# Fur Color/Pattern: How to Decide?



## PrismaKitty (Apr 8, 2016)

I'm pretty new to making fursonas and I've already made a ZootopiaSona (a margay), but I feel like a munchkin cat fits me more. I guess where I'm getting stuck is how to decide on what color to make my fursona and how to pick markings.
How did you decide? Any tips for a newbie? :3


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## Strangeguy32000 (Apr 8, 2016)

Just pick whatever.
I know with Dack, I actually revised his color scheme the day after I had initially drawn him. Going from maroon and purple to orange, purple, and tan so as to not have Dack look stupidly dark.
I'd recommend printing out a blank ref sheet and going into it with a set of colored pencils.

Dack went from this:






To this:




I revised the design further in more recent weeks (dropped the orange stippling in his hair, did away with the random purple marks under his eyes)


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## Kiari Candy (Apr 8, 2016)

Roll spirit dice. Nah, I'm kidding. I matched the colors/patterns to my aesthetics. If you don't have an aesthetic or the colors don't match, search palettes on Google for ideas.


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## LindyHop (Apr 8, 2016)

Here are my suggestions
1. 3-4 colors black and white dont count as colors.
2. Use neons sparingly and pair with netural colors
3. Complimentary colors are your friend, Orange/blue, purple/yellow, red/green
4. Play with saturations, muted purple with a vibrant yellow
4. Simple doesn't necessarily mean boring and complex is not always cool, remember this is a character you might potentially be drawing many many many times and have 3 different unique patterns may get old pretty quickly.
5. Nothing is ever set in stone, you can change your fursona every day if you want to.

My fursona is fairly simple, shes mostly monochrome blue having four shades of blue/grey then being topped off with a pop of a complementary bright orange because blue/orange is my favorite color combo.


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## PrismaKitty (Apr 9, 2016)

Ahh ok, thanks to everyone for their advice! These are all really good tips. I wanted my fursona to be a bit more natural, but I like the idea of having undertones of complementary colors!


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## Nataku (Apr 9, 2016)

I find it's best to have a drawing liberated in Photoshop (pick your art program, doesn't really matter) and then just have the colors on other layers so I can look at multiple patterns and colors on the same base.
Consider not only the natural pattern(s) that occur on the animal, but patterns found on other animals you like. Be careful not to combine too many different patterns into one animal lest it become too busy. Stripes are cool. Spots are cool. Spots and stripes on the same animal is often too busy to form any kind of recognizable design. Not to mention a pain in the ass if you plan on redrawing a character often. I have just one character (out of dozens) with stupidly complex detailed markings (spots and occeli). Guess who doesn't get drawn often?

Keep saturation in mind! Having a character with multiple colors is fine, but try to keep the colors in the same level of saturation to make it mesh better. Or, have just a single highly saturated color as a highlight on an otherwise much less saturated set of other base colors to really make that one highlight pop. As a general rule of thumb, more natural palettes tend to be less  saturated. At least in mammals anyhow. Unless your talking parrots or certain reptiles, those are often highly saturated in their natural schemes. Of course, whether you want a natural color scheme or not is totally up to you.

Natural vs unnatural markings - this is another thing to consider. A spot is a normally occuring marking, a star is not. Both are fine, but putting both on the same animal can result in a pattern that is too busy and muddy looking to be clear and distinguishable as an easily identified character. Also, it's always a good idea to be very familiar with the meaning of what symbols you are using. This is an especially common mistake when using a symbol from a language you don't speak.


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## PrismaKitty (Apr 10, 2016)

These are all really helpful tips. Thanks so much to everyone taking the time to help me out! 
Now, I'm having a problem with finding a breed of cat to stick to!  Can't decide between a munchkin of sorts or a singapura.


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## xofrats (Apr 16, 2016)

Adobe have a nice tool for palettes Adobe Color CC
We use this in my design class to pick a palette for websites and advertisement. It works out from the colour theories by Goethes (In case you want to study more :3 )

And when it comes to breed. You don't have to be pure. Take the features you like about munchkin and singapura and try and combine them


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