ❤️
There are plenty of tutorials on the internet teaching people on how to draw dark-skinned characters and different curly hair types and textures. The internet is filled with different fandoms and subcultures off all skin colors.
People really try to use the "it's the lighting" argument as if there aren't artists who are also giving black characters looser hair textures, slimmer noses, skinnier bodies, anything that makes them more palatable to a Eurocentric beauty standard.
The lighting argument is annoying enough when it comes to fan-artists, it’s worse when it’s the people working on a show itself who try to blame it on the lighting engine, (3D animated shows,) for example how Kanan is super ambiguous but distinctly not white in Star Wars Rebels, like I’ve seen some people speculate anywhere from POC Greek, to Arab, to Assyrian, Iranian, Armenian, Mizrahi Jewish, to Latino, to vaguely South Asian based on his comic book backstory with literal comic panels showing his own skin-tone to be roughly the same as Depa Billaba his Jedi master who was modelled after the Indian Turkish actor Dipika O’Neill Joti who played her in the prequel trilogy, (said comic is still broadly speaking canon and those same panels show him to also be not that far off from the clones skin tones and since they’re all meant to look like Temuera Morrison as Jango Fett that makes them Māori and therefore POC,) some people use the ‘tanning’ argument to justify how the post Kanan blinding character model shifts back and forth between looking just like a slightly lighter version of his previous model and being indistinguishable from the explicitly white characters to say that he’s white, but his final character model, artistic depictions within the series itself one of which carries over to live-action and his son having a similar skin tone clearly shows that he was always meant to be read as POC, of course the White Washed Batch using that white-washed Cal Kestis looking model of him to represent him as Caleb Dume with that same whitewashed model cropping up in the Clone Wars and Tales of the Jedi doesn’t make him white, those shows are notorious for taking clearly POC characters and at best lighting their skin and at worst literally changing their facial features and their skin tone but keeping them canonically POC. A similar problem concerns Ezra Bridger also from Rebels, (though this one is more caused by ‘fans’ and executives being annoying,) it’s an established fact that Ezra Bridger was loosely influenced and inspired by Ralph Macchio as Daniel LaRusso in the original Karate Kid, naturally the totally ‘not’ racist fans took that to mean his character model was meant to be read as a naturally tanned but ultimately white Greek-Italian boy this is despite the fact that his skin-tone was several shades darker than Kanan’s, his late parents character designs indicating vaguely space Arab and/or Mizrahi Jewish, on top of the somewhat unintentional space Aladdin coding in season 1 and 2, some people started reading him as somewhere between Indian, Latino (but not in the sense of European Spanish or Portuguese,) or as Arab, others however clung to the idea of him being white, given the direction Ezra’s character arc seemed to be heading post season 2 finale, (2015) they pushed the ridiculous theory based merely on the trailer for TFA that Kylo Ren was either an adult Ezra or somehow Kanan despite Kylo/Ben clearly being Adam Driver, even with that stupid voice changer, when the movie came out and he was established as Ben Solo that theory quickly crashed and burned, people still fan-casted white people to play Kanan and Ezra if they ever made the jump from animation to live action, (I’m pretty sure at least some of those white washed suggestions included Timothee Chalamet and Tom Holland.) Eventually Rebels ended, people moved on, hoping to one day get to see the Ghost Crew in live action, so when casting began for Ahsoka, some people got vaguely upset about the possibility of him being correctly represented as POC, Mena Massoud was in the running for the role and ultimately Eman Esfandi was cast, naturally totally not ‘racist’ fans met this news with abject horror claiming Eman, the producers, Disney, and the cast directors had ‘race swapped’ Ezra, (the fault on the side of the production crew of Rebels for going with a somewhat ambiguous design and not shutting down and shutting up these so-called fans sooner.)
on another important note, im most definitely mad at the encanto fandom for whitewashing pepas side of the family, are we forgetting that side is afro-latino????? HELLOOOO?
I remember seeing a fanart of Camilo but his hair was nearly red, his skin tone was whiter than pepa, his curls were eavy and had typical eurocentric features like a eurotric nose.. he couldve nearly pass as ed sheeran's future son 💀
I will never forget what the Pokémon fandom did to Nessa, a character I adored from the start. Colorism and racism is global so it doesn’t surprise me how prevalent it is in fandoms and art circles. That said, I love your Starfire look, Harri. ^_^
@@sangsterxx1897 I heard the artist who drew Nessa as a gorilla also drew Black Panther as a white blonde-haired blue-eyed man, compared Starfire from the live action Teen Titan to an ape and was throwing several tantrums because a black guy was representing Sweden in Eurovision
@@superstar-zn7wn I’ve seen fan edits that had that artwork just with darker skin and it still works within the palette so it just doesn’t make sense why people use that as an excuse
@Kokopium I’m not a danganronpa fan, but that sucks. I wondered why people kept saying it was their "style". It’s obvious those they don’t know what they’re talking about singe even if they wanted to make her pastel, what they did was far from it.
@Kokopium There’s also the fact that Yasuhiro and Akane were paired with Monkichi the monkey. I couldn’t believe they thought this was a good idea. They could have chosen any other Sanrio character.
It isn’t even JUST Sanrio, it’s been a problem since Marina’s introduction. She’s dark-skinned in the game but in promos like the splatfests she’s whitewashed as hell, which really she don’t even look white she just look grey. They’ve been doing Frye the same way. Not surprisingly but very disappointing. I mean iirc they do Frye well with the LIVE promos but when it comes to splatfests Marina and she are just whitewashed/grey lookin.
Here's the thing with Starfire: ANY woman of any race can play her, not just white girls however, black/hispanic women imo are better suited for the role. Their problem isn't the fact Starfire is played by a black woman, their problem is the fact Anna Dipped is dark skinned. I think if they casted a black woman closer to Starfire's complexion, then these comics nerds wouldn't have shit to say. Or keep the same actress and give her orange makeup to look more like Starfire and the issue is solved but then again they didn't bother to make Beast Boy green on the show.
Also buddy that’s just racism/colorism If you gotta start something with “anyone can play this character, it’s just people had a problem she was played by a darkskinned black woman” then you just described racism
@@afrolens9532 I really meant any race can play this character. I'm addressing the people who have a problem with the fact she's played by a black actress alone, despite the fact there are black women who are close to Starfire's skin tone cause Starfire is technically orange. I'm personally okay with actress herself, though I would've put some orange makeup on her and a little CGI to make her look like the character, similar to how Marvel handled Gamora. She's also an alien character she played by a black actress and they have green makeup to look like the character.
@@jourdonpatron212 You are comparing Disney funded franchise movies to a tv show Either way you addressed racism. If anyone has a problem with her skin then yes that's racism by default Also notice you or really any fan don't say anything about Raven not being grey or super pale or Beast Boy not being green
As an asian, I can say that I have the same skin tone as you. I have heard some people tell me that I'm not really Asian because "I'm not pale enough".
and the way there was a whole tiktok thing on tiktok of "if tiana was white!! 😱" or them whitewashing nessa (and i think she's the only dark skin black woman in pokemon sword and shield). and its the way they get so mad over us making one character black (like pinkie pie, for example). there's millions of commenters getting mad over someone making pinkie pie black and their excuse is "she's a pink pony, she's not black, she can be whatever we want" but suddenly that doesn't apply when pinkie pie is black (and her being black makes the most sense, considering she had a PICK and AFRO PUFFS in an episode). like for some reason it's never okay for a character to be black, dark skin, or even just brown-skin.
