The colour picture where her skin is many shades lighter than it canonically is? Because white-washing doesn't literally mean paper white it means significantly lighter than the character/person is.

Again, it's what the art style calls for. Marina is often draw with lighter shades all around because the aesthetic call for it (generally softer colors are used).

Can you stop the Tumblr tier debate and just appreciate the cute art?

The colour picture where her skin is many shades lighter than it canonically is? Because white-washing doesn't literally mean paper white it means significantly lighter than the character/person is.

Again, it's what the art style calls for. Marina is often draw with lighter shades all around because the aesthetic call for it (generally softer colors are used).

Alright if we're pretending that "art style" is a legitimate defense then their art style is boring and homogeneous and they should learn how to incorporate darker skin tones into their aesthetic to grow as an artist and accurately depict the characters they draw. If your "style" can't handle black people then it's limited and bland and you should work to expand it if for no other reason than to be a more well rounded artist.

Meh, I would have preferred all of this in their original forms.

I never knew how much I needed this in my life

Can you stop the Tumblr tier debate and just appreciate the cute art?

Indeed, very cute art and cute interaction

majere posted:

The colour picture where her skin is many shades lighter than it canonically is? Because white-washing doesn't literally mean paper white it means significantly lighter than the character/person is.

Again, it's what the art style calls for. Marina is often draw with lighter shades all around because the aesthetic call for it (generally softer colors are used).

Alright if we're pretending that "art style" is a legitimate defense then their art style is boring and homogeneous and they should learn how to incorporate darker skin tones into their aesthetic to grow as an artist and accurately depict the characters they draw. If your "style" can't handle black people then it's limited and bland and you should work to expand it if for no other reason than to be a more well rounded artist.

sigh if by expand it you mean stick to one color and never change it no matter the circumstances then that sounds limited to me ... Then again, even the official artist from Splatoon (the one who knows Marina more than anyone anywhere) who made promotional art was called out as racist for using blue and sepia (affecting the background and Pearl too) and some tumblr people compared the color to a photo of Marina in game and found it unacceptable by their standard as how art should be made and we're talking about the people who love to take japanese characters, make them black (and adding some other special features) and celebrate it or send death treats to OverWatch for not making MORE dark skinned characters... So really, seeing this discussion here, over a doujin of a squid and an octopus where you can see in the very first page that the artist doesn't mind at all, well.... I just feel like is a waste of time.

last edited at Jul 18, 2018 10:51AM

Maybe instead of sighing over the injustice of people criticizing art for being too homogeneous in its character design

artists can learn how to-hear me out-

draw black people better.

I mean honestly would half the folk trying to disparage the conversation at hand be nearly as invested if the artist was accused of Same Face Syndrome, or bland and uninteresting backgrounds, or bizarre proportions or uneven linework.

last edited at Jul 18, 2018 12:30PM

I will stick to the side that says this is not whitewashing and you guys are overreacting.
I always found it ironic that the same kind of people who complain about whitewashing also changes the race of other characters, including anime characters who are supposed to be Japanese (probably because the art style and hair/eye colors make them look white). Not saying whitewashing isn't wrong, but I don't see how that's any less racist.

And besides, I don't see anyone complaining about how human Pearl doesn't have the single pointy tooth. And how she was made more attractive (because canon Pearl is rather ugly tbh). The artist just didn't color human Marina's skin at all in the uncolored pics, that's not weird. And it's hard for a 3D character to have a consistent color scheme anyway, so saying her skin color is lighter than usual is not an excuse.

last edited at Jul 18, 2018 1:06PM

You'll note that most of the criticism I made came regarding the physical features of the Marina design, predominantly the hair, and the most any of the detractors have said regarding her skin color in the uncolored pictures was me where I said I don't mind that all that much. If I'm gonna point out issues with the literal skin color I'd point to the colored picture on page 6, and all I'm gonna say about that is it's kinda weird the shade this artist used there is noticeably lighter than the art they used on page 1. That's weird right? What's up with that?

But let's put all that aside for a moment. Whitewashing is not just used for the literal lightening of skin, although that is a large and frequent way it winds up coming up. In this instance, it's because the author's interpretation of Human!Marina winds up removing nearly all the racial coding and characteristics of her regular design. Marina is functionally a black character, in narrative and in appearance, so in creating a design that effectively removes all of that racial basis, presumably out of pure ignorance from the artist using what they already know about character design, is not only kinda shitty, it makes her nearly unrecognizable. And that's bad in a purely artistic sense.

