Hello, mix race guy here, it’s hilariously bad. Its either “you dont got a race so you wouldn’t understand” or im playing skin of connivence playing off Hispanic blood with my light skin or self deprecating humor
I’m mixed race, specifically white and native, I’ve felt like this almost my whole life, either feeling bad that I’m white, or feeling like I don’t belong with my native relatives since I’m not full native (and don’t like hockey like they all do n stuff).
2:30 yeah I literally a witnessed this. There was a South Korean artist who was asked whey he rarely draw black characters, he then answered the reason was because he was not confident enough yet. He answered it in a broken English because he wasn’t fluent in English. Then people meticulously deconstructed his answer word by word and somehow twisted it as if he was racist. I tried to help him answering the mentions but I got a lot of crap too. It was awful. In the end they just proved why he hesitated to draw black characters from the first place.
I'm Asian artist and I don't draw black characters much. Even darkskinned Asians. ( I'm darkskinned asian) I think it's weird to ask questions like this. It's like asking a portrait artist why don't they draw dogs. They can but they don't
If anyone ever asks me why I don't draw more diverse characters I'm either going to say "because I don't like you specifically" and move along it's gonna be funny
What kind of backwards logic is that, no one tells an artist what to draw and when (unless it's a comision the artist accepted doing, and both parties are respectful) I am an artist an no one gets to police what i can or cannot draw, art isnt made with the clap of hands
I remembered when a person commit suicide due to death threats in twitter because they didn't like a fictional character, looking at you genshin fandom.
This is why I don't like being part of the Genshin Impact community.. The game is good but most people in the fandom are so toxic. I think I'm pretty disconnected with the community 'cause I only watch a few content creators and don't interact with the actual community.
Honestly, as a black artist - I'd much rather see more black OCs then edits. I understand why people make black edit art - I do - but OCs NEED more love, support, and encouragement. Hype up the black OCs significantly more.
And crazy enough I've seen people PURPOSELY make terrible "black edit" versions of characters just to piss on the pot. Like damn, who let 4chan sit here.
I agree. I never really understood why people did this. I mean with cosplay it's different because you're dressing up as someone. But making a character that's Asian black or another ethnicity is weird to me. Like I get it we need representation but making OCs is better than just taking a character and making them black like you said
I feel like the reason many people have this double standard for "blackwashing" may have any to do with the amount of Black characters in Western media as well as the historical way in which they were used and depicted. It has changed SO MUCH SO since then and I personally do not believe that blackwashing a characters is a smart move to "see yourself" in your favorite roles. I'd much rather see us being drawn in our own original characters in these situations in which we apparently "don't belong" in. We shouldn't shame a person it they do attempt to draw a black or a darker skinned characters and make them a slightly different skintone because mob ostracized behaviors just makes people avoid the topic all together. If the goal is better representation, shielding ourselves from doing such attempts is asinine to the WHOLE purpose of art depicting different people and cultures, and hell, even skin tones. Glad you were able to take about this Mohammed! Also your beard is coming in nice 💪
Legit facts man! I would be so happy to see more poc representation in media. I don’t see why we should change the race of charactes when we can simply just make new poc characters. It would be great to see more animes, cartoons etc with poc in them. But I feel like changing the characters race and saying “it’s better” is kinda a slap in the face to the artist. I think it would be great if everyone could work together and make more inclusive media with poc, lgbtq representation etc.
I like the Black characters in the works of Ohkubo atsuhi. He's a mangaka who I admire for his art style but I recently realized how good he is at portraying diversity.
As a greek myself, all I have to say is: what the fuck are you fucking kidding me? I grew up watching american and other foreign content because 95% of greek media is shit/not my cup of tea and even if I am a white person, I personally had to deal with the HUGE difference in culture. Did that stop me from relating to characters? Fuck no, I relate and connect just fine to any characters. In fact, in arcane the character I relate to the most is ekko. It DOES hurt a bit that I never see my culture being represented, so I do get that it can get lonesome when there's no one of your kind, but the "I don't connect" excuse people use to blackwash is ridiculous and I'd dare say discriminating. If you have such an issue, create your own characters! I am an artist planning to create my own stories and I am definitely not missing the opportunity to represent my countries and the balkans(I am also albanian). Don't expect others to pamper you, get up and make your group be heard
The TH-cam thumin did a much better job. Plus you don’t have to have the same race as a character to relate to them, that’s internalized racism.thumin drew HERSELF as a popular anime character. She didn’t turn the character black.
Something that I've heard of is that people take POC characters and make them look darker to be more POC...? My dad is Middle Eastern and African and he's pale as heck. My uncle one the other hand is super tan. Conclusion: don't make POC darker to make them "more POC" its just rude and taking away their race.
@@exlipse3813 Though one thing to also point out, some areas in Europe still classify people from the Middle East (and also further east like Pakistan and India) as Caucasian/"white".
Im half latina and half white so this really resonates with me. I honestly hate seeing people (black/white)wash a character because the creator didn't intend on them looking like that. When ever I do fanart, I ALWAYS try to represent them in the way they were intended to look. I have made plenty Black, Hispanic and Asian characters but if the fanart im drawing doesn't have representation, OCS ARE A THING. MAKE A COMIC! WE'D LOVE TO READ ABOUT THEM!