*flashbacks to the white nessa mod people made for pokemon sword and shield* that crap was absolutely disgusting. Like they hate a person's skin color so much that they'll literally hack a game and waste hours to alter it? Talk about being a massive loser.
What I HATE is when we call out whitewashed art and people will defend it and say ooooh well its just their artstyle get over it 🙄🙄 but as SOON as someone draws a black version of a character for fun its a problem and you shouldn't be changing a characters skin color I fucking hate it
Another dc character who suffers from colorism is Talia Al Ghul(Chinese and Arab) in the comics they often draw her darker when she's being villainized and white when she's the "good guy"(not to mention 90% of media about her son damian draws him as white)
as a black person I can say that I'm not fond of whitewashing At All but I also think whitewashing is a topic that gets mishandled especially by well-meaning white artists . whitewashing doesn't only exist in art , there are historical events and figures that have whitewashed narratives to prevent those impacted from speaking out . this is largely a western / European thing but it doesn't exempt the regular person from criticism when it happens . I was in the Encanto fandom for the better part of 2022 and the back-and-fourth discourse between whitewashing and blackwashing (namely of the afro-side of the family) felt like thinly-veild antiblackness with the way it was handled . yes whitewashing isn't accidentally making the skin tones a few tints lighter and there are MUCH BETTER ways to approach actual whitewashing in practice but the mask-off disrespect of the Caribbean identities some of the characters and black people's input just turned me off and really just solidified the sentiment that anti-blackness is not just a western thing . my word obviously doesn't go above the latine community , but it was truthfully a rude awakening to see so much infighting among POC for how the movie was celebrated for representing so many distinctive features .
I feel the same way with the Twisted Wonderland fandom. How do you make the only 4 main dark skinned characters lighter than what they really are? They are canonically a different race than everyone else, not sure about Jack tho. Yet, I saw Jack, Kalim, Jamil, and Leona look like a whole Caucasian in some fan art.
People make so many excuses for anime fanartists when they whitewash darker skinned characters when 1) the eyedrop tool exists for digital art and 2) you can search up references on the internet for darker-skinned models 3) darker skin toned copics/markers DO exist for traditional art, people just too cheap to go to their local art store to buy 2 or 3 to do accurate color matches and 4) plenty of poc artists post tutorials on how to render darker skin tones. Maybe the difference in language might make it harder to do proper key word searches, but the resources *are* out there. Hell the creator of Cowboy Bebop literally made that anime in the 90s before the popularization of the internet and digital art tech for the anime industry and he *still* went out of his way to find references to draw the black people in that show accurately. What's anyone else's excuse?
Speaking of whitewashing, y'all remember what they did to Aisha, Musa, and Flora in the later seasons? Also I hate when people say "Oh its the lighting!" Or "Oh the colors are pastel and soft skin the skin as to be the same!" To excuse white washing like you are this emoji 🤓 in real life
Fr! This is so true! They did this to Luz and Gus from the owl house and they dare to make an excuse that it's a filter or other things. How hard is it to keep a of color characters' skin color, the same. How!?
People really don't know when "colour theory " applies. If the character is 3 shades lighter, EVERYTHING has to be 3 shades lighter too. They should be comparatively as dark as the original. _That_ is colour theory. They have to be visibly darker than everything else even if the colour itself is light. There's some good examples of that with pastel shades where they use like a milk-coffee-esque brown for dark-skin because light-skin is basically white so the brown looks much darker in comparison. That being said, it's still better to go as close as you can to the original character's shade. There are tutorials on all social media as to how to colour dark-skinned characters. It doesn't have to be exact, it just has to be visibly close.
i rlly appreciate that you mentioned marcy and anne from amphibia !! i’m southeast and east asian. my skin tone is very similar to marcy’s and while that isn’t dark it is seen as tan in some east asian countries. the majority of asians that get represented in the US are light skinned and i’ve had ppl tell me that they didn’t think i should classify myself as asian since i’m mostly southeast asian (basically implying that if you aren’t east asian you aren’t asian at all)
Seeing dark skinned characters with dark eyes and curly hair in recent years has been so refreshing. I remember how frequently designers used to give dark-skinned characters light/blue eyes or light/white hair to soften their ‘blackness’ or ethnic features (i.e. Kida, Allura, Yue, Katara, Storm). It’s always been an ‘interesting’ trend to see, to say the least. 👀
Yes speak on it, I saw fan art of Amanda the adventure and they literally had her as tan, with straight her. She is obviously a dark skinned girl with kinky hair. 🙄
And when my sister and I became adults it was really rough because she was just really getting into her fandoms. We've had several conversations about this and fandom racism in general.
This disgusting white-washing bullshit has got to go. We are not in the 1920s anymore. I really hate how this disgusting society views dark skin as ugly, unpretty, dirty, undesirable, etc. It's so pathetic and the fact that the art community is very infamous for doing stuff like this is very appalling and immensely disappointing. We need more dark skin characters in the media especially in cartoons for many dark skin beauties out there to identify with and see themselves in. Like Isabella from "Enchanto" for example, who by the way is one of the most beautiful dark skin characters I've ever seen. So yeah I absolutely agree Ms.Harriyanna, whitewashing is *ABSOLUTELY* colorism, it all stems down from colorism period. Like what my dad always says, "Brown skin makes good kin." BTW Gurl!!!!! You are slaying the gorgeous red afro with the dark purple *BeBe* jacket today honey!!!!!! You are definitely serving Starfire and original Clawdeen from "Monster High" vibes girl. You go Queen!!!!! 👑💜👍
Don't get me started on all the Human Lion King fan art. Whitewashing Everywhere! The only Human Lion King fan art I've ever loved are the ones done by Pugletto.
My favorite character from Omori, Kel has a darker skin compared to other characters from the game and it's very common to see fanarts of him with a whiter skin, this makes me really mad honestly
I always used to hear that the reason they don't draw black characters or that they white wash them is because it's "harder to draw darker skintones" or that they "don't know how".. But the reality is it's not harder. It's just not. Most artists that say this just haven't bothered to put in any time or practice learning how to color other skintones than pale white and or done any research or study into what colors to use for highlights and shadows. It's harder for them because they haven't practiced. They didn't pop out of the womb knowing how to shade white people. They had to learn that. And they put in the time and effort to. But when it's a darker skintone, suddenly it's "too hard". And they'll work on other aspects of their art, but they'll never step outside of their comfort zone when it comes to skintone. Because it was never about difficulty. Color theory ALSO isn't an excuse, and is actually the opposite. If you understand color theory, you should know how to work with all different colors and tones. Color theory doesn't say "don't use these colors." The fact that you can't figure out how to use colors that compliment a specific skintone isn't you "using color theory". It's proof that you don't know anything about what color theory is or how to use it. It's just a line artists use as a shield so they don't have to unpack their racism and draw anything other than a pale white person
I would like to contribute as a fellow artist (drawing for around seven years now). I was learning how to color dark skin for some time (some years), and I would like to add my own two cents. Even if it’s a pastel pallet, the thing is that the character’s dark skin would still look dark-skinned. I experimented by applying several different screen layer modes of pastel pink to get results. I got two different OCs to do the job. While white skin would show as tints of pink shades, my other character would have visibly purple-like colors. All darker, my character still looks dark. Even the colors of other colors can change too (like red hair showing as shades of pink, or dark purple hair being lighter purples). I tried different layer modes. In every one of them, that character still appeared to have dark skin. Yes, even when I applied a white screen layer mode, my characters’ pallet colors change … but that character still looks to have darker skin! So in conclusion, even with a pastel pallet, one can still incorporate a way to keep the integrity of a character’s dark skin intact.
