This Nessa (from Pokemon SwSh) whitewashing controversy is kinda blowing up in the art community right now
- Thread starter vestan
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And the people saying that drawing a character a bit lighter in your fan art is "erasing black people" and jumping to all kinds of conclusions are?
As far as black skin tones go, she's definitely dark skinned. She's very clearly not what a lot of us would call "brownskinned" and definitely not "lightskinned". Her in game color just seems pale, but dark skin is the obvious intent...
Not the DARKEST skin either...
But that's exactly what happens when you whitewash a character???
Yes they are. This isn't rocket science. You should take their posts and try to learn from it, it will give some much needed insight. I honestly don't understand how you aren't banned yet for being extremely pejorative...
You don't seem to be willing to actually discuss ANYTHING here...
Yeah, Lenora and Grant are far darker. And Kiawe is the darkest.
Weird that she has blue eyes though.
This whole argument is fucking annoying and nitpicky for the sake of nitpicking. The artist isn't changing her skin color outright. They're changing the color to go with the color pallet the artist chooses. Lighting also has a hand in it. If my color pallet is mostly red-based I'm not gonna stick a fucking green in it. Really fucking annoying and disrespectful to edit artist's pictures and tell them their wrong. Fuck off. They're not whitewashing and if it looks lighter than usual its an artistic choice, not to fucking make her white. Jesus.
I guess I should go back to the post I did way back in the FF7 Barrett thread about skin color and photography. It's definitely relevant here as well, probably more relevant.
Based on at least this exchange I think they can read more than a little English.
"putting in your place"
Damn
also her fix is still more pale than the original
OP
OP
Yes, they are. A lot of this comes down to things like colorism, eurocentric beauty standards and subconcious biases. They're actually discussing what's at hand instead of antagonising literally everyone in the thread. I'd really recommend you just bounce as you don't seem to be interested in actually discussing anything.
Pretty much. If this were official art I could understand the backlash, but fan art?
How is changing the skin color any different than the gender or sexual orientation? It's fan art and fans do this type of stuff all the time. I absolutely would see the problem if it were official but it's not.
But where's the line, though? Where's the line between "legitimate concern" and just being offended for the sake of it? Or do you not think that such a line exists? I'm genuinely curious.
That's just the trope. Most every water gym leader except maybe Wallace has blue eyes. Wallace has more seagreen.
Yeah that specific modification is kinda weak tea in my opinion. First time I saw it my thought was "looks like she ate too many carrots" from how orange it looked.
I'm afraid I don't understand what this means
What's annoying is people trying to make it seem like someone recoloring the original artist's art in an effort to educate them about their problematic practices is EXTREMELY OFFENSIVE X100000000, while in the same breath acting like anyone who has a problem with the artist whitewashing a dark skinned character is just overreacting...
It's honestly nothing more than a pathetic attempt to reduce the gravity of the issue at hand...
It's honestly nothing more than a pathetic attempt to reduce the gravity of the issue at hand...
Changing the gender actually involves redesigning the character and it's not inherently sexist. If people started drawing canonically gay characters in hetero relationships I'd raise an eyebrow too.
This is kind of nuts to me. Depending on lighting conditions, palette choices, stylistic choices etc any person's skin, regardless of ethnicity, can come out as any million different hues.
You can go round and round in circles colour picking images from various different scenarios and styles, and it just doesn't mean anything. Here's Grace Jones:
And here she is again:
You could literally take any shot of her in any of the thousands of different photos taken of her and find radically different colours at work, because colour is really fucking complicated. The point being, I don't think colour picking is much "evidence" of whitewashing. If the character stops reading as black and starts to look Caucasian, sure, but looking at the fan art I don't see that at all. I do genuinely see an artist who's gone for a more pastel colour scheme, and that's absolutely fine.
You can go round and round in circles colour picking images from various different scenarios and styles, and it just doesn't mean anything. Here's Grace Jones:
And here she is again:
You could literally take any shot of her in any of the thousands of different photos taken of her and find radically different colours at work, because colour is really fucking complicated. The point being, I don't think colour picking is much "evidence" of whitewashing. If the character stops reading as black and starts to look Caucasian, sure, but looking at the fan art I don't see that at all. I do genuinely see an artist who's gone for a more pastel colour scheme, and that's absolutely fine.
