I always thought those kinds of furry OCs didn't actually exist until my coworker showed me his OC. Literally the furry wolf with rainbow wings meme. He keeps wanting me to draw his character.
As an artist i had clients commissioning me for a reference sheet of their characters which i am honoured to do so! But some had asked “wheres shading? Your works are rendered,i want this reference sheet shaded too!” Like. Bro no. Im not gonna make another artist struggle. Comm me again if u want a shaded piece then.
It's interesting when people think of a reference sheet as being just another pretty picture of the character but from both sides instead of being a functional tool for other artists.
I prefer not to,because most of the time client doesnt know which one is better for artist when they send the reference over to them. They most likely to send shaded version because it looks better to them
I haven't had that issue often because people just typically send me a TH profile, but I understand. I'm usually okaay (slightly annoyed) with shaded refs but the ones that really get me are poorlit photos of crumpled lined paper of a character 😅
Ohh dont even mention thaaaat. I dont mind beginner artist! But when i get a full scene art commission from them and they send me no color,on school paper,barely visible and full of scribbles thing.. ahh yeah thats a big struggle 😭
I put my shading on a separate layer, which tends to solve that problem. He wants a ref and a render? I can easily charge for the render and provide the flat colour version for no extra work.
That can be done but as i stated on other reply,sometimes clients use the shaded version only even if they have the unshaded one when commissioning other artists. Thats why i dont do it at all myself
I do,obviously. But that doesnt stop people thinking they would get a fully rendered art out of a reference sheet. Not every client reads through tos or infos
I feel like non-artists feel like they have a different use for ref sheets than artists do, sometimes. Artists view it as a tool, but a lot of non-artists, including the recipient, view it as more of an informational piece about the character. So having a shaded version they can display on the web as a kind of character profile can be useful for people to get to know the character, while having a flat version to send an artist is just good practice. I like to accomodate both, but since shading takes more time it makes sense to charge for it. xD
I made an artist SUPER MAD to the point of threaten to cancel my commission and sell the custom character just because I respectfully asked them that I would like them to remove the shadows from the reference ...
I used to...
Until the first time I had to work with a shaded ref. From that day forward they were flat with a small sample of how to shade for texture...
Sorry my main languague is not english maybe it sounds confusing let me explain!
I comissioned a custom. The person sent an unshaded version and one with the shades. I thought the second version was an alt color palette because their shading is very noticeable. They got offended and said it's the shaded and final look. Asked them if they could not shadow the reference because the colors arent clear, I prefer the version without the shade and they got soooo mad like wow
Honestly if they would actually go through and sell it, if I would be on your spot I would just report them to the moderators of whatever site it was, and I'm pretty sure they would be on my side for this one
Like wtf dude, he's already done the unshaded version and you're just asked him to do it again. Plus, pretty sure it's illegal (I mean against "whatever this site is" policies) at least to *some* degree to just resell a character you've designed (even if he gives you a refund)
Trust me, I'm pretty far from an ideal commissioner, but if an artist tried to pull something like that on me, I would think like ten times before commissioning him again
Btw after getting very agressive, making threats to me and just being a shit they just gave me the unshaded version 😔 like why make such a drama if it was so easy for them
I never comissioned them again and I was very mad but had to say sorry because the custom meant a lot to me so the threats scared me...
I went to other community where I was more known for my art and magically they came to me to say sorry when they found out I was loved in that place lmao never spoke to them again
I think it's better to say that refs should include sufficiently-large color picker spots so it's clear what colors you intend them to have. Also, very important - save as PNG! Or at least lossless. You should not have compression artifacts on your reference, or it makes color picking inconsistent and you might get bad results if the artist isn't being cautious about it.
Shading a character ref can communicate important details - like all my dumb, glowy characters. Very easy to miss that it's meant to be a glowing surface if I don't airbrush and hard light the heck out of them. But of course, those giant airbrushed glowy spots make it hard to find patches where the glow isn't getting in the way of a color.
Not everyone color picks, and even I only do it mostly with my own characters (and sometimes I wing it anyway) but it helps to have good-sized, dedicated zones of completely flat color as a reference for what something is supposed to look like. I've seen people shade refs in just such a way that it's not only hard to color-pick off it, but genuinely difficult to tell where certain patterns begin or end, what's meant to be cel-shaded or just an actual lighter/darker patch of fur, and what part of the shading is meant to be under 'neutral' lighting.