Another example is the Ishtar family in YuGiOh. Marik and Odion keep their skin tone for the whole show but when the sister Ishizu makes her second appearance they made her skin and eyes lighter for literally no reason. Like no WTF what have you done to my Egyptian waifu.
I love your videos and the fact you are calling out all this colorism in the art community. This is good content I love to see on UA-cam. P.S. The ENCANTO fandom is... yikes... The reason I have never taken the time to do fanart of it is because of how racist and colorist most if not all the people involved in it, are. It's... It's honestly disgusting. But... Whatever. I do love Isabella's design, and Dolores. They're both so gorgeous. Maybe one day I'll draw them when I get a chance. Anyway, Thank you so much for your videos. Always love to watch them, as I said. =)
Well black latino/Latina people do exist. And yeah them thinking that making characters lighter to fix them is wrong. It's one thing to do a what if these characters were different races type thing but to draw the character and make her lighter solely because you feel she is prettier that way, that's very messed up. Though I was never able to read comic books but that is an interesting fact about Starfire that I didn't know.
I don't draw characters of color as much as I should, but when I do, I ALWAYS do my best to match the skin tone. A character's race is part of her heritage! Anyway thank you for bringing this to everyone's attention.
I make really stylized art with mostly pale and muted colors, so when I draw/paint people, I tend to do pale East Asian or Nordic people. HOWEVER, I recently drew Isabela in my own personal style. But I didn’t “use color theory” or any of the bullshit, I just figured out a way that it looked good in my style. It wasn’t difficult. It wasn’t.
I remember getting mad when a promotional picture of Phichit Chulanont (Yuri On Ice) that to me looked extremely white (he’s not) I was so mad, my mom eventually came into my room and had to point it out that they didn’t color any of the characters skin tones. Phichit is my favorite character so I don’t like to see him wronged (He is a beautiful ray of sunshine). The only excuse I can think of is they don’t know how to use darker color skin tones whichI don’t see that as an excuse. I can’t draw but I used to paint and I preferred to use pastels and some bold neon colors for my work but eventually I worked on using darker colors and making them work with my style. I know it’s not the same thing but if I can do that in a few weeks, then people with more experience than me can try to get a skin tone right.
It really annoys me when people white wash dark skin characters and make them light skin i would never forget when they white washed Luna from scooby doo twice which made me mad because her skin tone didnt need to be changed i liked the fact that she was a dark skin heavy metal singer 🤷🏿♂️
This is specially obvious in digital art, like,, color picker tool anyone?? But even in traditional, there's no excuse. Sometimes my lighting or materials make characters look lighter than I mean them to - but guys, it's just one trip to Photoshop to fix it before posting.
It is not hard in the slightest to keep characters skin dark its wild people try to pull that. I actually did a watercolor commission of Isabela earlier this year, and I do traditional; it really wasnt hard at all lmao and I loved doing her, I did her first look with the purple dress and flower petals, she was so fun! I love her so much (im weak for bitchy girls so... easy fave lmao) Digital artists have less of an excuse of it being hard to keep characters dark
Lin Manuel Miranda is actually thinking about turning Encanto into a Broadway show and if that happens, I would love to play Isabela. Especially because I latched on to her as soon as I saw her for the first time she was the only person in the family that looked like me and as a black person, I felt like saw myself
I didn’t realize how big of a problem this was. But I’ve seen something that reminds me of this. A daycare Center near my home used to have a drawing of Dora the Explorer. But Dora was lighter than she is on the TV show. And she also had blue eyes and went on the TV show she has brown eyes. Dora in the other characters they had on the front have since been replaced with other cartoon characters.
Starfire should be played by women of color imo. Also I don't think she was designed after Naomi Campbell. Starfire came out in 1981, Naomi had to be 10 years old by then.
A year later but I hope you either had a discussion with your friend and they learned, apologized, and started to do better. Or you pulled back and set boundaries where at the very least they aren’t allowed to draw your characters anymore.
Naomi Campbell was like 6 years old when Starfire first came out, how was Starfire's design inspired by her before she became famous? I'm a little confused. Lol
I love your videos so much, but your pronunciation of Encanto is killing me! It is pronounced En-kahn-toh like on in pronto. It can also be pronounced the way you're trying to say it but your accent is too American almost southern(?) on the can sound when that sound shouldn't be so harsh(idk how else to describe it besides maybe too much emphasis) Not angry at all just trying to educate💕
just to let you know, this is rude. your being disrespectful about my southern accent. this is how i naturally speak. it's one thing if you just told me that i was saying it wrong, but you felt the need to comment on my southern accent and that's not ok.
@@harriyanna I'm so sorry I didn't mean to be rude at all about your southern accent, especially since I'm also southern and sometimes have an accent. I was just trying to describe what was wrong and southern accents don't always want to mix with speaking Spanish/gen
Color Theory is a real thing for certain artstyles a lot of "white washed" fanart are in styles or are present in settings where the light reflection would make the character appear slightly lighter skinned simmilar to real life. For example there was one controversy where an anime inspired encanto fanart of Dolares and they were attacking the artist. Dolores was not made that much lighter she was still visably poc she was lighter because she was in a bright area against a blue sky. Even within officail media skin tone will change depending on the lighting. Have none of yall noticed how the colorpallete of some characters completely shift at different light levels and in different settings.
The problem is that this cannot be applied to every piece of white washed fanart or for every artist. Color Theory gets thrown around as the reason for characters appearing lighter skinned regardless of the actual setting of the piece. For individual artists it becomes a problem when they seem to only portray characters in these settings and as a result never draw them in their naturally darker skin tone. If an artist does not want to be labeled as whitewashing they should draw those characters in other settings with their proper skin tone as well. One good example of this that I have seen is a piece of fanart of Chel from The Road to El Dorodo where she is both in a bright, sunny setting but also partailly under some shade. The parts of her body in the light appear lighter, but the rest of her body that is under the shade is in her actual darker skin tone. Why more artists don't do things like this is confusing for if they are truly not trying to white wash these character
Hmm, weird that the artists always choose lighting that makes the character look lighter and never darker. Interesting how that works. Edit: also, it's not just the skin tone. Countless times I have seen artists give black characters a looser hair texture, narrower noses, thinner lips, skinnier bodies. It's clearly not just about the color of the skin.
hiii, just to clear up some confusion. starfire's more recent designs were modeled after naomi campbell.
Yeah, a lot of racist refuse to acknowledge the fact Starfire has been to designed with afro-centric features before. She's even had braids one of her official designs.
Naomi Campbell? Interesting. Tyra Banks is not gonna like this. Lol. 😉😜😄
@@devontamosley4487 you’re messy and I am here for it👁👄👁🤣‼️
I wonder how people can look at a dark skin character and go "yes I'll make this character lighter/white" like why
@@digimonalvatrax2738 wow that’s honesty and some deep thinking, thx u admitting that
because its psychological they do it without realizing, and that's the fault of years of history.