I draw Goku with darker skin. Yes I have my own saiyan characters but I'll draw and color the official characters how I want. I redesigned Sonic characters just to make them more fun to draw
See, I bypassed this completely, I only draw monsters, cybernetics, plants or etc as characters. So I don’t have to deal with the backlash, not to say drawing people isn’t rewarding, I just don’t want that stress on my plate, and with those kinda ideas you can make something even more different from the norm.
I mostly draw dogs, but one time when I painted a black girl (the one in my profile pic) I got a DM from a white girl asking me why I didn't paint her skin darker. I mean, if I was painting a specific person or character and I painted their skin lighter than it actually is, I would totally understand this comment. But I literally made up the person in my painting and made her skin tone complement the fox in the same painting. People need to direct their attention to legitimate racists or even someone who may have done something problematic without intending to.
"Why didn't you make her skin darker?" "Because this is a legitimate skin tone. Not all people look the same you crazy" Btw love the art. Didnt even see it was a drawing until I blew it up more.
I am literally around the person's skinstone in your painting, I swear- people constantly forget that not all black people have dark skin. ❤️ I love this painting though it is detailed and pretty and it made me smile :D
I really think more black media needs to be adapted. There are so many untapped stories and folklore from black communities around the world. And yet Hollywood is like, "Nah, how about we don't adapt black culture and I guess you can be this previously white side character"??? It just feels so disingenuous. Black Panther was HUGE, so what's the excuse?
I would honestly love to see more media based on history, cultures and stories of different communities around the world. Instead of inserting one random Asian or Black character (and the same principle goes for sexual and gender minorities), I'd love it if they could make movies and shows about and inspired from different cultures and communities around the world. Also, on a related note, can anybody guide me to where I can read mythologies and folklore from Black and Asian cultures?
Never forget when someone showed how to properly colour palms on dark skinned characters (paler colour on the palms cause that’s what it looks like in reality) and someone called it whitewashing
I think I know what you're referring to! Someone on Tumblr or Twitter showed people how to paint dark skin properly, "melanin and lighting" etc etc, and someone got mad.
I don't know how to draw palms of a black character. Is it just a lighter tone or is there a specific rule? I want to draw black characters and OCs properly, but I haven't even tried to do it. I'm afraid I'll mess everything up. And I'm usually afraid to ask about such stuff because of how some people can get when they hear such questions.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR CALLING OUT BLACK WASHING ASIAN CHARACTER . As South East Asian , i want to say it out loud so bad but people always come with excuses like they never see dark skin Asian befor. as an artist , This Cancel anything but black culture is scared the crap out of me to the point the i don't want to make or Draw any dark skin character . Thank you again for call out this stupid behavior as Black artist . I meant a lot to me :[
I love this. I think it's very ethnocentric of Westerners to conflate dark skin with being Black. Asia is a giant place and Asians come in many skin tones ranging from pale to dark.
Its like they think Dark skin MUST 100% mean black. Forget Native Americans, South Asians, Southeast Asians and Polynesians/Melanesians man, we don't count apparently.
1. Simply don’t change the race of a character. 2. Don’t harass someone for not knowing how to color a skin tone 3. Redesign, don’t blackwash / whitewash 4. You can still redesign a character and change their race; but separate it from the character edit: what the hell
As a black person myself, I always found both Blackwashing and Whitewashing to be both equally problematic as like you said it's erasing one's ethnicity in place of either a black or white one. Especially for canon Japanese Anime characters who have darker skintones like Mirko from MHA and such on. And another thing they claim that they've made them Blasian when they've erased anything that was Asian about them while characters who are either aliens or nonhumans I'm fine with that since they aren't humans or from Earth but just look like one.
@@Girldont-ib6vw Personally i think it is, it both stirs problems and makes ppl hate each other i rather have the character just the way they are not whiter or blacker
you can even look it up the future are very mix and diverse, 90% - 95% of them time it will always have mixed futures, only a few being expection to fully looking black or Asian and we also have to take account the fact that Asians can just be diverse within the coumminty because Asia is a big place with lots of diffrent people,
@@Girldont-ib6vw erasing a character's race and forcing a different one onto them, drastically changing art against the original artist's wishes. They're both equally problematic.
As a black person, im just confused the reason why are they editing the characters to look black instead of making their own characters instead if they really wanna relate to it ?
frfr create the character instead of editing characters to be black because that isn't gonna do shit, you're not going to get representation out of an edited blasian character
When people say that a lot of people say “because it’s hard if you’re so upset about people making POC representation YOU do it” or just call them racist but it’s mostly talking about characters who are Japanese…
That first comment hit me hard. I talked on twitter and was like “stop bashing interracial relationships, i didn’t see these when I was growing up so i like it” and I got hit with comments like “you have a fetish for them, we get it. Take that to instagram” and “this tweet is for black people, not whatever you is.” SERIOUSLY??? NEVER talk about interracial relationships on twitter. I get people want black/black couples. I just like the change of pace because it was rare to see growing up. When I said “we should make it ourselves if we want to see our relationship.” One person’s reply was like “you know it puts the onus for black people to make stories about our relationships” or something like that. YES. We should be doing it ourselves. We SHOULD be setting the example. No other race can portray the black experience like black people can because THEY HAVEN’T LIVED IT. I didn’t want to reply to that because I know people will go on and on trying to prove their point. On top of it, I saw an artist hating that she was mixed because of twitter people’s opinions. Granted, she has some mental illnesses but still sad to see her changing her opinion on herself because of twitter.