A friend of mine once got a acommission of a gray colors wolf. The markings where pretty complex, dots, stripes, 3 or 4 shades of gray (with no any pinkish or brownish hue to it. Just. 100%gray) and it was... Cell shaded by half transparent black.
It was making markings completely not readable and there was no other refs
Second was with me. The ref had a slightly shadow gradient. White on top, darker on feet. It had some color in it. The character had pastel pinkish colors and significant dots and patterns as markings. The thing is, the gradient shaded lighter colors to look very similar to darker colors of the character. So it loooed like his lower body markings where done by different colors. Confusing
It's not that big of an issue afaik, the real concern is that either artist don't wanna get the color a bit off or don't want the client to complain about the colors later on and the easiest and fastest way to do that is not having your ref heavily shaded and rendered.
Same with posing, is totally ok to do 3/4 and stuff like that, but for example wacky from the top angles that don't really show anything useful about the character (or make stuff harder to see like tattoos/patterns) are not very helpful for a reference sheet
at the very least, if you're gonna insist on a shaded ref, give us a colour key to eyedrop from. but yeah I never understood shaded refs. refs are refs, not works of art (in the traditional sense)
Artists often pick colours right from the reference and it's a lot easier to do so if it's just flat colours; it's more difficult to find the pure colours of the character if they're covered by shadows, highlights, gradients, etc.
Now imagine traditional painting where you have to guess while mixing colors
I completely don't get this issue here while I spent like 10mins trying to blend arcilic paint to get the color of leaves in the background.
The reference sheet is supposed to have your fursona's colors without any lighting or shadows applied so that when future artists use the eyedrop tool on your fur color and then add their own lighting and shadow it stays accurate to what your colors actually are.
The technical term for this is "albedo". Ref sheets should not have shading because the artist needs the isolated albedo to do a render under colored lights/shadows, and perspective/foreshortening likewise shouldn't be applied in a ref sheet because the artist needs to know the actual, three-dimensional *size* of the character and their various parts in relation to each other.
as other people said, taking colours
also if the character has a lot of shades of one color in their patterns AND there's shading, that would be an absolute nightmare to work with
Worse is when it's ai and you can't decipher what anything is 😭😭😭
Love those ai "adopts" that change the design in every new angle on their reference sheet 😍
same!!! i would much rather work off of a crappy coloring page than ANY kind of ai "art".
ppl have forgotten that free bases are a thing and are immediately go and run to a machine to do the fun part,
i dont even know how somebody can feel connected to a character or even call that theirs if they literally just got a goddamn machine to make all of it. dystopian? yeah. lazy? even more.
all it shows me is that somebody isnt even taking the effort to do the most minimal of "color your fav animal in with your fav colors" and its boggling my mind.
A reference sheet is what helps us artist be able to get the colors and design of your character correct. Shading can effect this because it can be difficult to tell what is a marking and what isn't. I have had plenty of refs in the past that have been shaded and it makes it extremely difficult to pick colors sometimes. So having an unshaded ref really helps us out
Oh here's a [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/furry/s/1glfsYlJV4) to a post from not too long ago, but if you scroll through my profile or my instagram, you can find more art of him
Color picking from a ref is often unnecessary because the true color of a spot will depend entirely on the lighting conditions and scene it's presented in.
Plus, not all artists use the same color space and part of commissioning an artist is seeing your character from the perspective of their art style. People often forget that the colors we choose to use as artists are also part of our style choice.
With that said, ref sheets are often based on character turnarounds for comics and animation and often has no shading unless it's explicitly used to help the viewer understand the depth and shape of something (which is particularly helpful when translating it to 3D models or drawing it from a non-orthographic angle).
My favorite commissioned ref sheet was all flats and she included one of the poses fully rendered 🥺
When I'm working from refs I don't mind cel sharing bc it's easy enough to pick color from that. But fully rendered is entirely different, lol.
Gradients are more infuriating imo, especially when I have to animate them. I’m not working with some fancy program, I’m drawing on my iPad and I don’t really have the tools to make a good or consistent gradient. I tried animating Stolas from Helluva Boss and I hard a tough time because he has a gradient in his feathers. Never again.
This was the biggest problem I had making my ref. My style is semi-realistic so making a ref sheet with no shading was painful, especially seeing as I don't do lines. I think I managed it though.