It's unconscious bias most of the time, but it also can be on purpose, depends on the person
but its a fictional character though. its just skin color though. so who cares? Why do you care so much if its just fictional characters? why the fragility and outrage? Isnt this the justification blacks have when you want to blackwash white characters? that its "just skin color and a fictional character." so why do you care if a fan artists change the skin color of a FICTIONAL character? make it make sense and unpack your black hypocrisy and racism.
What I noticed is that fan artists would leave black male characters dark skinned, while black female characters are the only exception to this rule. People want the unambiguous black men… but for black women we’re always made lighter skinned or biracial, and it’s so infuriating to see another black queen made into a light skinned girl MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!!!
Black male characters get whitewashed too ,Raihan from Pokémon Sword and Shield being an example ,however that being said Nessa from the same game got the worse treatment of two in comparison.
THANK YOUU
@@miguelcruz2941 I didn’t say black male characters don’t get whitewashed but it’s mostly black female characters that get the treatment. but okay ig
Yes!!😭
Its the exact same way in tv shows. The dad and son will be 100% black and have all of the common black features, but the mother and daughter will be biracial with loose hair and almost white passing. Pushes the narrative that darker skin is maculine. People suck
Don’t forget about the featurism attached. Many fan art of Dolores and Camilo with straighter their hair. Same with Amanda the Adventurer. She has afro-puffs but so much fan art gives her straight hair.
You all have no idea of how close I am to actually losing my sanity *everytime* I see whitewashed fanart of Esmeralda, Isabela, Tiana, etc.
Fr, I've never seen any white washed fan art of Tiana, I agree, it's always insufferable seeing artist on Insta, Twitter, Tumblr, etc white washing a dark skinned character but whenever someone decides to make a head cannon of a light skinned character people start loosing their shit, it's also sad that a lot of artist, rarely decide to draw dark skinned character.
It happens to all the Encanto characters, I've seen ppl drawing Camilo and Dolores pale with European features as if they're not literally black
Even Disney themselves has whitewashed Tiana in promotional art/material... it's very strange
@@snowpocalypse69 how are they black
@@electricay they're afro latina i think?
I hate it because what's so hard about using the eyedrop tool to color the skin
THIS
ITS LITERALLY JUST THAT SIMPLE
Eye dropper sucks sometimes though, I always get the wrong color still sometimes
You realize that doesn’t always work sometimes
An artist Was trying to draw the new Ariel and tried to color pick the skin tone she had in the trailer and still got accused for “”white washing her” even tho they literally showed they color picked what it gave him from the screenshot
So in a way no, the eye drop tool doesn’t always work and there’s sadly not many tutorials for dark skin tones so it’s very limiting
As an artist, it really depends on the reference picture. For me, it’s easier to color pick for fan art of 2D anime and cartoons because there are more flat colors so it’s easier to get accurate colors. However, 3D animation and real people tend to have a lot of shading, rendering, and lighting, just lots of lack of flat colors. As of now, I’ve only done one fan art where my reference photo was a real person (Chrissy from Stranger Things) and man, it was very frustrating getting a natural looking palette that wasn’t super grey looking. It can be difficult to translate colors to your art style. That being said, don’t use this as an excuse to whitewash. Just try your best to match the colors of the character/person you’re drawing.
The fact that it should go without saying that making a dark skinned character lighter is colorist/racist but people would defend this just goes to show how much fandom still reeks with colorism, and that's if they care about the characters of color at all since they often get ignored in favor of light skinned characters.
It always bothered me when somebody would take a dark-skinned character and make them lighter and say they're "fixing them" or making them "look better".
Doing this is just as trashy as the other way around...
@@chrispambo1539 No, it’s really not.
@@chrispambo1539 it really isnt. Black cartoon/anime edits are a way for us black people to get equal representation in the media since 90% of leads in fictional media are white or fair skinned.
@chris pambo So imagine having a little representation and a small amount characters that look like you being whitewashed because colorism, European Beauty Standards, and anti-blackness.
@@chrispambo1539
You tried
People who say, "OhHh DwAwInG dArK sKiN iS hAwD" it's a skill issue, if you can color light skin you can color dark skin simple as that.
Apparently they forgot that increasing saturation was a thing,but only when it’s skin.
EXACTLY LIKE... it's not that difficult WHAT 😭as a fanartist it is actually ridiculous to me that people think it's hard. the only exception is if it is traditional and you don't have the materials/colours for it. however for the digital there is absolutely NO EXCUSE, like you can colour drop and shit
What it's infuriating, is that if the half-white characters are drawn canonically and originally dark skin/tan skin, most artists will use excuses like "It's not whitewashing if they're half-white." No. IT STILL IS. Because that's how they were originally drawn as by their creators and using the half-white excuse won't cover up your bs. Admit you hate to draw them dark skin/tan skin (as they are presented in canon), and you prefer to draw them as white skin like their white mom or dad and move on. 😭
Sometimes, people are forgetting that even people who are half-white can have darker or tan skin, exist.
hell, even people who are fully white can have darker or tan skin
Excellent point! One of my cousins is wasian and is as tan/brown as his Filipino mom. A former coworker of mine is wasian and is as brown as his Indian dad.
THANK YOU as someone who is half white half black I agree and its annoying. One of my older sisters( who is white ) was helping me write some papers and when it came to it asking for my race she just put WHITE........ I NEVER LOOKED AT MY ARM TO CHECK MY SKIN COLOR SO FAST lol I just looked at her and said " so you think I'm just white?" it was quiet and awkward after that
@@whatever5401 a darker PINK is not “dark”. And the ones who do have super dark brown skin is because of sun DAMAGE for intentionally being in the sun for too long. Which is why their skin is LEATHERY
so using your OWN logic, it makes sense for white fictional characters to remain white. because they were originally drawn as white by their creators. and according to you, that shouldn't change.
see how black hypocrisy works?
When I watched Mojo97 video and she talks about how they didn’t have any black people to model for her art class… It’s really sad how black/brown people aren’t added in drawing programs. It’s important for people to learn how to draw and especially color brown/black people.
Amphibia finally represented Asians, let alone SE Asians that don't default to fair skin and straight hair and mfs in the fandom do this shit :/ like come on
As a SEAsian (specifically Vietnamese), it's so rare seeing a character with the same complexion as me since almost every Asian character I saw growing up was pale and when there's finally an Asian character with darker skin, people in the fandom whitewash them in every fanart
@@whatever5401 exactly! That just makes the ignorance more annoying.
I love Amphibia even more now, it really sickens me seeing that one of the only representation southeast asians have is taken away from them
I'll be honest, I didnt consider Starfire a dark skinned girl. To me she was orange, but it does make sense for her to be played by black ladies.
Also, to me, color theory is only an excuse if youre new to art or bad at coloring and youre learning. After a while, its an empty excuse
Yeah I agree
I mean she's essentially an alien and I always thought she was orange so I never really saw her as a "person of color" but again I do understand the annoyance with coloring characters lighter than they're supposed to be
She’s literally based off of a Black woman tho. 🙃
@@imthebossmermaid3648 really? I never knew that
@Ariana Well, now ya do! 🙂
@@imthebossmermaid3648 now i know, and knowing is half the battle
It bothers me when MGA always whitewashed Sasha’s skin tone on her artworks. I haven’t forgotten they did the same thing to Flora and Aisha on Winx Club in the later seasons.
n when they whitewashed flora or ~~terra~~ by casting a white person omjfjdjdjfif uuughhh im glad aisha was still portrayed by a dark skinned person but they changed her to the mammy archetype whiCH NOOO
@@medea__witchhh the Netflix adaptation didn't whitewash Aisha, but it washed away her entire personality
@@whatever5401 into a very parental personality which can mirror racist stereotypes of black women so its like what's happening
Doesn’t help they lightwashed Pepa compared to her initial designs.
