# Realistic Colors or Toon Colors of Furries?



## Art Vulpine (Jan 20, 2015)

Something I've been thinking about while I was searching on FA. Do you prefer seeing more realistic colors on furries, or do you like more of a toon coloring (blue, pink, orange, etc.)?


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## AliothFox (Jan 20, 2015)

Art Vulpine said:


> Something I've been thinking about while I was searching on FA. Do you prefer seeing more realistic colors on furries, or do you like more of a toon coloring (blue, pink, orange, etc.)?



I don't mind a slightly cartoonish look to the colors, but I get annoyed by the sparkle-dogs with glowing purple/lime green/neon orange tongues (and... other things).  And if it's going to be a cartoon color, it should be at least somewhat subtle.  But furries who look like they were near an explosion at the spray-paint factory, no.  Don't like.


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## PuppyChowder (Jan 20, 2015)

I am an artist that is mostly realistic, and while I don't really care if someone chooses to use unrealistic/gaudy colors, I probably won't because I don't see the advantage of doing so. Artistically, it's not visually pleasing to have a lot of clashing, vibrant colors and our brains don't generally enjoy looking at something that makes eyes bleed. Florescence is used to warn away, so using it in ridiculous amounts is just asking for the majority of people to go "eugh" when looking at it. If I'm an artist, I'm not going to be producing an unrealistic eyesore. 

On the other hand, like I said, I don't care if other people do it, and some colors can look pretty good together. Birds have a wide range of colors, for instance, but they still manage to use them correctly and make for a beautiful animal. In the end, no matter what color you use, it's all about contrast and values; darks with lights, and the midtones in between. If the contrast is balanced, it gives the eyes something worth looking at. It gives resting spots and areas of interest, which makes the piece overall more visually interesting and appealing. It doesn't "hurt the eyes", so to speak. It's why colors like purple and yellow can look great together(high contrast), but hot pink and bright green do not(low contrast). Basically, it's not just about the colors, but about the values associated with those colors, that changes it from eye-bleeding to beautiful or nice to look at. 

As a personal preference though, I enjoy going with more realistic colors, though I may decide to use something that is an unrealistic pattern, like spots or stripes on an animal that doesn't always have them. Other than that though, I like to use whatever colors catch my fancy, and if it's a mythical thing, I'll try and think about _why_ it would be a certain color, instead of just slapping on some bright paint. If it makes sense to me, that's what's important and what I try to stick with. No reason to go crazy when realistic colors are just as good.


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## AliothFox (Jan 20, 2015)

PuppyChowder is better at words than I am.  Yeah - that's pretty much the point I was trying to get across.


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## TheRedGhost (Jan 20, 2015)

I like realistic colours, but the odd colours make for an artistically appealing and popping piece. While I liked the natural tones for a relatable fursona, I prefer non-realistic for artistic reasons so I don't feel like I'm colouring a thousand mud-coloured wolf dogs.


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## Maugryph (Jan 21, 2015)

As long as the artist understands color theory , he/she can make most colors pleasing.
Not following a theme/pallet will always end in disaster, for example: sparkledogs.
'Less is more' works %90 of the time


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## Teckolf (Jan 21, 2015)

Blue or Teal always...


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## Catilda Lily (Jan 21, 2015)

Mine started out with the normal color pallet for mountain lions and somewhere along the way it went to what it is today.


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## Zeitzbach (Jan 21, 2015)

Furry toons can be of any color as long as you know how to use them properly.

Even pink fur will work if you tone down the brightness and add in some red.

But for the love of god stop with sparkling pink green blue yellow red banana saturn fur color at maximum saturation.


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## AliothFox (Jan 21, 2015)

Zeitzbach said:


> Furry toons can be of any color as long as you know how to use them properly.
> 
> Even pink fur will work if you tone down the brightness and add in some red.
> 
> But for the love of god stop with sparkling pink green blue yellow red banana saturn fur color at maximum saturation.



Exactly this.  The color wheel is not a "Wheel of Fortune" sorta deal - if you just spin the color wheel and see where it stops, it's gonna look awful most of the time.