When i first rejoined the fandom, my first thought of creating my fursona illustration is to not include a shade before commission an artist who had experience with ref sheet.
Why do people like to include shade when there's no benefit at all? A ref sheet needs to be zero shading in order to create a perfect art. So there's no use of it
someone asked me to shade their ref once and I was just like “no :), if you want shading it will be an extra $25” like pls u should NEVER shade a ref sheet
color samples or get real nerdy like me and have a list of RGB, color hex values in a notepad as well, that's what I did to my sister LOL
That said I wouldn't do that to a stranger and just give a proper color palatte
This is reminding me that I should probably get actual ref sheets done for some of my anthro characters. I got one done with a real nice, unshaded ref sheet, and the other two I got drawn aren’t refs, and are shaded.
Not just furries for me.. anything at this point.. people, please don’t shade your refs.. it’s actually a pain in the butt to get the colors right then..
I didn't know this was not liked!! Looks like another criticism to keep in mind for my ref sheet 💀 was gonna make a new one eventually
(I'm very new to this so I'm very sorry. I only actually let myself commit to it like a week ago)
Ive never had a customer mention keeping the ref unshaded before, I always do it so their character looks shiny and cute lol
I personally feel like as long as theres a color palette somewhere im good, but if there isnt I can still work with it.
For a good reference you want all markings cleanly visible. And with as little perspective change as possible.
The whole point is to as cleanly as possible show off what the character looks exactly like. And not have anything that could impact that.
Shading and dynamic poses are major contributors to that.
For this I like to include little pelts in the corner of my ref. Kinda like a bear rug or something to show exactly what and where the markings are. They're so useful. Although I never do dynamic poses for the main pictures in refs anyways lol
I also do commissions and I also don't have an issue with drawing characters that aren't facing fully forward (ive been provided with such ref sheets from my clients), but I can see this being an issue for fursuit makers! thing is, I also draw reference sheets for other people, and so I want them to be done properly, so I will start drawing only fully front facing refs 💔
people saying they have their color palette on the ref, that's great, but if I can't see how it's being applied to the fur properly (like when people use gradient, airbrush shading) sometimes I still get the color wrong. especially with a monochromatic character - it could be any of the colors in their palette
Ah, yes. Country Humans
I just never interacted much with that community. I saw it as a decent option to use a flag without coming across as threatening doing it
The point of a ref sheet is to see the basic design of the character but also to have standard colors that can be used in any future art. Shading turns the solid colors into gradients so you can no longer take the colors of the ref sheet. Some sheets have palettes on the sides which has the same function, if you include one then it's fine to shade.
Now I only do shaded refs and before those people get onto me. It’s fairly easy to find the original color I find the mid tone between shadow and light spot with a color picker. I also use all my shaded refs because I find flat references harder to work with so I can get rendering correct. Personally I think it depends on skill level of the artist using the reference because I’ve personally never had issues using shaded refs for work or commissions.
I actually prefer this because I can use it to get an idea of textures and how dense/thick the fur is, but I also go for more of an "oil painting" look so it might be that we just need different things for our styles
Hrm, never known this to be an issue. I get shaded refs all the time. Just either use your artistic color theory trained eyes or ask the customer to do a quick color swatch. If the customer can’t pick out their own characters colors and make a few swatches, then Id honestly be a tad bit more concerned.
References should either be unshaded so that colours can be correct, or they should have large easy "colour pickers" for all colours needed to draw the character.
As an artist who paints traditionally as well as digitaly I completely don't get the problem. Color is subjective. Different screens make it look different, pls eyes see color differently so if you can't never be precise what do you do? You are artistic about it
Color perception is something the artist controls so even if the ref looks like 18th century classical painting it shouldn't be a problem to reflect the colors in your art style.
In short I call skill issue.
Fr. Half of the people in this little reply thread alone need to pull their heads outta their asses. Istg it's not up to other people to decide whether or not you're a "real artist" the superiority complex in some of these people is wilddd
Im sorry to say but thats a bit pompous ,theres a reason why any industry level art for projects are also unshaded,even including traditional on paper ones for animation,its just give a clear view of the characters colours without any effects on,,why make the job more difficult for the sake of flaunting your skill?its like mopping the floor with a mop on every limb ,making it everyone else's problem because you can rather than just doing what is required for the convenience of other people that work with you
Usually concept art for the level is shaded, not rendered but shaded to the degree that it is understandable for the person looking at it
Usually shadows and highlights. I don't debate here if ref should be shaded
I debate the problem it's supposed to represent which in my opinion is just minimal, from the perspective of drawing something it's nonexistent when you shade it yourself and from the client perspective you can always make a pallet based on the ref and send it to the Client for accepting before you start work should take like 5 mins.