Because of course we need a reason for Dolores, the only confirmed Afro latina in the family, to be lighter than her youngest brother and father. Yes the fact she isn’t allowed to be darkskinned is colorism
I've seen a few videos on that subject from Columbians, and they said it was a good call to give Pepa light skin to break the stigma that there's only one skin shade for people of color. I'm not too involved with the community myself, but I've seen comments that gatekeep people from it for being "too white", so I'm inclined to agree with them. Not sure about Dolores though.
Oh my god I can't believe you're all still bitching about Pepa's skin color it's been almost a fucking year, is it a crime for her to b light-skinned? A latin-american white woman in a latin-american family is colorism? I have never in my entire life seen people more obsessed with skin colors than gringos, at this point you guys are delusional it's insane. Let me explain this real quick and simple, she is light-skinned because latino is not a goddamn skin color, latinos are a mix of absolutely everything, we can have light skin, dark skin, brown eyes, green eyes, east-asian features, black hair, curly hair, blonde hair, straight hair. In Peru for example, there's a lot of people with east-asian features because they descend from Chinese or Japanese immigrants, in Argentina there's a lot of light-skinned people because they descend from Italian or German immigrants, and the most well known source of white skin in Latin America: Spanish and Portuguese. The only ones offended with Pepa's skin color are you gringos, us latinos couldn't care less about that because it's so fucking normal and irrelevant to us, it should be even more irrelevant to y'all so stop trying to talk for a culture that's not even yours.
@@kiwikarp9509
Were they from Afro Colombians though? Because one thing the Latino community hates talking about is the antiBlack racism
With every “if you look too white you aren’t considered Latino/a” there’s about 10x the amount of antiBlack/darkskinned comments waiting to come around the corner. You go to any Latin American country, you will most likely see White or white passing models and actors everywhere. And if not? Skin bleaching products
All my life I have never seen people complain about White Latine people. They are very much praised in the community and it is encouraged to marry them to water down Black and/or indigenous features of a family tree. So it always astounds me whenever we talk about Afro Latino representation, somehow that means White Latine people never get represented in media when that is far from the truth
Want to include a White/white passing Latine person in the family? Go ahead. Don’t whitewash two of the characters in the process when you could have just made another family member
@@kiwikarp9509 she is Afro Latina what is there not to be sure about?
Remember, everyone: using references while drawing is like using recipes while cooking. It's not cheating, it's a guide, especially when it's unfamiliar. Personally, I want to learn how to draw box braids, so I favorited a UA-cam tutorial on how to do one's own hair into box braids so I could see the structure of them. And I can never get enough of gazing lovingly at photos of Sacha Dhawan--just to get his skin tone right, of course! ;)
Btw I recall asking in a server how blushing works when people have darker skin, as I am a light-skinned wasian who blushes pink visibly. I'd love it if people weighed in with their personal experiences of how blushing shows up, but I'll copy-paste what one person said:
So blushing, in its essence, is nothing more than a nervous/vascular phenomenon where blood rushes to the face, neck, and chest. As you’ve stated, this looks different for every skin tone. Whereas [light-skinned characters] might blush a rather dark red color, [medium/brown-skinned characters] might appear slightly rosy, or their complexions might darken. In [dark-skinned character]’s case, you might even describe him as shiny, bc the rush of blood plumps up the skin making it smoother, and the extra color darkens the skin- smooth + dark = more reflective
So in a way, they're glowing... I'd love to see that! It's so beautiful seeing such a huge variety of skin colors and seeing how they interact with the environment and stimuli. We need more blushing black and dark-skinned people of color in general! ❤️
There are plenty of tutorials on the internet teaching people on how to draw dark-skinned characters and different curly hair types and textures. The internet is filled with different fandoms and subcultures off all skin colors.
People really try to use the "it's the lighting" argument as if there aren't artists who are also giving black characters looser hair textures, slimmer noses, skinnier bodies, anything that makes them more palatable to a Eurocentric beauty standard.
The lighting argument is annoying enough when it comes to fan-artists, it’s worse when it’s the people working on a show itself who try to blame it on the lighting engine, (3D animated shows,) for example how Kanan is super ambiguous but distinctly not white in Star Wars Rebels, like I’ve seen some people speculate anywhere from POC Greek, to Arab, to Assyrian, Iranian, Armenian, Mizrahi Jewish, to Latino, to vaguely South Asian based on his comic book backstory with literal comic panels showing his own skin-tone to be roughly the same as Depa Billaba his Jedi master who was modelled after the Indian Turkish actor Dipika O’Neill Joti who played her in the prequel trilogy, (said comic is still broadly speaking canon and those same panels show him to also be not that far off from the clones skin tones and since they’re all meant to look like Temuera Morrison as Jango Fett that makes them Māori and therefore POC,) some people use the ‘tanning’ argument to justify how the post Kanan blinding character model shifts back and forth between looking just like a slightly lighter version of his previous model and being indistinguishable from the explicitly white characters to say that he’s white, but his final character model, artistic depictions within the series itself one of which carries over to live-action and his son having a similar skin tone clearly shows that he was always meant to be read as POC, of course the White Washed Batch using that white-washed Cal Kestis looking model of him to represent him as Caleb Dume with that same whitewashed model cropping up in the Clone Wars and Tales of the Jedi doesn’t make him white, those shows are notorious for taking clearly POC characters and at best lighting their skin and at worst literally changing their facial features and their skin tone but keeping them canonically POC.
A similar problem concerns Ezra Bridger also from Rebels, (though this one is more caused by ‘fans’ and executives being annoying,) it’s an established fact that Ezra Bridger was loosely influenced and inspired by Ralph Macchio as Daniel LaRusso in the original Karate Kid, naturally the totally ‘not’ racist fans took that to mean his character model was meant to be read as a naturally tanned but ultimately white Greek-Italian boy this is despite the fact that his skin-tone was several shades darker than Kanan’s, his late parents character designs indicating vaguely space Arab and/or Mizrahi Jewish, on top of the somewhat unintentional space Aladdin coding in season 1 and 2, some people started reading him as somewhere between Indian, Latino (but not in the sense of European Spanish or Portuguese,) or as Arab, others however clung to the idea of him being white, given the direction Ezra’s character arc seemed to be heading post season 2 finale, (2015) they pushed the ridiculous theory based merely on the trailer for TFA that Kylo Ren was either an adult Ezra or somehow Kanan despite Kylo/Ben clearly being Adam Driver, even with that stupid voice changer, when the movie came out and he was established as Ben Solo that theory quickly crashed and burned, people still fan-casted white people to play Kanan and Ezra if they ever made the jump from animation to live action, (I’m pretty sure at least some of those white washed suggestions included Timothee Chalamet and Tom Holland.) Eventually Rebels ended, people moved on, hoping to one day get to see the Ghost Crew in live action, so when casting began for Ahsoka, some people got vaguely upset about the possibility of him being correctly represented as POC, Mena Massoud was in the running for the role and ultimately Eman Esfandi was cast, naturally totally not ‘racist’ fans met this news with abject horror claiming Eman, the producers, Disney, and the cast directors had ‘race swapped’ Ezra, (the fault on the side of the production crew of Rebels for going with a somewhat ambiguous design and not shutting down and shutting up these so-called fans sooner.)
on another important note, im most definitely mad at the encanto fandom for whitewashing pepas side of the family, are we forgetting that side is afro-latino????? HELLOOOO?