@@patch2932 ikr? There’s a game dev who bashed interracial relationships constantly. I want to support her game because we need more black game devs. However, seeing a game dev throw up such opinions was tiresome. Funnily enough, the one white character she added ended up being the most popular.
@@hatguyfan22 Yeah, I’m white but I’ve been in several great interracial relationships with men and women so it really pisses me off when people say, “races don’t mix,” like dude? You okay?? Lmao. People need to learn the “mind your own damn business” skill. People are beautiful in all shapes, sizes colors and identities so why should I *not* want to be with them? Some people’s logic makes no sense at all
my mom straight up told me to find chinese boyfriend to continue our chinese lineage i agree with you, people can date anyone they want and have any preferences they prefer if they prefer to date someone of the same race, it should not be forced onto other people.
Thoses peoples make me feel really funny as a quarteron. I already thought that really racists white people could think that either A) quarteron is the solution to erase blackness definetly and could be used to erase everything non white too or either B) quarteron are tainted white people with black blood. But sometimes when I started to watch some Black empowerment channels (?) and see in the comments black people saying shit like "races shouldn't mix"... I just wonder if for them mixed Black and White people are an abomination that can be "saved" if they marry Black people ? And that quarterons aren't black ? One day they will bring back apartheid and say shit like it's to create space where POC can feel safe or something. Not that I think people shouldn't have their own space, but there's a limit between having a space for a certain group of people and segregation. Anyway, people are clowns.
I once saw a "black month" post, where they legit drew characters from different fandoms black. I was speechless. Especially so because they made asian characters black! I commented on it saying it was weird, and people told me I was racist
I think raceswapping any characters at all is just disrespectful to the character and their creators. Clearly the creators decided to make the character a certain race for a reason. I would love to be seeing more of peoples black OCs than seeing the 50th corporate raceswap
im confused what’s the design choice reason behind peach and daisy being white 😭😭 the og designs are already basic corporate designs by triple A studious, why should the artists stay 100% true to the designs?
@Enna Sy and I'm confused about why it's so damn hard for people to respect the skin tones of non-black characters. Here is my thoughts on it- if it's not okay to draw black characters with the wrong skin tone then it's not okay to drawn non-black characters with the wrong skin tones either. Just draw them how they look
@@Iggika cus people like to have fun and see themselves in characters they like? what’s so wrong with an artist drawing a dark skinned peach? who is it harming? +why didnt you answer my question?
@Enna Sy so does that mean it would be okay for someone to draw someone like Falcon as white or Asian because they want to see themselves in thay character? Also how am I meant to know the reason why Peach and Daisy are white- do I look like I work at Nintendo? I'd rather see people make black Princess OCs to have interact with Peach and Daisy
one of my OC's is black. I felt guilty for creating her because I'm white and was worried if I did something wrong that was offensive. In the past I've seen comments like, "Why is her hair straight" "why is she the villain" edit: atp idc. If I make a dark skin character and think she's pretty, I'm gonna use her. Argue with the wall.
If they srsly complain about straight hair I finna laugh. Black people can have any hair color, hair type,eye color, etc. Also there are plenty of black people who can be villains too, any people of any race can hurt ppl. Im black and I got ur back💗
I've drawn a self portrait of myself and posted it on Twitter and got called out for 'whitewashing'. I drew myself with a dark-light skin tone since I'm Malaysian and Malaysia has a lot of races like Indian, Chinese, Muslim and other indigenous races. I'm an indigenous Malaysian but also have a Chinese bloodline and I am mostly lighter than darker but of course, the Western side of Twitter condemned me for having a slightly lighter than darker skin tone in my self portrait. Not everyone should be black in the world, every skin colour exist and of course they'll call you out for not being black and that it's ironic that they never realise how that came out as racist also 😒
I don't understand anymore- If character is black, draw him BLACK If character is white, draw him WHITE ...why do you need to change their whole races?
seeing people say "blackwashing and whitewashing are in the sense same but in history black rep was minor and this is changing that!!" Like bro ur not changing history and you still replaced a character's race with another 😨
@@Lordy-Lord That is part of it, but it's also popularity and money. Corps like DC and Marvel have learned new woke characters don't work so they don't want to make new ones, instead they just woke-ify existing characters and just label anyone who doesn't like it or has valid criticisms as bigots because it's easier than making and banking on a new character doing well. On the other hand the woke scolds do it because "If I force the thing that everyone likes to be like me, then that means everyone will have to like me too!" suffering from the same issue where they want to change existing characters because they want the POPULARITY and ICON status of the OG character... without actually putting in the work with an OC to reach that point.
@@deltagearadvanced5140that's bs, miles Morales is actually a better written character than Peter. In fact, miles Morales IS the spiderman. Peter is now an old fart raising kids lol
As a black creator, my OC has had some fans already, mainly due to her design. (her clothing nowwithstanding) I find it pretty nice, but I also get the opposite of "Why don't you draw x you're racist!" But I love the attention my girl is getting.
@@witchplease9695 didnt you listen to the video? POC people have skin tones that vary. black people can have lighter or darker skin tones and yet still be black. like doja cat. doja cat exists
It’s a lose lose game. You either draw black characters of which Twitter seems you can never do good enough unless your black yourself or you avoid drawing black characters to not upset the mob of which they come after you anyway for not drawing them. I think the only healthy answer is to draw what you want and ignore the people being annoying.