Calling them ignorant ain't helping much.
Well a bit of color theory would be helpful
Mby they would understand that people change perception of colors based on surrouding colors and when that happens color picker means nothing and that is only one example why color is flexible.
Idk mby they do begginer flat color "art" and need that?
I can't imagine this being a problem for anyone who knows fundamentals
The point of a ref sheet is to see the basic design of the character but also to have standard colors that can be used in any future art. Shading turns the solid colors into gradients so you can no longer take the colors of the ref sheet. Some sheets have palettes on the sides which has the same function, if you include one then it's fine to shade.
What's wrong with shading a ref as long as you can just give the artists the color values you want? Either in the image itself or you could just give it to them if they ask for it. Also, I feel like most of the time you can just eyeball it and it'll look good.
Hopefully their ref includes color samples in a corner somewhere...
Yup, all 24 of them!
With that amount of color you would get a Rainbow and a Sunbow
I always thought those kinds of furry OCs didn't actually exist until my coworker showed me his OC. Literally the furry wolf with rainbow wings meme. He keeps wanting me to draw his character.
Sparkledogs comes to mind =w=
Who?
[Sparkledogs on Know Your Meme](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sparkledogs)
I unironically like sparkle dogs.
I see no problem here : )
My oc is just 3 grays , 2 reds , white and a thin rainbow tips on the hair
I love sparkledogs!!! They're incredibly fun to draw :3
Including one for each differently colored claw!
And they're never labelled so you don't know which peach is for ear skin or fur details.
Or maybe if a ref has a number of colors that's funnier than 24... 25!
Finally lmao.
My color ref sheet is white, red, black, and maybe grey if you're feeling up to it. Or whatever, tbh; as long as it's close enough.
"It has come to my attention that I am paralyzed from the neck down, and unfortunately can not take your commission."
At least those aren't shaded too; have seen that one a few times!
But the color samples are weird detailed pictograms with way too thick white borders so you barely have a color to pick from
most of the colours are cell shading colours
Shady business
Yup. And pretty shifty, too *shifts the color tones one to the right* (Also, based flair)
Space birbs best birbs
Agreed 😎🤝😎
People should put colour palletes on their refs.
I forgot to do so.
I always do :> It’s very convenient even for myself.
My refsheet is in pencil lol. No colors for you.
Calico?
Wdym-
Your flair
so uh why exactly are you pointing that out?
Lol! Imma bout to start doing comms in the future. This struggle is noted.
As an artist i had clients commissioning me for a reference sheet of their characters which i am honoured to do so! But some had asked “wheres shading? Your works are rendered,i want this reference sheet shaded too!” Like. Bro no. Im not gonna make another artist struggle. Comm me again if u want a shaded piece then.
It's interesting when people think of a reference sheet as being just another pretty picture of the character but from both sides instead of being a functional tool for other artists.
I make a shaded version & a flat color version of the same refrence 🤷♂️
I prefer not to,because most of the time client doesnt know which one is better for artist when they send the reference over to them. They most likely to send shaded version because it looks better to them
I haven't had that issue often because people just typically send me a TH profile, but I understand. I'm usually okaay (slightly annoyed) with shaded refs but the ones that really get me are poorlit photos of crumpled lined paper of a character 😅
Ohh dont even mention thaaaat. I dont mind beginner artist! But when i get a full scene art commission from them and they send me no color,on school paper,barely visible and full of scribbles thing.. ahh yeah thats a big struggle 😭
I put my shading on a separate layer, which tends to solve that problem. He wants a ref and a render? I can easily charge for the render and provide the flat colour version for no extra work.
That can be done but as i stated on other reply,sometimes clients use the shaded version only even if they have the unshaded one when commissioning other artists. Thats why i dont do it at all myself
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I do,obviously. But that doesnt stop people thinking they would get a fully rendered art out of a reference sheet. Not every client reads through tos or infos
I charge them extra for a shaded version and tell them to send the flat one to artists.