I remember seeing a fanart of Camilo but his hair was nearly red, his skin tone was whiter than pepa, his curls were eavy and had typical eurocentric features like a eurotric nose.. he couldve nearly pass as ed sheeran's future son 💀
i know exactly which picture you talking about too LMAOOOO
I will never forget what the Pokémon fandom did to Nessa, a character I adored from the start.
Colorism and racism is global so it doesn’t surprise me how prevalent it is in fandoms and art circles. That said, I love your Starfire look, Harri. ^_^
Someone even drew Nessa as a monkey as "bait"
And now with the newest champion, Geeta, she’s Desi & people already whitewashed her not long after she was released 😭
@@Pridekun97 Pain.
When those "artists" drew her as a gorilla, I nearly threw up.
@@sangsterxx1897 I heard the artist who drew Nessa as a gorilla also drew Black Panther as a white blonde-haired blue-eyed man, compared Starfire from the live action Teen Titan to an ape and was throwing several tantrums because a black guy was representing Sweden in Eurovision
A few years back, Sanrio made plushies of Pearl and Marina from Splatoon. Marina is very dark skinned, but they made her plushie white.
The promotion art for the plush even made her brown (though barely. Wasn’t even her shade so I don’t get why people defended it as being pastel.)
@@superstar-zn7wn I’ve seen fan edits that had that artwork just with darker skin and it still works within the palette so it just doesn’t make sense why people use that as an excuse
@Kokopium I’m not a danganronpa fan, but that sucks. I wondered why people kept saying it was their "style". It’s obvious those they don’t know what they’re talking about singe even if they wanted to make her pastel, what they did was far from it.
@Kokopium There’s also the fact that Yasuhiro and Akane were paired with Monkichi the monkey. I couldn’t believe they thought this was a good idea. They could have chosen any other Sanrio character.
It isn’t even JUST Sanrio, it’s been a problem since Marina’s introduction. She’s dark-skinned in the game but in promos like the splatfests she’s whitewashed as hell, which really she don’t even look white she just look grey. They’ve been doing Frye the same way. Not surprisingly but very disappointing. I mean iirc they do Frye well with the LIVE promos but when it comes to splatfests Marina and she are just whitewashed/grey lookin.
Here's the thing with Starfire: ANY woman of any race can play her, not just white girls however, black/hispanic women imo are better suited for the role. Their problem isn't the fact Starfire is played by a black woman, their problem is the fact Anna Dipped is dark skinned. I think if they casted a black woman closer to Starfire's complexion, then these comics nerds wouldn't have shit to say. Or keep the same actress and give her orange makeup to look more like Starfire and the issue is solved but then again they didn't bother to make Beast Boy green on the show.
I think they could've casted a brown skinned woman but I really love Anna Diop in the role.
So Hispanic women can no longer be darkskinned Black women?
Also buddy that’s just racism/colorism
If you gotta start something with “anyone can play this character, it’s just people had a problem she was played by a darkskinned black woman” then you just described racism
@@afrolens9532 I really meant any race can play this character. I'm addressing the people who have a problem with the fact she's played by a black actress alone, despite the fact there are black women who are close to Starfire's skin tone cause Starfire is technically orange. I'm personally okay with actress herself, though I would've put some orange makeup on her and a little CGI to make her look like the character, similar to how Marvel handled Gamora. She's also an alien character she played by a black actress and they have green makeup to look like the character.
@@jourdonpatron212
You are comparing Disney funded franchise movies to a tv show
Either way you addressed racism. If anyone has a problem with her skin then yes that's racism by default
Also notice you or really any fan don't say anything about Raven not being grey or super pale or Beast Boy not being green
As an asian, I can say that I have the same skin tone as you. I have heard some people tell me that I'm not really Asian because "I'm not pale enough".
That's just sad
and the way there was a whole tiktok thing on tiktok of "if tiana was white!! 😱" or them whitewashing nessa (and i think she's the only dark skin black woman in pokemon sword and shield). and its the way they get so mad over us making one character black (like pinkie pie, for example). there's millions of commenters getting mad over someone making pinkie pie black and their excuse is "she's a pink pony, she's not black, she can be whatever we want" but suddenly that doesn't apply when pinkie pie is black (and her being black makes the most sense, considering she had a PICK and AFRO PUFFS in an episode). like for some reason it's never okay for a character to be black, dark skin, or even just brown-skin.
i actually really like the idea of Pinkie being black
It's especially gross with video game characters where people will literally make mods to make the characters white/lighter
*flashbacks to the white nessa mod people made for pokemon sword and shield* that crap was absolutely disgusting. Like they hate a person's skin color so much that they'll literally hack a game and waste hours to alter it? Talk about being a massive loser.
now that is pretty messed up
What I HATE is when we call out whitewashed art and people will defend it and say ooooh well its just their artstyle get over it 🙄🙄 but as SOON as someone draws a black version of a character for fun its a problem and you shouldn't be changing a characters skin color I fucking hate it
Literally a mess holy shit
it's very hypocritical and literally doesn't make sense
Another dc character who suffers from colorism is Talia Al Ghul(Chinese and Arab) in the comics they often draw her darker when she's being villainized and white when she's the "good guy"(not to mention 90% of media about her son damian draws him as white)
not to mention the bruno simps ALWAYS making his features look more european (smaller nose, paler skin, etc)
you right, I'm sick of the excuses. the nonsense/willful ignorance needs to end
as a black person I can say that I'm not fond of whitewashing At All but I also think whitewashing is a topic that gets mishandled especially by well-meaning white artists . whitewashing doesn't only exist in art , there are historical events and figures that have whitewashed narratives to prevent those impacted from speaking out . this is largely a western / European thing but it doesn't exempt the regular person from criticism when it happens .
I was in the Encanto fandom for the better part of 2022 and the back-and-fourth discourse between whitewashing and blackwashing (namely of the afro-side of the family) felt like thinly-veild antiblackness with the way it was handled . yes whitewashing isn't accidentally making the skin tones a few tints lighter and there are MUCH BETTER ways to approach actual whitewashing in practice but the mask-off disrespect of the Caribbean identities some of the characters and black people's input just turned me off and really just solidified the sentiment that anti-blackness is not just a western thing . my word obviously doesn't go above the latine community , but it was truthfully a rude awakening to see so much infighting among POC for how the movie was celebrated for representing so many distinctive features .
I feel the same way with the Twisted Wonderland fandom. How do you make the only 4 main dark skinned characters lighter than what they really are? They are canonically a different race than everyone else, not sure about Jack tho. Yet, I saw Jack, Kalim, Jamil, and Leona look like a whole Caucasian in some fan art.
People make so many excuses for anime fanartists when they whitewash darker skinned characters when 1) the eyedrop tool exists for digital art and 2) you can search up references on the internet for darker-skinned models 3) darker skin toned copics/markers DO exist for traditional art, people just too cheap to go to their local art store to buy 2 or 3 to do accurate color matches and 4) plenty of poc artists post tutorials on how to render darker skin tones.
Maybe the difference in language might make it harder to do proper key word searches, but the resources *are* out there.