I don't think it's as complicated as you make it seem. Changing the skin color from brown to pink has obvious implications that other things don't have.
Because there's a centuries' long historical context of black people being erased and whitewashed that actively contributes to stereotypical attitudes towards these very people?????
It's a dogwhistle often used by alt-right assholes online to dismiss claims of prejudice made by marginalized groups. The phrase itself says "their claims aren't valid, because they're looking for things to complain about", as if someone from a marginalized group seeing something problematic regarding the group they belong to shouldn't speak up about it.
The amount of people freaking out about this innocent fanart is absurd to be frankly honest. If it was the original creators who patched her skin to be lighter, or if she had lighter skin in her eventual anime appearance, then sure. But some person's random piece of fan art? Fucking hell, Twitter.
That being said, I don't see this as white washing at all, even after reading all of the OP's post.
Also, the reason why this got started is because another artist took an artist's picture, slightly edited it without asking, then responded to the original artist saying "I improved it for you." Piss off with that, how arrogant do you have to be to even do something like that? It's annoying but ultimately fine when someone does that with official art (the new P5 girl for example), but doing it with someone else's fanart without permission is just shitty.
That being said, I don't see this as white washing at all, even after reading all of the OP's post.
Also, the reason why this got started is because another artist took an artist's picture, slightly edited it without asking, then responded to the original artist saying "I improved it for you." Piss off with that, how arrogant do you have to be to even do something like that? It's annoying but ultimately fine when someone does that with official art (the new P5 girl for example), but doing it with someone else's fanart without permission is just shitty.
"The artist's vision!!!" doesn't apply to the artist who created Nessa, only the artists who whitewash her. And of course everyone knows why.
If you don't like someones art its easy enough to just not support them. If this was a developer there would be a good reason to go in on them, but its not. Ive seen hundreds of artists who ive just ignored because I didnt like their takes.
I get what people mean when they bring up tone-mapping, in fact that was my first thought without even reading any comments (I've got an art degree btw), but they definitely went for lighter looking skin. I can understand why that would be upsetting but I don't think pelting angry comments at the artist is okay.
Good post. Imagine if the second image was a drawn one, everyone would freak out.This is kind of nuts to me. Depending on lighting conditions, palette choices, stylistic choices etc any person's skin, regardless of ethnicity, can come out as any million different hues.
You can go round and round in circles colour picking images from various different scenarios and styles, and it just doesn't mean anything. Here's Grace Jones:
And here she is again:
You could literally take any shot of her in any of the thousands of different photos taken of her and find radically different colours at work, because colour is really fucking complicated. The point being, I don't think colour picking is much "evidence" of whitewashing. If the character stops reading as black and starts to look Caucasian, sure, but looking at the fan art I don't see that at all. I do genuinely see an artist who's gone for a more pastel colour scheme, and that's absolutely fine.
Not a common eye color in dark-skinned people, let alone that dark.
Not that it would be a problem in anime, but some people tend to not like it despite all the diverse hair and eye colors the genre is known for.
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Yes, I'm alt-right because I don't think that every complaint is automatically valid just because it was uttered by someone of a marginalized group of people.
Jesus fucking Christ.
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This isn't necessarily about that one Nessa piece, but an issue in fandom that has been going on for years. Nessa just happened to be the spark to light the tinder.
Well that's pretty toxicI guess I should go back to the post I did way back in the FF7 Barrett thread about skin color and photography. It's definitely relevant here as well, probably more relevant.
Based on at least this exchange I think they can read more than a little English.
Of course they would. People would use it as a prime example of whitewashing, citing that the black hues of her suit are too dark for her skin to be that colour without also making her suit come out grey (which is total bullshit).
Understanding lighting and colour is actually really, really difficult, and whilst plenty of artists don't fully understand it themselves, 99.9% of people outside the art community don't have a clue at all.
In a bubble I don't see anything wrong with the drawing, it's well drawn and looks appealing. The problem with the drawing is in the context of everything else because there's a well documented history of dark skinned people (fictional or not) having their skin tone lightened or captured poorly. Not that it excuses it but the artist is coming from a culture that isn't exactly known for positive depictions of a lot of minorities. The piece just serves as a spark for a more meta discussion.