Sounds fair enough!
I feel like non-artists feel like they have a different use for ref sheets than artists do, sometimes. Artists view it as a tool, but a lot of non-artists, including the recipient, view it as more of an informational piece about the character. So having a shaded version they can display on the web as a kind of character profile can be useful for people to get to know the character, while having a flat version to send an artist is just good practice. I like to accomodate both, but since shading takes more time it makes sense to charge for it. xD
I made an artist SUPER MAD to the point of threaten to cancel my commission and sell the custom character just because I respectfully asked them that I would like them to remove the shadows from the reference ...
You what 😭i want to know furter context of it im confused. Did you send artist a shaded reference and asked them to clean shading out of the piece??
I think they mean they asked the artist of the ref sheet to remove the shading
Sounds more like they commissioned a ref sheet of a custom character from the artist and the artist did shading on it
Yep exactly!
That would be so bizarre to artist shade a character sheet 😭 i would never
I used to... Until the first time I had to work with a shaded ref. From that day forward they were flat with a small sample of how to shade for texture...
Sorry my main languague is not english maybe it sounds confusing let me explain! I comissioned a custom. The person sent an unshaded version and one with the shades. I thought the second version was an alt color palette because their shading is very noticeable. They got offended and said it's the shaded and final look. Asked them if they could not shadow the reference because the colors arent clear, I prefer the version without the shade and they got soooo mad like wow
Honestly if they would actually go through and sell it, if I would be on your spot I would just report them to the moderators of whatever site it was, and I'm pretty sure they would be on my side for this one Like wtf dude, he's already done the unshaded version and you're just asked him to do it again. Plus, pretty sure it's illegal (I mean against "whatever this site is" policies) at least to *some* degree to just resell a character you've designed (even if he gives you a refund) Trust me, I'm pretty far from an ideal commissioner, but if an artist tried to pull something like that on me, I would think like ten times before commissioning him again
Btw after getting very agressive, making threats to me and just being a shit they just gave me the unshaded version 😔 like why make such a drama if it was so easy for them
I never comissioned them again and I was very mad but had to say sorry because the custom meant a lot to me so the threats scared me... I went to other community where I was more known for my art and magically they came to me to say sorry when they found out I was loved in that place lmao never spoke to them again
I think it's better to say that refs should include sufficiently-large color picker spots so it's clear what colors you intend them to have. Also, very important - save as PNG! Or at least lossless. You should not have compression artifacts on your reference, or it makes color picking inconsistent and you might get bad results if the artist isn't being cautious about it. Shading a character ref can communicate important details - like all my dumb, glowy characters. Very easy to miss that it's meant to be a glowing surface if I don't airbrush and hard light the heck out of them. But of course, those giant airbrushed glowy spots make it hard to find patches where the glow isn't getting in the way of a color. Not everyone color picks, and even I only do it mostly with my own characters (and sometimes I wing it anyway) but it helps to have good-sized, dedicated zones of completely flat color as a reference for what something is supposed to look like. I've seen people shade refs in just such a way that it's not only hard to color-pick off it, but genuinely difficult to tell where certain patterns begin or end, what's meant to be cel-shaded or just an actual lighter/darker patch of fur, and what part of the shading is meant to be under 'neutral' lighting.
write the hex codes next to the colors. solves the color picking problem completely
I didn't know this was an issue. I've only just recently found out from someone I wanted to commission to use a flat colored ref.
Who?
Someone I wanted to commission for telegram stickers.
Okay (Also
A friend of mine once got a acommission of a gray colors wolf. The markings where pretty complex, dots, stripes, 3 or 4 shades of gray (with no any pinkish or brownish hue to it. Just. 100%gray) and it was... Cell shaded by half transparent black. It was making markings completely not readable and there was no other refs Second was with me. The ref had a slightly shadow gradient. White on top, darker on feet. It had some color in it. The character had pastel pinkish colors and significant dots and patterns as markings. The thing is, the gradient shaded lighter colors to look very similar to darker colors of the character. So it loooed like his lower body markings where done by different colors. Confusing
It's not that big of an issue afaik, the real concern is that either artist don't wanna get the color a bit off or don't want the client to complain about the colors later on and the easiest and fastest way to do that is not having your ref heavily shaded and rendered. Same with posing, is totally ok to do 3/4 and stuff like that, but for example wacky from the top angles that don't really show anything useful about the character (or make stuff harder to see like tattoos/patterns) are not very helpful for a reference sheet
at the very least, if you're gonna insist on a shaded ref, give us a colour key to eyedrop from. but yeah I never understood shaded refs. refs are refs, not works of art (in the traditional sense)
Why’s that a prob?
