as a bunch of new fans are getting into atla via netflix and there’s been a resurgence of fan content (as well as whitewashed fan content), i’m gonna say for artists looking to make fanart of atla:
google images is probably not the best place to pick your references, unless you’re going to be critical about which ones you use. a lot of the images are lightened. i see people defend themselves for whitewashing by showing they used a reference, but that reference was lightened too.
i’m going to use some pictures of katara i found on google images as examples:
[id: three images of katara from avatar: the last airbender. each image is a side by side comparison of the coloring of a scene. in the first image, she is from the waist up, smiling and looking at her friends who are off camera.
the second image is of katara sitting on a staircase, leaning down and putting her face in her left hand. she looks exhausted.
the third image is a closeup of katara’s face, with her looking up at someone off screen. the screenshots on the left of each image are picked from google images and significantly paler than the ones on the right, which were screenshotted directly from the show. end id.]
the ones on google images are paler than the show. this is also a problem i see with gif makers putting filters on katara and sokka. i would not use edited gifs as reference either.
this post is not saying you shouldn’t use google images at all for reference, or that all images found on it are bad. a lot of the katara images on google look just fine! i just wanted to bring awareness that people should not blindly trust their references and instead pick directly from the show if they can. if you do not have netflix or the atla dvds, avatarspirit has had an archive of screenshots from each episode of the show for a long time. i also advise choosing references that have a similar background and lighting you’re going for. colors will appear differently if you’re using them on red, or blue, or etc.
this post is not defending or giving excuses to artists who whitewash by saying they just picked bad references. this post is specifically to point out how to AVOID whitewashing by not picking bad references.
this post is also not arguing over if whitewashing is bad or not. if you comment about how whitewashing is not racist, i will delete your reply and/or block you.
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