HOW I TRY TO AVOID WHITEWASHING MY GIFS (FOR THE PITT)
hey! so, the show i've undoubtedly been giffing the most lately is the pitt, which features a whole lot of characters of color! it also happens to be a show with mostly white & cool toned backgrounds and bright lighting. unfortunately, those are circumstances in which it can become really easy for gifs to slide into whitewashing territory - whitewashing in this case meaning that characters of color are colored to be a lot lighter than they were in the unedited version of the scene.
DISCLAIMER: these are some examples of whitewashing that i encounter in my gifmaking process and actively try to avoid. this is by no means comprehensive, nor am i any kind of authority on what does or does not constitute whitewashing. furthermore, i myself have an issue where gifs look surprisingly different on tumblr on my pc vs my tablet, so truly, i think it can even depend on what device you're viewing gifs on. there are some cases that are pretty straightforward to me, but sometimes my tablet makes gifs - that looked perfectly fine on my computer - suddenly look kind of too pale.
TO NON-GIFMAKERS: absolutely feel free to look at these examples and if gifs strike you as way too pale for what you saw on screen just consider not interacting with that set. maybe you might even shoot the creator an ask/reply telling them that they may have veered into whitewashing.
okay, now that that's out of the way, let's just take a quick look at what i mean when i say whitewashing - let's look at this (extreme, cartoonish) example:
now you might say, "that's absurd, nobody would color it that way," but the thing is, something like this in different forms is easier to get to while coloring a gif than one might think.
and both skin tones (again... duh) and lighting can differ drastically from character to character and scene to scene. i've tried to assemble a few gifs of different characters of color to explain what i try to avoid and how i avoid it when i color.
BRIGHTNESS & CURVES
the most obvious and probably the most widespread (i think) thing is that when you originally screencap a show/import a video into photoshop, it's kinda dark. it just looks nicer to most gifmakers when we make it a little brighter. the issue with that can come when we do too much with our curve or brightness layers.
(the little circles show shades that i picked with the color picker tool at hopefully pretty much the same spot for all four gifs)
so you can see that i'm a bit of a hypocrite - i made her lighter with my standard psd! that's why i say that i personally think this is a matter of degrees. as far as i'm aware the difference between the unedited and second gif that shows how i usually color is within the margins. it's still fairly vibrant and brown whereas with the two lower gifs i'm firmly in pink/light beige territory (which is not sepideh moafi's skin color).
this one's pretty easy to avoid, in my opinion: just don't go too far with curves or brightness. i try to keep it in that margin that still approximates the color of the unedited version.
THE BLUES & GREENS
i feel like this is the most complex one. like i said, the pitt is a show with a lot of blue in the background and what can happen is that in trying to make those colors pop or reducing reds & yellows, we distort skin tones maybe a little too much.
layers this can become an issue in: selective color, color balance, levels, channel mixer, hue/saturation.
how i try to avoid this:
selective color: the red & yellow tabs of selective colors are crucial to me here. in those, i try not to increase the cyan or decrease the magenta or yellow too much -> of course it depends on the scene! if it's a very yellow scene, i can probably decrease the yellows of red or yellow without running the risk of actual whitewashing
levels: i usually keep my hands off the individual color levels for this - that's just a personal preference, though. if used, i'd apply the rules of color balance and channel mixer
color balance: i pretty much only use "shadows" and "lights" for color balance and here i try to take care with the cyan/red slider (and in some rare instances the yellow/blue slider) -> too much cyan and i create that pink-ish hue in the spots where the light hits the character, and that doesn't really belong there; with other characters too much cyan almost bleaches them out
channel mixer: no increasing reds in the green or the blue channel, basically
i made another example for this in combination with increased curves/brightness:
VIBRANCE
i don't see this one as often anymore because the pale gif trend was years and years ago (and personally, i'll never participate in it again bc i didn't like it), but for completion's sake i wanted to include it because pale gifs had a HUGE whitewashing problem.
as you can see, victoria looks sort of grey and ashy in the bottom two gifs. if you add more brightness/curves on top of that it becomes very, very pale which was sort of the trend for a while.
again, easy to avoid because i have to add a hue/saturation or vibrance layer and drag the dials into the negatives.