(Also, juan, what the hell are you talking about. Pearl's pointy tooth is a squid beak. Why would a human have a squid beak. And attractiveness is not a metric you can measure objectively but looking at the actual physical characteristics between the two designs there's very little actual deviation.)

both pearl and marina are adorable in game and in this the stupid complaining about perceived white washing is just plain stupid calm down not everything is racist

this is golden

This is cute as shit

Marina without dark skin is practically unrecognizable though, what a shame

I will stick to the side that says this is not whitewashing and you guys are overreacting.
I always found it ironic that the same kind of people who complain about whitewashing also changes the race of other characters, including anime characters who are supposed to be Japanese (probably because the art style and hair/eye colors make them look white). Not saying whitewashing isn't wrong, but I don't see how that's any less racist.

And besides, I don't see anyone complaining about how human Pearl doesn't have the single pointy tooth. And how she was made more attractive (because canon Pearl is rather ugly tbh). The artist just didn't color human Marina's skin at all in the uncolored pics, that's not weird. And it's hard for a 3D character to have a consistent color scheme anyway, so saying her skin color is lighter than usual is not an excuse.

I like they way cannon pearl looks and I thought the "human" version this artist did should have resembled it more . . . just my opinion though.

Can you stop the Tumblr tier debate and just appreciate the cute art?

I don't think it's tumlr tier level yet. Though there is a lot of "shudup" and you're "overrating" feelings in a lot of these comments which always goes a long way in conversation as we all know.

Personally though. "Cute art" is one of the cringiest f**king things. I can stand it to an extend but the prevalence of it in anime and manga type things really gets to me sometimes. That's the real debate here! Kidding. While really don't like it I do my best to respect that others do.

last edited at Jul 18, 2018 3:42PM

I will stick to the side that says this is not whitewashing and you guys are overreacting.
I always found it ironic that the same kind of people who complain about whitewashing also changes the race of other characters, including anime characters who are supposed to be Japanese (probably because the art style and hair/eye colors make them look white). Not saying whitewashing isn't wrong, but I don't see how that's any less racist.

And besides, I don't see anyone complaining about how human Pearl doesn't have the single pointy tooth. And how she was made more attractive (because canon Pearl is rather ugly tbh). The artist just didn't color human Marina's skin at all in the uncolored pics, that's not weird. And it's hard for a 3D character to have a consistent color scheme anyway, so saying her skin color is lighter than usual is not an excuse.

I like they way cannon pearl looks and I thought the "human" version this artist did should have resembled it more . . . just my opinion though.

i like the way she looks in game too but this is nice to look at and i see as it more just giving them human proportions but yeah it would be nice if they looked more like in game

I didn't know about this beautiful art by Kashkaze senpai... Thia is perfect

I don't really care that much about this whole skin color debate, but I will say that this artist's human Marina looks absolutely nothing like Marina. She looks more like Riko to me, if I'm gonna be honest. Of course, human Pearl looks pretty different too, but at least I could still tell it was her right away. That said, I think the author could have at least made her skin a bit dark even in the black-and-white portions. I mean, it's not like other manga don't have dark-skinned or tan characters (like Umiko in New Game), so it's not like it's impossible to portray dark skin and preserve the whole cute aesthetic even in such a format. That's just my opinion though and very likely one with crappy foundations, but... yeah.

last edited at Jul 18, 2018 9:21PM

Are we really gonna compare being black to being ugly now, smh....

Like what is this... Someone calls an artist out for whitewashing and everyone gets triggered.
And "it's hard for a 3D character to have a consistent color scheme" ?????? What????!

last edited at Jul 19, 2018 4:35AM

And "it's hard for a 3D character to have a consistent color scheme" ?????? What????!

It's true. When you have to use photos or 3D models as color reference, lighting can make it really hard to determine which shade is the base skin tone. I've had that dilemma during some recent art commissions (and of course you can't use the eye dropper cos it just gets you that murky bog color).

Most Japanese characters in manga don't have easily recognizable Asian characteristics,

you mean that you think they lack the squinty eyes and yellow skin that you consider to be "asian characteristics", but which japanese people would not necessarily consider japanese characteristics. many japanese people can be quite pale and have rounder eyes than a lot of white people. additionally, the typical anime jawline is heavily based on japanese standards of what a jawline should look like.

there is considerable variety in just east asians so of course stylised characters based on japanese people and specifically their beauty standards are not going to look like they've been averaged across an entire continent.

Jesus fucking christ what happened to dynasty

I will be wait forever.