Do you have any tips for prehistoric animal coloration? I’ve been struggling with coming up with new, plausible, and eye-catching colorations for my reconstructions for the past month, and would love to know how you come up with your colorations.
Ahhhh, yes.
It is an endless struggle. Best advice I can give is: have lots of exposure to animal coloration and pattern. The more you know the ABC of nature the easier it gets to recombine the pieces.
Colors are a very complex issue though. So keep in mind the environment of the animal, it's ecology, size, diet etc. Many animals for example need to get their pigments from their environment or diet. Certain patters appear again and again in nature because they are good for camouflage. Some animals have pigmentation that follows fur direction etc.
But at the end of the day, when it comes to extinct creatures, it's best to experiment a lot and consume and learn as much about animal coloration as you can so you can weaponize your mind to quickly puzzle together a new color scheme from an arsenal of snippets you have picked up over the years.