PALE COLOR GRADED/LIGHTING SCENES
sometimes the show does the deed itself, although i'm not super sure if that can still be qualified as whitewashing. in any case, sometimes i'll load screencaps into photoshop and go, "why does she look so pale??? i've giffed her before and she didn't remotely look like this."
at that point, i come to kind of a crossroad - do i try to color correct in addition to my usual coloring or do i just proceed as normal and go off of the skin tone presented to me in the scene?
i skew towards the latter... the top two look bad To Me but i don't know if there's an actual right answer to this conundrum, to be honest.
and that's it for now!! i hope this is maybe a little helpful? again, this is not meant to encompass everything or even go into much detail on individual colorings but moreso the general considerations i try to make when i gif. i hope it makes sense! tysm for reading!!
i love for ilya to be super selfindulgent abt his own cock. he loves looking at it, he gets a head rush from looking at it go inside shane and he loves doing that (he does this a lot in canon WOHOOOO). he loves making shane talk abt it "you love that big cock huh? tell me" all demanding while fucking him or maybe sometimes in a slow grind and superduper sweetly too. "i love your big cock" shane slurs and HE DOESSS so much
I just think, based on the way Ilya had his hand down his pants for the entirety of the Boston conversation, that after he and Shane are settled in their relationship his relaxation always includes somewhat inappropriate Shane touching. They're watching a movie with Shane resting on his chest? Ilya's hand is on his bare ass, fingers playing along the crease where his butt becomes his thigh, occasionally lifting the cheek and letting it go just to feel it jiggle. Shane's on the couch reading? Ilya's crawling between his legs and resting his head in the crease of his thigh. Shane's cuddled up with his back against Ilya's chest? Ilya's hand is resting on that man's cock. It's not necessarily sexual, it's not consciously possessive (although it is subconsciously possessive in that Shane's body is his to touch in whatever way he wants), that's just how he's most comfortable.
Meanwhile, Shane Oral Fixation Hollander always has some part of Ilya in his mouth. So they're cuddled up, Ilya's right hand on Shane's ass, the left one in his mouth and it's become so normal that neither one of them gives it a second thought. There's definitely a time or two where they accidentally do it around other people, like they're watching a scary movie with the Pikes and don't realise that Shane's had two of Ilya's fingers in his mouth for the past ten minutes until Hyden catches it out of the corner of his eye and goes "dude, what the fuck??" or they're heading back with the Cens after a series of away games and they're cuddled up on the plane, both half asleep, when Ilya's hand just makes its way down Shane's pants to rest in the crease of his groin and when Troy says "Roz, you'll be home in like two hours, can't that wait?" neither one of them realises what he's even referring to.
halt this eclipse in me (47572 words) by bisoubug
Chapters: 4/4
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Characters: Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Hayden Pike, Svetlana Vetrova, Jean-Jacques Boiziau | J. J. Dagenais, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Paranormal, Demonic Possession, Demon Sex, Demon/Human Relationships, Ghost Sex, Possession, Dom Ilya Rozanov, Sub Shane Hollander, Bratty Shane Hollander, Protective Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov is Obsessed With Shane Hollander, Possessive Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander Needs a Hug, Occult, Psychic Abilities, Masturbation, Curses, Ilya Rozanov is neither dead nor alive, Sex Toys, Mutual Pining, Forbidden Love, Ilya finally gets to live inside Shane's skin, Mind Games, Magical Realism, some freak shit goes on at some point, a little bit of blood mentioned but nothing crazy, Shane considers an exorcism but then accidentally gets a crush on the demon inside him, it's not that scary probably, Eventual Smut, Demon Ilya Rozanov, Human Shane Hollander, Soul Bond, Anal Sex, Anal Fingering, Rimming, Oral Sex, Multiple Orgasms
Summary:
On the outside, Shane Hollander is one of the best and most beloved hockey players in the world.
On the inside, there is a demon who has been whispering sweet nothings to him since one fateful night in 2008.
And after several failed attempts to cleanse his cursed soul, Shane has to face the fact that he might be sharing his mind, body, and soul with a wicked little creature for the rest of his life. So… he might as well fall in love with it, right?
OR; Ilya is a demon and Shane is accidentally possessed by him.
Dear PenPal, Cry Every Day Until My Next Letter (27053 words) by thedaisyfairy, disappearordie
Chapters: 4/?
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Characters: Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Svetlana Vetrova, Sasha | Ilya Rozanov's Coach's Son, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander
Additional Tags: Epistolary, Pen Pals, Alternate Universe - Pen Pals, Shane Hollander Loves Ilya Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov Loves Shane Hollander, Canon Compliant, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Childhood Sweethearts, Autistic Shane Hollander, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Summary:
In 2003, Shane Hollander is assigned a PenPal, and gains a friend. A friend who smokes, calls him boring, and gives him ridiculous nicknames.
Across the world, Ilya Rozanov practices his English with a curious Canadian boy whose name he can't fucking remember.
Or, before they were Canada's Shane Hollander and Russia's Ilya Rozanov, they were Cat and Elijah. Shane has no reason to suspect his childhood PenPal is his hockey rival, and Ilya has never even considered that the man he's falling for is also the boy he already fell in love with through letters and postcards.