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## Charrio (Jan 21, 2015)

Just go with whatever your world is most like. 
Mine is Cartoon simply cause the characters are Cartoons and some of them know it and exploit it much like Buggs Bunny ect. 

If your story or world has a more realistic tone then go with what fits. 
I guess what it breaks down to is your audience your aiming at, childlike or carefree seems to lend itself to cartoony colors. 
While most serious animation or images seem to feel more natural in realistic coloring.


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## Gator (Jan 21, 2015)

cartoon in the sense where most follow at least a semi-realistic color pattern, but you get the occasional odd-colored critter.

if i'm dealing with more realistic-looking characters, though, i prefer realistic colors.  anything weird better have a believable explanation, like "they dye it".


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## Bonobosoph (Jan 21, 2015)

I like realistic usually but I also really like bright, iridescent colours sometimes. When it's done well and not sparkledoggy. Falvie's art is a good example of unnatural colours that look pretty.



AliothFox said:


> I don't mind a slightly cartoonish look to the colors, but I get annoyed by the sparkle-dogs *with glowing purple/lime green/neon orange tongues (and... other things*).  And if it's going to be a cartoon color, it should be at least somewhat subtle.  But furries who look like they were near an explosion at the spray-paint factory, no.  Don't like.


What? Gotta love me some neon purple wang.


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## Troj (Jan 21, 2015)

I prefer realistic colours, but I don't mind bright or "unrealistic" colours, as long as they complement each other, make sense in light of the character, and aren't just plain ugly (since there are colours that I just plain hate).

I don't like it when it looks someone just tossed a fox or a wolf in a radioactive twirl-o-paint just for the sake of appearing "unique."


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## Art Vulpine (Jan 22, 2015)

For me I like both realistic and colorful toon designs. I don't like super colored sparkle dogs as the colors need to make sense. Admittedly I didn't study color theory until recently, only seeing what color combinations worked with an art and what didn't.


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## Kleric (Jan 25, 2015)

Realistic. I don't mind others taking it to just a decent degree, but to any extreme such as sparkledogs (as everyone's example), I just can't really handle it.
For my own standard, I do think it is at least cool to give your characters unique eye-color, and maybe some slight fur pattern that's unnaturally colored (which of course can also be excused as body-paint of some sort), but I could never make any of my characters look like I messed with the Hue on Photoshop for the whole of my character.


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## Riltmos (Jan 25, 2015)

Zeitzbach said:


> Furry toons can be of any color as long as you know how to use them properly.
> 
> Even pink fur will work if you tone down the brightness and add in some red.
> 
> But for the love of god stop with sparkling pink green blue yellow red banana saturn fur color at maximum saturation.



I'm just going to echo this. Though I do prefer natural colors myself.


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## Percy-Lyn (Jan 25, 2015)

I personally don't feel that it matters.

Either realistic or fantastical colorations have their merits, and both have the potential to be cute/sexy/cool/etc depending on the style that the character is drawn in, the character's general mood/attitude, etc.

I'm rather a fan of the character TRPC (short for "The Random Purple Cat") belonging to FelisRandomis, but I'm also a big fan of Lorena's eponymous character, who is a normally colored cougar.

As mentioned earlier, understanding how colors interact is an important part of color choice. Splashing red and dark blue and neon green everywhere and expecting it to look good is... bad. At its most basic, you can make colors work by understanding supplementary and complementary colors, or by going with strictly-cool, strictly-warm, or mixed themes. Then there's choosing which colors are most prominent, etc...

There's a huge number of factors to consider, and if you don't know how to work with them, the coloration will look unbalanced. It takes a skilled eye and a creative mind to bend color to your will.
tl;dr: They can be practically sparkledogs or they can be mundane, it doesn't matter to me if they can fit a color theme and rock it.


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## -Sliqq- (Jan 25, 2015)

Not either. Just the right colors to make it relaxing to the eyes


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## Suid (Mar 18, 2015)

I want to be able to use more unnatural colors, but it doesn't sit right with me. I guess it'll take some practice.


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## S.D.O.S. (Mar 24, 2015)

You're eyes are trained to see similar to nature tones, shapes etc. There's a reason why the movie Avatar for example the navi were humanoid. So in general nature like colors, shapes and patters will get your character a more appealing figure.