Don’t be? Draw what you want. Black folks don’t care as much as you think they do. I think it’s just Twitter scaring the shit outta you as they always do. For me, as long as it’s not a red lipped, deep black character eating a watermelon we good -an African American
@@ok-sg8tw no you shut up, did you piss in your bed because someone is scared of getting shitty "advice" from shit heads like you and they should be since you get all pissy when they "drew your race wrong"
Edit 4/28/22: No I don't hate black people just because I have experienced racism from some black people, please consider that before telling me I "hate my black side." Thank you, much love. As a Black/White person, it's actually really common for black people (and other races too but I've mostly experienced it from black people) to hate on mixed people and interracial couples for tons of different reasons. Since you asked I hear reasons such as "Mixed kids aren't really black," "Mixed kids try to speak on behalf of the community but it isn't their place" "MIxed kids act too white," "Mixed kids aren't helping the black community," "Mixed kids should identify with their culture more," "You shouldn't be dating the oppressor," "There's plenty of black men/women and you chose a white one you're a race traitor." These are just a few things I've seen over Reddit and Twitter (the reasons I mean, I've heard it all in real life yes) but there are probably more reasons,
Thank you. When I was growing up I used to hear from my mother that somehow Black people and Asian people tend to not get along at times (like a stereotype or something) but here I am because my black father and filipino mother loved each other. What hurts is that Mixed people get flack for not being this one race enough and they’re already trying to figure out wtf they even are as they explore their ancestry. Some black people devalue the struggle as “a little bit of a identity crisis” and some say that they need to “know their place” or “stay in their lane.” Most black people ive seen are wonderful, but It’s fking disgusting how racial prejudice exists even in the community, and some of their members just don’t wanna hear about it because they’re more focused on fighting the oppressors than the hatred and mindsets they’re exhibiting towards other poc when they should focus on both. How can we as poc fight oppression and racial prejudice if we can’t even respect each other?
Wth? The blk community is probably the most accepting to mixed people, even uplifting them above monoracial black people, even to the detriment of colorism. So I'm really confused by this. Also mixed people aren't just black, that is the one drop rule. Mixed people are both of their parents races not just one.
as a south east asian, i really wanted to talk about this but id be called "racist" lmao. guys, just stop. leave things be and itd be better if you make your own characters than take the ones that are for us asians because damn.
ironically enough its mainly Americans who call basically everyone else racist. I get pissed whenever they complain about Encanto fanart. Like its not their country, not their culture, nor family. And the Colombians love the fanarts. I honestly don't care wether they have a lighter skin tone or not. Cuz Colombia is very diverse with their ethnicities and people and it makes me happy that people are interested in the movie and maybe even my family's culture.
@lun it's all wrong and illogical cus the author don't make their character black or queer or anything else, so please respect the author's choices and design of their characters:>
@lun maybe find a proper counterargument instead of mindlessly making assumptions about other people? Like have you ever seen this person get mad at anyone for headcanoning Isabella as a lesbian? Or are you just making baseless assumptions?
I'm actually mad at "Blasians exist" excuse. I'm sorry but have you LOOKED at mixed race people? Paranakan people can have slanted Chinese eyes while having the dark Malay skin tones. They are MIXED, their features should be MIXED. If you erase all the defining racial features of an Asian character and replacing them with Black features, you are not drawing a Blasian, you are drawing a Black person. You wanna make them have curly hair, big lips and darker skin? Fine. But don't say they're mixed race when you erase literally every racial feature to put in another. Admit it when you make a non-BIPOC Black and stick to it instead of hiding behind this weak excuse.
Totally. I remember a Tiana cosplayer that had tanned skin and white racial features, so of course people called her "white people cannot cosplay Tiana" or "don't you dare!". She posed next to her father and guess what? he was black, with a warm dark skin. People should understand better on how mixing ethnic or genetic works in general because, like you say, If you erase all the defining racial features of an Asian character and replacing them with Black features, you are not drawing a Blasian, you are drawing a Black person.
hm i can kind of understand where you’re coming from. I don’t believe in blackwashing it isn’t a thing i just wanted to point out if we’re talking anime characters “blackwashed” a whole lot of them don’t have asian features to begin with! also mixed people don’t have to literally looked “mixed” all the time they can be darker, lighter, etc. i can understand if it was only ever very blackpassing blasian edits but there’s a wide variety of edits.
@@gooch3097 I'm talking less on edits and more on redraws. My issue is people calling them mixed race when _every_ feature is changed to one race/ethnicity. Then they aren't mixed.
@@mastertofu oh okay but still mix people come in many different shades you can’t say one is not mixed because they don’t look mixed that’s not how it works. if every mixed edit looked like that then i could understand but there’s then again many different varieties of edits/redraws.
I’ve had people dm me and tell me I’m not allowed to have a poc OC because I’m white. I’ve also asked for advice on how to draw more ethnic features and textured hair but people have literally just told me I shouldn’t draw my main oc because they’re darker skinned. I’m trying my best but without other experienced artists encouraging and giving me help instead of yelling at me and insulting me then I’ll have to figure it out myself.
@@ShinDMitsuki Yeah. i’m trying to study more ethnic facial features. I learned how to draw dreads and cornrows lately so that’s a big accomplishment for me.
@@yeetlol3537 Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do. It’s especially hard because my art style isn’t all that realistic so all of their noses and lips look about the same, the only difference is the eyes, I have a white/asian oc who has monolid eyes so that’s something I’ve practiced a lot. Just trying to find my art style still, *while* trying to figure out how to draw different features is pretty difficult.