Hell the creator of Cowboy Bebop literally made that anime in the 90s before the popularization of the internet and digital art tech for the anime industry and he *still* went out of his way to find references to draw the black people in that show accurately. What's anyone else's excuse?
Speaking of whitewashing, y'all remember what they did to Aisha, Musa, and Flora in the later seasons?
Also I hate when people say "Oh its the lighting!" Or "Oh the colors are pastel and soft skin the skin as to be the same!" To excuse white washing like you are this emoji 🤓 in real life
Fr! This is so true! They did this to Luz and Gus from the owl house and they dare to make an excuse that it's a filter or other things. How hard is it to keep a of color characters' skin color, the same. How!?
What often irks me is how some of these people will use "lighting" as an excuse
People really don't know when "colour theory " applies. If the character is 3 shades lighter, EVERYTHING has to be 3 shades lighter too. They should be comparatively as dark as the original. _That_ is colour theory. They have to be visibly darker than everything else even if the colour itself is light.
There's some good examples of that with pastel shades where they use like a milk-coffee-esque brown for dark-skin because light-skin is basically white so the brown looks much darker in comparison.
That being said, it's still better to go as close as you can to the original character's shade. There are tutorials on all social media as to how to colour dark-skinned characters. It doesn't have to be exact, it just has to be visibly close.
i once saw someone say 'whitewashing is ok bc light skin people are still black' LIKE.....how do you say that and not feel embarrassed💀
i rlly appreciate that you mentioned marcy and anne from amphibia !! i’m southeast and east asian. my skin tone is very similar to marcy’s and while that isn’t dark it is seen as tan in some east asian countries. the majority of asians that get represented in the US are light skinned and i’ve had ppl tell me that they didn’t think i should classify myself as asian since i’m mostly southeast asian (basically implying that if you aren’t east asian you aren’t asian at all)
I love your starfire look.
She's really giving Koriand'r
Ikr purr
Seeing dark skinned characters with dark eyes and curly hair in recent years has been so refreshing. I remember how frequently designers used to give dark-skinned characters light/blue eyes or light/white hair to soften their ‘blackness’ or ethnic features (i.e. Kida, Allura, Yue, Katara, Storm). It’s always been an ‘interesting’ trend to see, to say the least. 👀
Yes speak on it, I saw fan art of Amanda the adventure and they literally had her as tan, with straight her. She is obviously a dark skinned girl with kinky hair. 🙄
This exact thing has made me burn with anger for so long. Like child me couldn't enjoy seeing dark skin characters fanart cause of this. Like dang 😒
And when my sister and I became adults it was really rough because she was just really getting into her fandoms. We've had several conversations about this and fandom racism in general.
i hate when people make a character darker or lighter. like why? 😟
Unrelated but I love your hair today. Red is such a great color on you
This disgusting white-washing bullshit has got to go. We are not in the 1920s anymore. I really hate how this disgusting society views dark skin as ugly, unpretty, dirty, undesirable, etc. It's so pathetic and the fact that the art community is very infamous for doing stuff like this is very appalling and immensely disappointing. We need more dark skin characters in the media especially in cartoons for many dark skin beauties out there to identify with and see themselves in. Like Isabella from "Enchanto" for example, who by the way is one of the most beautiful dark skin characters I've ever seen. So yeah I absolutely agree Ms.Harriyanna, whitewashing is *ABSOLUTELY* colorism, it all stems down from colorism period. Like what my dad always says, "Brown skin makes good kin." BTW Gurl!!!!! You are slaying the gorgeous red afro with the dark purple *BeBe* jacket today honey!!!!!! You are definitely serving Starfire and original Clawdeen from "Monster High" vibes girl. You go Queen!!!!! 👑💜👍
What are the odds that you’d post a video about Encanto the same day my college campus movie theatre plays that movie? I am so excited!
Don't get me started on all the Human Lion King fan art. Whitewashing Everywhere! The only Human Lion King fan art I've ever loved are the ones done by Pugletto.
They’re literally in Africa…wtf. They SHOULD be Black. 🤦🏾♀️
My favorite character from Omori, Kel has a darker skin compared to other characters from the game and it's very common to see fanarts of him with a whiter skin, this makes me really mad honestly
I always used to hear that the reason they don't draw black characters or that they white wash them is because it's "harder to draw darker skintones" or that they "don't know how".. But the reality is it's not harder. It's just not. Most artists that say this just haven't bothered to put in any time or practice learning how to color other skintones than pale white and or done any research or study into what colors to use for highlights and shadows. It's harder for them because they haven't practiced. They didn't pop out of the womb knowing how to shade white people. They had to learn that. And they put in the time and effort to. But when it's a darker skintone, suddenly it's "too hard". And they'll work on other aspects of their art, but they'll never step outside of their comfort zone when it comes to skintone. Because it was never about difficulty.
Color theory ALSO isn't an excuse, and is actually the opposite. If you understand color theory, you should know how to work with all different colors and tones. Color theory doesn't say "don't use these colors." The fact that you can't figure out how to use colors that compliment a specific skintone isn't you "using color theory". It's proof that you don't know anything about what color theory is or how to use it. It's just a line artists use as a shield so they don't have to unpack their racism and draw anything other than a pale white person
I would like to contribute as a fellow artist (drawing for around seven years now). I was learning how to color dark skin for some time (some years), and I would like to add my own two cents.
Even if it’s a pastel pallet, the thing is that the character’s dark skin would still look dark-skinned. I experimented by applying several different screen layer modes of pastel pink to get results. I got two different OCs to do the job.
While white skin would show as tints of pink shades, my other character would have visibly purple-like colors. All darker, my character still looks dark. Even the colors of other colors can change too (like red hair showing as shades of pink, or dark purple hair being lighter purples).
I tried different layer modes. In every one of them, that character still appeared to have dark skin. Yes, even when I applied a white screen layer mode, my characters’ pallet colors change … but that character still looks to have darker skin!
So in conclusion, even with a pastel pallet, one can still incorporate a way to keep the integrity of a character’s dark skin intact.
Another example is the Ishtar family in YuGiOh. Marik and Odion keep their skin tone for the whole show but when the sister Ishizu makes her second appearance they made her skin and eyes lighter for literally no reason. Like no WTF what have you done to my Egyptian waifu.
Harriyana, MA'AM, you look fantastic with that redhair. ❤️🙏
I love your videos and the fact you are calling out all this colorism in the art community. This is good content I love to see on UA-cam. P.S. The ENCANTO fandom is... yikes... The reason I have never taken the time to do fanart of it is because of how racist and colorist most if not all the people involved in it, are. It's... It's honestly disgusting. But... Whatever. I do love Isabella's design, and Dolores. They're both so gorgeous. Maybe one day I'll draw them when I get a chance. Anyway, Thank you so much for your videos. Always love to watch them, as I said. =)
Well black latino/Latina people do exist. And yeah them thinking that making characters lighter to fix them is wrong. It's one thing to do a what if these characters were different races type thing but to draw the character and make her lighter solely because you feel she is prettier that way, that's very messed up. Though I was never able to read comic books but that is an interesting fact about Starfire that I didn't know.
I don't draw characters of color as much as I should, but when I do, I ALWAYS do my best to match the skin tone. A character's race is part of her heritage!
Anyway thank you for bringing this to everyone's attention.