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## Obsydian (Mar 24, 2015)

I like toon colors if they have a valid reason!  Normally I go with natural colors.
In the case of my fursona, she's leucistic and dyes her crest feathers pink.  Otherwise she's natural colored for a leucistic penguin.


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## Alexxx-Returns (Mar 24, 2015)

It depends on who/what I'm drawing. Most of the time I gravitate to realistic, but I'm currently working on a unicorn and I knew it had to have non-realistic colours.


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## Filter (Mar 24, 2015)

I used to prefer natural colors, but nowadays I'm more into the sparkledog look. An unnatural palette, when it shows at least some grasp of color theory, can really pop. Besides, if anthro animals were real, who's to say they wouldn't sometimes dye their fur crazy colors?


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## Inpw (Mar 24, 2015)

It depends on what I'm looking at.

When I look at a art piece that is drawn to emphasize on the artists ability to draw realism. I enjoy %100 natural colors and perfect shading.

When I look at general furry art or cartoony art I enjoy the colors being realistic but the shading and color fading can be toony.

When I look at more fictional characters I accept bioluminescence and crazy things like that but please don't smash every color of the rainbow onto a character. Keep it minimal. 

IMO when the colors looks like a pack of m&m's that's when I point and say "Sparkle-dog." Oh and when hard colors such as max green, 0 blue, 0, red.


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## Samandriel Morningstar (Mar 24, 2015)

I like either.
When it comes to Toon style though,as long as it doesn't look like someone vomited after eating a whole bag of pearler beads I'm fine.
I mean be creative and stuff,but don't turn it into nightmare fuel or something that would cause people to gouge their eyes out just by the mere sight of it.
I can understand wanting to stand out and express yourself,but my god please do it in a tasteful manner.


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## WolfNightV4X1 (Apr 1, 2015)

I like fantasy. I always have. Unrealistic colors, especially in moderation (and even if not) have a cool look to it. Imagine, like birds, seeing a furred animal with vividly colored fur, neon. It'd be interesting. It breaks our ideas of reality and makes something new and different. Granted we have 'blue' in reality as a form of gray (Russian blues, Blue merle Aussie Sheps.), Red is a rusty form of brown (Red wolf, Red merle Aussie Sheps, etc), yellow is tan/light brown found in lions and pumas (Catilda Lily is an example of the color changing slightly from realistic)...these are all colors found in reality and not to a shocking degree.

 Like always, art that isn't realistic, such as toony and semi-toony, will exaggerate the bounds of reality to make something different that doesn't exist. I don't want to get defensive over something like color, but I can't see why someone would hate it because it's unreal. Furries aren't even real and I know people deeply rooted in reality that think fantasy is dumb because it's not real. Nothing wrong with experimenting a little and adding things that wouldn't exist in reality.

I prefer simple designs and color schemes, easier to look at. My own 'sona is a simple black, gray, and single odd color scheme. I add the Magenta to specific areas but let black adorn the majority.

I think many colors can be an eyesore as well, but I have no problems against it, it can even look nice. Zeph is probably my most oddly colored and detailed character (Navy blue, Black, White, Red-Orange and Teal spots, Yellow nose and eyes). I planned it specifically hoping the colors would mesh and not clash too much. It probably does a little. Plus, as much as I'm not overly fond of looking at colorful characters, most of them are highly detailed and I envy the artists ability to do that, so I made Zephyr to step out of my boundaries of simplicity and do something slightly more complicated.

I don't exactly hate 'sparkle dogs' either, I see them, some are great. Some you can tell are bordering or are way overdone to try to make something cool. When someone tries too hard is when I think it becomes sparkle dog status. 

So yeah, I understand people have preferences to realistic, but I love either one.


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## pheonixbat (Apr 3, 2015)

Never go full sparkledog...


In all seriousness, both can look good if the colors are harmonious. Of course, serious characters should stay natural if they want to be taken seriously and sillier characters can be any color.


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## Biochemiphy (Apr 3, 2015)

As long as it's not radioactive green coloured or sparkle sparkle c:


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