@@patch2932 how about the way you do lips? have u tried doing the lips more prominent or shading them or? (Obviously not all black people have bigger lips but my style ain't realistic either and just the lips and eyes can make a big difference when it comes to guessing which race my character is🤷🏾♂️)
As a dark-skinned asian person who is also an artist, it pains me when people take away characters I relate to due to race and race swap them. They are our representation! We want to see ourselves too!
I tend to avoid drawing characters who aren't white because of how harsh Twitter is. Like, if I made one mistake I'd probably be bombarded with death threats, which results in most drawings I do only containing white characters
I feeel you and I'm mixed (black and white, but more on the lighter side) and I don't want to draw really dark characters at all bc of them:( even if its my mom. Really sad how a lot of people don't want to draw dark people bc of them.
A white character you can go absolutely nuts with giving them any facial features, proportions or even skin tones (tanned people do exist). But drawing POC has me feeling like their is a knife hovering over my shoulder even if I’m alone drawing in my private sketchbook. Though I still do practice them because I enjoy it
@@mrpizzacat8273 same, i feel like if I don’t draw my ocs a certain way, i’ll get attacked. The worst part is most of my stories take place in a fantasy world where hair color/texture works differently than irl, which means that a darker-skinned person in my world could potentially have naturally straight hair. (I’m black)
What really gets me, is when a character's whole personally is changed. Not even race, just they become not that character and just have their name. In that case, why not just make a new character to replace them? O!! Along with their outfit design too, where when the two characters are compared, they are no longer alike or even have remnants of their old design. Not even time skip wise or something like that.
I think race-bending characters in general is mostly pointless and asking for trouble and drama, and I also think people of colour deserve better than an edit of a frame from an animated film or Ariel the mermaid turned black when there are countless legends, rich folklore and mythologies to explore that actually represent poc culture and heritage. Also the hypocrisy of the people blackwashing Asian characters and saying anime isn't rep or that Japanese characters from anime look white... yeah, that's definitely something that should be spoken about. I only feel a bit conflicted about race-bending and hypocritical when I look at it from my perspective of a queer man who enjoys queer shipping, even when characters aren't technically gay or queer. I feel like it's a bit of a different scenario with LGBT identities vs ethnicity but can't exactly put my finger on it.
I think the biggest difference between having a race headcannon (that drastically changes the skin of the character) and a sexuality/ nurodivergent headcannon is that the former actively changes the design of the character. And as an artist, it’s pretty disrespectful to change character designs drastically like that. Personally I think we should treat racebending similarly to how we treat gender-bending characters. Where it’s more of just a fun design challenge thing, but it’s no longer really the same character and should have its own tag and stuff.
I've seen artists treat racebending like an AU and I thought it was really cool! Someone I follow did a "what if this anime were set in Mexico" that had a lot of thought put into it and didn't feel like it was trying to "fix" the source material at all. Which I think is the thing that makes it weird, especially when the character being "fixed" is Asian. I'm East Asian, and well...I sympathize with the need for representation, but when it's with that particular intention it feels like the artist thinks all pale characters are white and therefore overrepresented, and people like me just don't exist. I think LGBT headcanons don't have that fixing element to them, so they don't feel uncomfortable? Or at least they can be a different flavor of uncomfortable? Like when people change aroace characters to be something more shippable- even then, it's straight-up erasure and not like they think they're fixing the character. From what I've seen, at least.
@@strawberrymochi118 I suppose the question is Is the race bend an attempt to “fix” the character or just an attempt to see them in a different culture and style? Tbh I’d love if many stories were reimagined from different cultures, I mean it happens with live action and plays and to see small artists do that is so cool to me so I feel like there’s so many sides to this
Making characters black is most problematic when the original character is also a minority with barely media spotlight (specifically south east asians with dark skin tones) There are way too many people claiming that the character is black or makes their skin darker than it should be … nothing wrong with black characters, but just draw yourself cosplaying the character… dont change the skin tone and claim them as a black character .. - from a southeast asian with tanned skin
@@hbsupreme1499 you know what… good point. I don’t think I was the right person to talk about this. I’m not even Dominican, honestly. I must’ve been tired when I wrote that comment. Sorry.
Hello there, all races can mix tbh and the fact that these toxic people will say that is just straight up racist. 🤦🏾 and that's coming from someone who is black myself, my auntie's bf is white but she's black and that is ok, anyways I hope you agree with this. Have a nice day ✌
Insecurities, differences in social structures due to unbalanced historical advantages, stereotypes, lack of personal experiences with real friends who are black that had a positive effect in their earlier life, upbringing with racist family or friends, etc...or just being a douchebag. It's easy to get away with being an idiot if your the majority unfortunately. Tears everyone apart.
I can't lie, the concept of Blacktober always felt off to me. Like if you want black rep do it yourself, you have the power to make your own characters instead of forcing it onto other ones. Hell that'd even be a fun design exercise in creativity.
have you seen blacktober recently? there was more ocs than gross edits. the miku incident is another one of such trends that felt off to me.. why would want to make a whole trend just with the excuse of making her black?
Im of the strong opinion that, now here me out, dont be an ass about the skin tone. Lets understand, skin tone is amazingly confusing and any number of factors change the color
Yeah. While I'm no pro, I consider myself a pretty solid digital painter. I still have a hard time getting skin tones, for any race, right while copying portraits. It's really hard.