This is kind of nuts to me. Depending on lighting conditions, palette choices, stylistic choices etc any person's skin, regardless of ethnicity, can come out as any million different hues.
You can go round and round in circles colour picking images from various different scenarios and styles, and it just doesn't mean anything. Here's Grace Jones:
And here she is again:
You could literally take any shot of her in any of the thousands of different photos taken of her and find radically different colours at work, because colour is really fucking complicated. The point being, I don't think colour picking is much "evidence" of whitewashing. If the character stops reading as black and starts to look Caucasian, sure, but looking at the fan art I don't see that at all. I do genuinely see an artist who's gone for a more pastel colour scheme, and that's absolutely fine.
What? ...No.
She's still clearly brown in the second picture, I would never mistake her for a white person. The fan art is literally using pink.
"stop overreacting" is a brain-dead response to this. People are talking about whitewashing and how to color dark skin tones. That's a good thing.
She kinda did a crappy job anyway. Nessa is still not as dark as she is.
If you look closer at the original art, she actually has two colors in each eye. She has blue eyes with a brown ring around the pupil which is real natural occurrence in people too, just very rare much like heterochromia is rare.
For all these claims of white-washing, I've never in my life seen a white person with a skin that hue.
Um. Isn't that first image the album cover to Nightclubbing? It's not her actual skin tone? And it's darker than her actual skin tone. I'm not sure I understand the point you're trying to make.This is kind of nuts to me. Depending on lighting conditions, palette choices, stylistic choices etc any person's skin, regardless of ethnicity, can come out as any million different hues.
You can go round and round in circles colour picking images from various different scenarios and styles, and it just doesn't mean anything. Here's Grace Jones:
And here she is again:
You could literally take any shot of her in any of the thousands of different photos taken of her and find radically different colours at work, because colour is really fucking complicated. The point being, I don't think colour picking is much "evidence" of whitewashing. If the character stops reading as black and starts to look Caucasian, sure, but looking at the fan art I don't see that at all. I do genuinely see an artist who's gone for a more pastel colour scheme, and that's absolutely fine.
You're comparing a painting of Grace Jones for her Nightclubbing album, sanctioned by Grace Jones herself to the point of emphasizing her dark skin, to a picture of her with no context aside from her existing in her also dark skin...This is kind of nuts to me. Depending on lighting conditions, palette choices, stylistic choices etc any person's skin, regardless of ethnicity, can come out as any million different hues.
You can go round and round in circles colour picking images from various different scenarios and styles, and it just doesn't mean anything. Here's Grace Jones:
And here she is again:
You could literally take any shot of her in any of the thousands of different photos taken of her and find radically different colours at work, because colour is really fucking complicated. The point being, I don't think colour picking is much "evidence" of whitewashing. If the character stops reading as black and starts to look Caucasian, sure, but looking at the fan art I don't see that at all. I do genuinely see an artist who's gone for a more pastel colour scheme, and that's absolutely fine.
Despite the sources, there is no question to her complexion, nor does the stylized depiction carry behind it a strong history of cultural whitewashing or colorism...
This. And anyone throwing a tantrum at them or reposting their work is being an asshole, you can be constructive without ruining their week.
Taking a photo of grace Jones at a concert where her skin comes out a much brighter hue, it is not.
Changing the ethnicity of a character, it is.
Herein lies the problem: in anime, what information do we have to go on to determine ethnicity? The character in the thread looks like an anime character, and lacks any real traits of any real ethnic group. So all people have to go on is the colour of the skin, which ultimately is going to shift so massively with each given rendition that it's almost impossible to really determine anything at all.
Basically, you could do a line art drawing of a black person and make it very obvious what race they are, without having to rely on colour at all - you'd just make sure they had those visible traits inherent to their race. If you drew that same character again, without colour, only as line art, but they read as caucasian, then I'd say that's whitewashing. It's got almost nothing to do with the colour palette being used, imo.
I don't think the original artist really knows much of what is going on. They're a Pixiv artist from Japan who uploads almost specifically drawings of young girls and spells gallery as "gallary" on their site.