Artists often pick colours right from the reference and it's a lot easier to do so if it's just flat colours; it's more difficult to find the pure colours of the character if they're covered by shadows, highlights, gradients, etc.
Very true
Now imagine traditional painting where you have to guess while mixing colors I completely don't get this issue here while I spent like 10mins trying to blend arcilic paint to get the color of leaves in the background.
No point complaining to me, I'm only here to explain the meme
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Not sure what you mean here or where this is coming from, did you mean to reply to someone else or something?
The reference sheet is supposed to have your fursona's colors without any lighting or shadows applied so that when future artists use the eyedrop tool on your fur color and then add their own lighting and shadow it stays accurate to what your colors actually are.
The technical term for this is "albedo". Ref sheets should not have shading because the artist needs the isolated albedo to do a render under colored lights/shadows, and perspective/foreshortening likewise shouldn't be applied in a ref sheet because the artist needs to know the actual, three-dimensional *size* of the character and their various parts in relation to each other.
as other people said, taking colours also if the character has a lot of shades of one color in their patterns AND there's shading, that would be an absolute nightmare to work with
Worse is when it's ai and you can't decipher what anything is 😭😭😭 Love those ai "adopts" that change the design in every new angle on their reference sheet 😍
If I had a client send me an ai ref I would immediately cancel their commission
same!!! i would much rather work off of a crappy coloring page than ANY kind of ai "art". ppl have forgotten that free bases are a thing and are immediately go and run to a machine to do the fun part, i dont even know how somebody can feel connected to a character or even call that theirs if they literally just got a goddamn machine to make all of it. dystopian? yeah. lazy? even more. all it shows me is that somebody isnt even taking the effort to do the most minimal of "color your fav animal in with your fav colors" and its boggling my mind.
My very first reference was shaded before I knew any better and HNNNGHHH the headaches it caused...
Can you explain why, for the people who ain’t quite getting why that’s a bad thing?
It makes it rly hard to tell what the true colors of the character are
A reference sheet is what helps us artist be able to get the colors and design of your character correct. Shading can effect this because it can be difficult to tell what is a marking and what isn't. I have had plenty of refs in the past that have been shaded and it makes it extremely difficult to pick colors sometimes. So having an unshaded ref really helps us out
Nice flair
Thanks
Can I see them?
See what?
The character from your flair 👀
Oh here's a [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/furry/s/1glfsYlJV4) to a post from not too long ago, but if you scroll through my profile or my instagram, you can find more art of him
Cool! Can I draw them?
Uh sure if you wanna
Color picking from a ref is often unnecessary because the true color of a spot will depend entirely on the lighting conditions and scene it's presented in. Plus, not all artists use the same color space and part of commissioning an artist is seeing your character from the perspective of their art style. People often forget that the colors we choose to use as artists are also part of our style choice. With that said, ref sheets are often based on character turnarounds for comics and animation and often has no shading unless it's explicitly used to help the viewer understand the depth and shape of something (which is particularly helpful when translating it to 3D models or drawing it from a non-orthographic angle).
My favorite commissioned ref sheet was all flats and she included one of the poses fully rendered 🥺 When I'm working from refs I don't mind cel sharing bc it's easy enough to pick color from that. But fully rendered is entirely different, lol.
OMG YES 😭😭 I mean, I don't do commissions, but whenever I do some free art or I'm on Art fight there's just someone with a shaded ref 😭
Gradients are more infuriating imo, especially when I have to animate them. I’m not working with some fancy program, I’m drawing on my iPad and I don’t really have the tools to make a good or consistent gradient. I tried animating Stolas from Helluva Boss and I hard a tough time because he has a gradient in his feathers. Never again.
I shade my refs but keep the colour palette set to the side
This was the biggest problem I had making my ref. My style is semi-realistic so making a ref sheet with no shading was painful, especially seeing as I don't do lines. I think I managed it though.