@@yoshistover5881 Hey I have the same problem omg, sometimes I'll just get the picture of them on my screen and copy and paste it, but sometimes that's hard too because their skin tone doesn't always look the same
Tbh I don't mind if people draw characters as a different race or ethnicity, it can be fun to see them in different ways! If they're not pulling the "I fixed the character :) " bs then I have no issue with it. But I do feel there should be more black ocs and characters.
If you're going to redesign a character at least change the features like hair, skin, face, and type of clothing. Using a paint bucket tool and calling it a day is just like those donut steel oc type of shit, doesn't help at all.
I feel like as long as you're redesigning a character to relate it to you for fun then you're fine. But if you're doing it to fix a character then that's wrong. I'm bipoc and I've drawn myself as lighter skinned characters and I've gotten heat for that :/
Literally this! I got harrassed once because I edited Starfire to look like me for a fun pfp even after I explained why I did it. Unfortunately people who do edits tend to get lumped in with people who "art fix" and it's so sad
Genuine question, I'm a bit confused on the whole issue since I agree that race-swapping characters to 'fix' them is strange at best, what about people who draw and/or redesign certain characters to look more themselves, because they relate heavily to the character? Asking because I've done that myself and I just want to see other people's opinions on it.
@@MohammedAgbadi I'm black. Got an Asian friend. She's been my friend for over 10 years. BLM gets big and she doesn't talk about it on her Twitter because it's only for art. She gets dms telling her silence of racism or something, and worriedly comes to ask me if she's racist. Twitter is something else, really.
It feels like a new age of censorship of sorts, but this time not by the government but by other people on social platforms. People are saying you can’t draw triggering artwork, people are saying you can’t make political cartoons or draw a race that you aren’t part of. There should be no censorship of art, even if it makes you uncomfortable, it is art. Some art is MADE to make you uncomfortable and that’s the message of it. Even if you don’t agree woth the message being sent out, it’s unethical to censor art because that’s censoring people’s personal expression. So now it’s become, “Express yourself but only how I feel comfortable and how I say you can.”
@@edgechan you’re funny LOOOL, just cause she’s asian that means they’re pulling an asian hate crime on her for asking her to speak up about black issues? you’re fr weird
I'm a mix race artist and like others in this comment section have said it can be awful. I don't see a space for mixed race characters in the art world and drawing characters that are white or black (my personal mix), or even other races, seems to be full of peril online.
Oh gosh, I have this anxiety. I'm mixed race too and trying to draw a character like me can be stress inducing, but I think I just realized that people who see race as divided into clear groups and have to be either one of the other are weirdos and our art isn't for them.
I'm white but I find it super weird that people are so upset over drawing mixed characters. I don't even know what my character's races are and yet people will get upset. If I don't know then how do you know?
Honestly!! I’m mixed and I make mixed characters of all kinds, It’s just what I know. Race isn’t just clear concrete groups? I hate how people try to make things black and white. The world is diverse.
I’m also mixed race and honestly I make a lot of my characters mixed but a lot of the time when other people draw mixed (especially black and white) they really romanticise it for example, drawing mixed people with that golden-brown curly/wavy hair, light-mid skin and green eyes… which is fine, those kids exist out there but it’s like… there’s nothing else… ? I probably don’t make sense pfft sorry
I’m curious, what is your opinion on “Blackwashing a white/asian character is okay, because black people need more representation in media.”? I hear this a lot and when I try to explain why it’s still not a good reason to do it, I got people calling me racist because of my opinion Would love to hear your thoughts in the near future if possible
As an Asian this stuff really bothers me. Of course, the skin color itself isn't the issue but changing skin tone in general. Like when an Asian character is edited to be "blasian" and has almost every original detail erased and turned into a different character. I feel like that sort of takes away our representation in Asian media and it makes themselves feel better.
As an Asian myself, I’m really bothered by this. I have seen many people think it’s controversial to draw black characters white (it is), but when they see artists “blackwashing” a white/asian character, they actually encourage this action. I believe there’s nothing wrong with drawing black characters, it’s the “changing skin color” part that’s problematic. Clearly the black can get more presentation, it’s just they put the presentation on the wrong character. And when others disagree with them, they immediately guilt those people as racist and harass them.
dark skinned South East Asian here, I'm offended by that as it does nothing to the representation. The characters are still whites or Asians no matter how many layers of color they painted on. It's like some kind of pointless activism that harms other races and does nothing but to bring more controversy.
One of my favourite arguments about changing a character’s race, gender, sexuality etc. is Spider-Man. So many people want a black Peter Parker or make him gay or trans or whatever when it’s so easy to make a whole new character who is those things. There’s plenty of alternate Spider-Man characters like Miles Morales, Gwen Stacy plus there’s the spider-verse where you can make your own Spider-Man and you can’t really argue with it cause “It’s an alternate universe”
As an Asian, I saw photos of people race bending Asian/anime characters (such as mha characters) to be black, and when I saw the comments, it honestly pissed me off. I don’t mean to sound rude, but evryone was saying “omg black bakugo is sooo hot” or even “am I the only one who thinks black bakugo is better?” Like, it’s ok to try to cosplay yourself into a character, but saying that it’s better, is honestly disrespectful. Us asians get hate too, I was once told “go back to your country dog-eater” as in stereotyping asians. I’m japanese, and this hurts me. I believe that we shouldn’t race-bend characters in the first place, and if we do, keep it to ourselves and don’t post it online.