I make really stylized art with mostly pale and muted colors, so when I draw/paint people, I tend to do pale East Asian or Nordic people. HOWEVER, I recently drew Isabela in my own personal style. But I didn’t “use color theory” or any of the bullshit, I just figured out a way that it looked good in my style. It wasn’t difficult. It wasn’t.
Great job.
I remember getting mad when a promotional picture of Phichit Chulanont (Yuri On Ice) that to me looked extremely white (he’s not) I was so mad, my mom eventually came into my room and had to point it out that they didn’t color any of the characters skin tones. Phichit is my favorite character so I don’t like to see him wronged (He is a beautiful ray of sunshine).
The only excuse I can think of is they don’t know how to use darker color skin tones whichI don’t see that as an excuse.
I can’t draw but I used to paint and I preferred to use pastels and some bold neon colors for my work but eventually I worked on using darker colors and making them work with my style. I know it’s not the same thing but if I can do that in a few weeks, then people with more experience than me can try to get a skin tone right.
It really annoys me when people white wash dark skin characters and make them light skin i would never forget when they white washed Luna from scooby doo twice which made me mad because her skin tone didnt need to be changed i liked the fact that she was a dark skin heavy metal singer 🤷🏿♂️
This is specially obvious in digital art, like,, color picker tool anyone?? But even in traditional, there's no excuse. Sometimes my lighting or materials make characters look lighter than I mean them to - but guys, it's just one trip to Photoshop to fix it before posting.
It is not hard in the slightest to keep characters skin dark its wild people try to pull that. I actually did a watercolor commission of Isabela earlier this year, and I do traditional; it really wasnt hard at all lmao and I loved doing her, I did her first look with the purple dress and flower petals, she was so fun! I love her so much (im weak for bitchy girls so... easy fave lmao) Digital artists have less of an excuse of it being hard to keep characters dark
Lin Manuel Miranda is actually thinking about turning Encanto into a Broadway show and if that happens, I would love to play Isabela. Especially because I latched on to her as soon as I saw her for the first time she was the only person in the family that looked like me and as a black person, I felt like saw myself
If you want to play Isabela you’ll have to fight me for her!
@@imthebossmermaid3648 😂 omg yesss are you a theater kid too? If so, what’s your favorite musical? Mine is Mean Girls.
@@tarinblanding1584 Yes! Mine is Six: The Musical but I love MEan Girls too! IT's actually better than the movie and that's saying something!
@@imthebossmermaid3648 I would Love to play Janis Sarkisian in Mean Girls on Broadway someday
@@tarinblanding1584 I would just about die if I didn't get to play Katherine Howard in Six! 😭
I was shocked seeing the amphibia plushies cause why is marcy lighter than sasha????
All people have to do is take a screenshot of the character, open it up in CSP or whatever, and grab the correct skin color from there
I didn’t realize how big of a problem this was. But I’ve seen something that reminds me of this. A daycare Center near my home used to have a drawing of Dora the Explorer. But Dora was lighter than she is on the TV show. And she also had blue eyes and went on the TV show she has brown eyes. Dora in the other characters they had on the front have since been replaced with other cartoon characters.
3:00 I’m pretty sure he said it did exist, but it’s not as bad as people think it is.
unrelated to the topic but the red hair and purple jumpsuits (??) combo ?? immaculate
Starfire should be played by women of color imo. Also I don't think she was designed after Naomi Campbell. Starfire came out in 1981, Naomi had to be 10 years old by then.
her more recent designs are designed after naomi.
@@harriyanna Oh! Okay gotcha!
You published a book?! That's great! I knew there's still some writing blood in you. 🙂 Never lose that.
My best friend whitewashed my own character
Get rid of them, that’s not a best friend
Ex bsf I hope
That's horrible!
A year later but I hope you either had a discussion with your friend and they learned, apologized, and started to do better. Or you pulled back and set boundaries where at the very least they aren’t allowed to draw your characters anymore.
My thing is a bit off topic, but your hair looks amazing!!!
You said what is on my mind about these
Not even 10 seconds in and ik all you spit were straight facts
i paused the video, not to explain why i changed her colour (i've never made a single piece of fan art in my life) but for the algorithm...
Mohammed Agbadi has a wonderful video series on this subject. Highly recommend checking it out!
Oh my gosh, your hair looks AWESOME!!!
Your hair is so pretty!!
I feel like whoever was painting Jesus needs to see this.
The wig glasses combo 😍
Girllllll this wig is amazing 😍😍😍😍
So many people are white washing G3 Cleo. It’s starting to get annoying.
Naomi Campbell was like 6 years old when Starfire first came out, how was Starfire's design inspired by her before she became famous? I'm a little confused. Lol
her more recent designs.
Your hair so pretty
Another great vid Captain!!!
Also the term “l*me” is ableist /gen /nm
This is random but I love your hair! Red is the best color.
Could you make a video about black people making Asian and other ethnicities black?
If by “Asian” you mean just Japanese animation, then you should already stop
slay hook slay
I love your videos so much, but your pronunciation of Encanto is killing me! It is pronounced En-kahn-toh like on in pronto. It can also be pronounced the way you're trying to say it but your accent is too American almost southern(?) on the can sound when that sound shouldn't be so harsh(idk how else to describe it besides maybe too much emphasis) Not angry at all just trying to educate💕
just to let you know, this is rude. your being disrespectful about my southern accent. this is how i naturally speak. it's one thing if you just told me that i was saying it wrong, but you felt the need to comment on my southern accent and that's not ok.
@@harriyanna I'm so sorry I didn't mean to be rude at all about your southern accent, especially since I'm also southern and sometimes have an accent. I was just trying to describe what was wrong and southern accents don't always want to mix with speaking Spanish/gen
ohhh what the hell oh my godd no wayy
Color Theory is a real thing for certain artstyles a lot of "white washed" fanart are in styles or are present in settings where the light reflection would make the character appear slightly lighter skinned simmilar to real life. For example there was one controversy where an anime inspired encanto fanart of Dolares and they were attacking the artist. Dolores was not made that much lighter she was still visably poc she was lighter because she was in a bright area against a blue sky. Even within officail media skin tone will change depending on the lighting. Have none of yall noticed how the colorpallete of some characters completely shift at different light levels and in different settings.
I think it’s easy to tell when this is the case. However,if only their skin tone is changing that is questionable.
The problem is that this cannot be applied to every piece of white washed fanart or for every artist. Color Theory gets thrown around as the reason for characters appearing lighter skinned regardless of the actual setting of the piece. For individual artists it becomes a problem when they seem to only portray characters in these settings and as a result never draw them in their naturally darker skin tone.
If an artist does not want to be labeled as whitewashing they should draw those characters in other settings with their proper skin tone as well. One good example of this that I have seen is a piece of fanart of Chel from The Road to El Dorodo where she is both in a bright, sunny setting but also partailly under some shade. The parts of her body in the light appear lighter, but the rest of her body that is under the shade is in her actual darker skin tone. Why more artists don't do things like this is confusing for if they are truly not trying to white wash these character
Hmm, weird that the artists always choose lighting that makes the character look lighter and never darker. Interesting how that works. Edit: also, it's not just the skin tone. Countless times I have seen artists give black characters a looser hair texture, narrower noses, thinner lips, skinnier bodies. It's clearly not just about the color of the skin.
Can you talk about racism/misogyny in SpongeBob SquarePants?
harri, play dislyte. there's so many good representations of dark people :D
I love amphibia also u really educated me about so much thing Im not really aware about it
glad i could help
Hiiiii