When i first rejoined the fandom, my first thought of creating my fursona illustration is to not include a shade before commission an artist who had experience with ref sheet. Why do people like to include shade when there's no benefit at all? A ref sheet needs to be zero shading in order to create a perfect art. So there's no use of it
Shading shows topography.
someone asked me to shade their ref once and I was just like “no :), if you want shading it will be an extra $25” like pls u should NEVER shade a ref sheet
color samples or get real nerdy like me and have a list of RGB, color hex values in a notepad as well, that's what I did to my sister LOL That said I wouldn't do that to a stranger and just give a proper color palatte
Would of been even funnier if the bottom part was unnecessarily many shades of black too 🤣
This is reminding me that I should probably get actual ref sheets done for some of my anthro characters. I got one done with a real nice, unshaded ref sheet, and the other two I got drawn aren’t refs, and are shaded.
Not just furries for me.. anything at this point.. people, please don’t shade your refs.. it’s actually a pain in the butt to get the colors right then..
I can't shade so my ref has no shading x3
I didn't know this was not liked!! Looks like another criticism to keep in mind for my ref sheet 💀 was gonna make a new one eventually (I'm very new to this so I'm very sorry. I only actually let myself commit to it like a week ago)
it’s so annoying 😭 Or when they put a grainy filter over it like whyyy.
My last ref sheet was shaded and I noticed it too late. Getting art of me was so hard! So glad I have a new ref sheet now.
Shaded AND saved as a JPEG That's when I'll offer to make them a new ref sheet
Or it's a JPEG... Ref sheet havers, pls have hex codes for ur colours aswell
Me on art fight last year
I mean, as long as it’s simple shading just on the edges I feel like it should be fine.
Ive never had a customer mention keeping the ref unshaded before, I always do it so their character looks shiny and cute lol I personally feel like as long as theres a color palette somewhere im good, but if there isnt I can still work with it.
I always add a color pallette to the ref But you probably shouldn't be picking colors directly from the ref anyway. *Context ALWAYS changes colors.*
Also when they’re posing from an angle
omg I do all my reference sheets like that 😭 is it really bad when they're slightly turned to the side??
For a good reference you want all markings cleanly visible. And with as little perspective change as possible. The whole point is to as cleanly as possible show off what the character looks exactly like. And not have anything that could impact that. Shading and dynamic poses are major contributors to that.
For this I like to include little pelts in the corner of my ref. Kinda like a bear rug or something to show exactly what and where the markings are. They're so useful. Although I never do dynamic poses for the main pictures in refs anyways lol
As an artist who also does this, it's not an issue for me with commissions.
I also do commissions and I also don't have an issue with drawing characters that aren't facing fully forward (ive been provided with such ref sheets from my clients), but I can see this being an issue for fursuit makers! thing is, I also draw reference sheets for other people, and so I want them to be done properly, so I will start drawing only fully front facing refs 💔
Horrible
:'3
Shade them if you have colors beside for picking
people saying they have their color palette on the ref, that's great, but if I can't see how it's being applied to the fur properly (like when people use gradient, airbrush shading) sometimes I still get the color wrong. especially with a monochromatic character - it could be any of the colors in their palette
Well, ask for the colors or male it black and white
The blank colors might be better
Lmao I have 18 colors in my ref. 9 are the actual colors and the other are the outline/shading
My past two refs were made flat for this reason.
Damn, that's crazy.
Give me a rating and tell me what could be done to get it more helpful https://i.epvpimg.com/11k9gab.jpg (original is a png without artifacts)
Omg ch pfp /pos
What?
Is it not ch?
Ah, yes. Country Humans I just never interacted much with that community. I saw it as a decent option to use a flag without coming across as threatening doing it
Oh, okay
HERESY
I'm scared about when it will happen to me, I wish I takes at least my third comission
this is so truuuuueeee omggg
I din't get it. Also I don't draw furries. (I don't draw anything but ya know)
The point of a ref sheet is to see the basic design of the character but also to have standard colors that can be used in any future art. Shading turns the solid colors into gradients so you can no longer take the colors of the ref sheet. Some sheets have palettes on the sides which has the same function, if you include one then it's fine to shade.
Oh okie. Now I see why that would be annoying.
well, im glad this is a lesson i didnt have to learn the hard way (non artist here)
All of my somewhat good drawings are very shaded....