@@hbsupreme1499 This was from 8 months ago, I completely forgot about this 💀 But anyway, I’m not saying I’m offended but I’m saying that they should try to make their own characters. When it’s a cosplay, I don’t care. However, when they change and absolute asian character to be black, it doesn’t matter if it’s for representation, it’s still wrong. I’m saying that instead of changing characters, they should maybe make new ones if they want representation. By changing an already made characters skin tone, it doesn’t rly do anything to affect the actual problem. They should be making new characters and try to let other people know of it, so that way in the anime world more races are shown.
@@hbsupreme1499mang's comment is for the people who think black people = better than Asian. Honestly j think blackwashing is boring af. It's basically just changing their appearance and maybe adding the culture of black people into that character. You can literally do that to anything and it'd just be the same. If you switch back to the characters original version then you can just see that the characters traits (other than their appearance) did not change whatsoever. If you need to make poc characters there should be personality, but the blackwashed characters personality remains the same. It's as if drinking water, but instead of drinking in the glass you decided to put it in a bottle, it doesn't matter, it's the same and nothing changes for the best.
But fr, it's ok to think it's cool but saying it's better is so fcking weird. Personally I see it as redesigns as long as you're not changing characters who's backgrounds are connected eg changing Mikasa, even if it's a mixed edit, is wrong because her being Asian is important to her character.
I feel like the rise in black washing anime characters kicked off with the rise of cosplaying. Black cosplayers got tired of being "that one black character" from a show so we start just cosplaying who ever. And i think that in turn sparked the idea of making black version of characters that black cosplayers could cosplay happily and comfortably to make up for thd gap in options.
I think the problem with that thought process though is most anime characters are asian like even the black now obviously some exceptions do apply so to put simply a white guy doing Son Goku cosplay really isn't different than a black guy doing it because neither are asian so being honest trying to cosplay based on race was always wasted effort because most cosplayers aren't getting from the get unless they were asian
@@addex1236 but the making black versions of characters doesn't change the canon of the design and story. It just lets black people online have an outlet to feel represented. Like you said there isn't a difference between a white person cosplaying Goku and and black person. But the black person gets harassed online and the white person gets praised. That's where the problem lies
@@crablegs1 your never going to solve that problem people are cunts there will always be cunt and frankly it's the internet mean words are not could not matter less on unless someone is divulging were you live then you no problem. The problem now is because of this we are creating a culture of skin deep narcism which will in the long term set the entire human race back for decades if it dosent die soon
I actually felt uncomfortable for years drawing anyone who wasn't white because of how scared it made me due to twitter. In the end I tried to research more about drawing and painting different skin tones and now one of my favourite characters I've created is black, and I'm incredibly proud of the detail and care I put into colouring her skin.
I'm seeing this with a lot of people who are making fanart of the movie Encanto, it seems like every skin tone is always wrong. A lot of artists are complaining about this, they are constantly getting hate comments
As a Colombian, the funniest part is there's no real "right" way to paint most of these characters' skin tones (except for Felix, Antonio and Pepa). It might sound wild, but us mixed people's skin color fluctuates a lot based on how much sun we get, so we might look lighter or darker on any given day and don't have a "pure" skin color, like the commenter above put it. Our skin tone is literally a spectrum and it doesn't actually matter at all if any of these characters is portrayed a bit lighter or a bit darker, but, y'know, Twitter gotta do what Twitter does best.
@@RezzSubs I totally agree (I'm also mixed) there really isn't a right way to colour let's say Camilo or Luisa skin because the can change under lighting, overlay or depending on how much sun they have.
@@RezzSubs Ohhh this is so true!! I am Honduran and, because of the pandemic, I hardly go out, so I was really pale. But i had to go out in the sun last week and suddenly I am a more of a mid-tone person like my mom. It also matters and changes on a person to person basis. Some people just tan faster than others.
@@RezzSubs I'm Chilean and I facepalmed hard when someone commented "stop white people drawiing white people in Encanto" like... Have they even seen the whole country at all? Latino America is a huge mix and you WILL find a white person born and raised there. It not makes them less latino because "ew he was born white".
Getting all riled up for the shading of a characters skin and using that as justification to cancel and ruin someone's life is one of the most pathetic things I've ever seen. The people who accuse artists of whitewashing are nothing but opportunistic vermin who think destroying a human being's life somehow makes them look heroic and accomplished. I'm an artist and I quit Twitter years ago. That place is a toxic shit-hole that I hope one day will burn to the ground and disappear. But even if it were to die, some other platform will take its place and the cycle will continue once more.
@@ok-sg8tw I know that. There's a difference between offering constructive criticism to help the artist grow, and pointing out said flaws are justification to ruin their lives. What I was trying to say is that there exist scum out there who take it too far.