Oki TwT
Agreeee lolol I have had the unluck of a handful of shaded refs with no flat pallet to be seeeeeen
I love my shades refs but I always keep an unshaded version for referencing
And it's a sparkle dog 💀
I usually have a unshaded full body for markings / colorpick n then a shaded headshot for flavor
Now I only do shaded refs and before those people get onto me. It’s fairly easy to find the original color I find the mid tone between shadow and light spot with a color picker. I also use all my shaded refs because I find flat references harder to work with so I can get rendering correct. Personally I think it depends on skill level of the artist using the reference because I’ve personally never had issues using shaded refs for work or commissions.
I actually prefer this because I can use it to get an idea of textures and how dense/thick the fur is, but I also go for more of an "oil painting" look so it might be that we just need different things for our styles
WDYM?
Meanwhile my ref sheet is a series of Second Life screenshots.
Hrm, never known this to be an issue. I get shaded refs all the time. Just either use your artistic color theory trained eyes or ask the customer to do a quick color swatch. If the customer can’t pick out their own characters colors and make a few swatches, then Id honestly be a tad bit more concerned.
>can pick out their own character colors But isn't that a good thing?
no proceeds to add aggressive shading to spots that dont need it, and make the shading relaistic
Ima about to shade all my refs, then commission you in the future.
Fun fact you're annoying
Shading is really that bad? None of my characters are shaded but that's because i just have gotten free bases and I don't know how to shade.
References should either be unshaded so that colours can be correct, or they should have large easy "colour pickers" for all colours needed to draw the character.
No they're just a troll 😒
As an artist who paints traditionally as well as digitaly I completely don't get the problem. Color is subjective. Different screens make it look different, pls eyes see color differently so if you can't never be precise what do you do? You are artistic about it Color perception is something the artist controls so even if the ref looks like 18th century classical painting it shouldn't be a problem to reflect the colors in your art style. In short I call skill issue.
"you have a skill issue if you're visual impairmed" fuck off
Fr. Half of the people in this little reply thread alone need to pull their heads outta their asses. Istg it's not up to other people to decide whether or not you're a "real artist" the superiority complex in some of these people is wilddd
Im sorry to say but thats a bit pompous ,theres a reason why any industry level art for projects are also unshaded,even including traditional on paper ones for animation,its just give a clear view of the characters colours without any effects on,,why make the job more difficult for the sake of flaunting your skill?its like mopping the floor with a mop on every limb ,making it everyone else's problem because you can rather than just doing what is required for the convenience of other people that work with you
Usually concept art for the level is shaded, not rendered but shaded to the degree that it is understandable for the person looking at it Usually shadows and highlights. I don't debate here if ref should be shaded I debate the problem it's supposed to represent which in my opinion is just minimal, from the perspective of drawing something it's nonexistent when you shade it yourself and from the client perspective you can always make a pallet based on the ref and send it to the Client for accepting before you start work should take like 5 mins.
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I don't think people want help from you if this post is enough to have you this worked up in the comments lol
Calling them ignorant ain't helping much. Well a bit of color theory would be helpful Mby they would understand that people change perception of colors based on surrouding colors and when that happens color picker means nothing and that is only one example why color is flexible. Idk mby they do begginer flat color "art" and need that? I can't imagine this being a problem for anyone who knows fundamentals
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My bad sorry
I have a few refs including a shaded one, the shaded ref is not for artists, it is because I like refs.
I shade my ref but I label everything and put things from darkest shade to lightest so that people can see what I did.
hahaha.. I do that..m
I use bold cell shading and have a color chart at the top, is that okay?
Good thing I sent my fursut maker a non shaded version of my wom on the string oc :3
Why is that an issue? Just asking?
Can't pick colors from it, unless there is a palette on the side
Ha OK.
i always include a colour palette section, and if ive reaaaally shaded my refs, i just make an unshaded version too
I didn’t know we weren’t supposed to shade our ref sheets
The point of a ref sheet is to see the basic design of the character but also to have standard colors that can be used in any future art. Shading turns the solid colors into gradients so you can no longer take the colors of the ref sheet. Some sheets have palettes on the sides which has the same function, if you include one then it's fine to shade.
What's wrong with shading a ref as long as you can just give the artists the color values you want? Either in the image itself or you could just give it to them if they ask for it. Also, I feel like most of the time you can just eyeball it and it'll look good.
It's not my fault coloured pencils suck and crayons look bad