The idea of reimagining a character as someone from another culture/setting isn't actually a bad idea, there's a Ghibli movie called "When Marnie Was There" which was from a British novel taking place in Norfolk, but in the anime it takes place in Japan instead and most of the characters have become Japanese as well, and it was just beautiful. Personally I think the concept is creative and fun as long as it's done with respect, like I enjoy seeing art of Marvel Superheroes reimagined as Indonesian folk tale characters or as Japanese Feudal Era fighters, and honestly I do find some art of characters reimagined as black also beautiful and creative. At the end of the day though, it's the mindset and entitlement that comes with the art that gets really stupid and toxic, instead of the art itself :/
@@hallucination3704mainly because the characters being white doesn't affect their story or them being white doesn't impact their story at all. As POC, our race is tied to our stories more often than not eg Spawn, Black Panther, Storm
Yes, that's why it makes no sense to change the appearance of entire cultures, it's disrespecting their ethnicity and their distinctive history. In the rings of power they practically took away the main physical characteristic of the elves, which is that yes, they were all white. As there is an intolerance to an entire culture being white, they made them look like a mixture of different races in terms of skin and aspects of their faces where most do not reach the level of whiteness of the original films, except for the ears that to look like elves, they had to be pointed. It is as if in Wakanda the physical culture of Black Panter was changed by pure ideological whim "anti Afro" and they had been bleached. Another unpleasant change is in the infamous avatar life action, Katara and Zoka have been made to look as if nothing happened with their ethnic history! Physical asoect, whether they want to or not, IS CHARACTERISTIC OF A RACE, one can't just come and change it on a simple caprich.
@@Gohan-Bestia ok one question but like elves aren't always white in fantasy, so is it like an exclusive thing in the Rings saga or?? If so then that's weird af to change. And in BP isn't the point the fact skin color isn't the only part of diversity and that's the reason they're all black people from different tribes like in Africa??
I'm scared too, I don't draw (post) much black people because I'm scared of people coming to make a fuss, like yikes, if I did something wrong you can politely correct us lol
@@dragoonssrbguilty4719 Same! Even tho I'm black I'm constantly scared with how I draw black people! This actually causes most of my art to be people with light skin tones ;-;
People on Twitter are the real circus. Once I've drawn an alternative version of Gamora (Guardians of the Galaxy) and posted it on Twitter, immediately got called out for racism because I didn't draw her skin tone in dark green rather violet. :/
This is the same people who starts crying when they see a pastel color palette and start canceling the artist accusing it from ''colorism'' and ''racismm''.
@@ok-sg8tw you can draw dark skin with pastel but the color will be lighter, as long as the skin isn’t the only thing that lightened you can see it’s a pallets
If whitewashing exists, which it does, then blackwashing exists. Of course, if you wanna make a black/white version, then go ahead but the moment you call it “fixing” is where it becomes washing. I’d even argue if you don’t acknowledge the fact it’s a different version it’s washing. But basically, just don’t change it. Make OCs.
The only problematic thing about changing the race IMO is calling it “fixing”. It is not a bad thing to imagine and visualize what a character would look If they were another race. (And that goes both ways) And if simply changing the race is problematic, then wouldn’t that mean changing gender and sex is as well??🤔
@@wake5307 Saying “I drew a genderbent version of [character]” is different from saying “I drew [character]” and changing the race without saying anything.
@@Corfright at first I didn’t understand what you meant but I think I get it, and oh yes definitely. Vastly different. And I agree!! Though my point was that people (well, Twitter) get upset at ANY sort of racebending of a character. And on the next side of the extreme, people who claim to “fix” characters are bad too. But to continue on from what you were saying, If the artist just said “racebend version of (character)” or “my idea of what (character) would look like as another race” then what’s the problem? Personally I think that’s okay. just don’t claim you are making a character “better” or “fixing” it
I think my issue is how people take Anime/Game characters, who are canonically asian (usually japanese), and just make them black... Erasing another underrepresented group of people... Editing already existing characters mever sits right with me, wether white- or blackwashed... Just make OCs !! Make your own characters and stories and have fun with that !! 😭
When I was young it was rly fun re-imaging characters you like as another age, race, gender or even as yourself.. also tricking a little their stories to fit... It was a fun activity in the art community and no one putted those over the original character... but US obsession about races kinda spread like an infection to the rest of the world thanks to twitter...
i don't really mind blackwashing when it's just for fun, it seems like an interesting drawing exercise and people often come up with pretty bomb designs it just irks me when people justify racebending anime characters that are obviously japanese by saying "they look white, so it's ok" like What? and then they act like they have the moral high ground as if they've magically created real representation in the industry instead of just a really neat fanart Twitter... edit: Alright so people are interpreting this as me saying "blackwashing is only bad when done to asian characters", which wasn't my intention at all because as I said, there's a lot of very talented people out there doing a lot of really cool fanart and there's nothing wrong with them having fun. A lot of the time black fanart or edits of anime characters come from a real place of love and passion for these shows and yk what? good for them! In my original comment I was trying to bring attention to how "x looks white so it doesn't matter if I change their race" is a pretty nasty sentiment and how its used as an excuse to treat asian people/characters in fandom spaces as "white people lite", which I do think is a real problem. Feel free to disagree, though.
Nothing says creating real representation by creating digital blaekface and using black fishing/ stereotypes by their own standards towards real life people as justification am I right?
@@Saltedroastedcaramel most Asians have white skin, so of course they look white!! What the hell do people want, have every single artwork of Asians with a yellow tint to their skin because of the stereotype? God damn
@@Akalim *A character from an anime with a eastern name but white skin* Twatter: Yup looks white to me! Then again these people think would someone with a darker skin is black. Skin tones are more complex than that
@@Saltedroastedcaramel TWATTER I LOVE THAT HWNR but yeah. I mean the skin tone itself is white (at least to me), but there's so much more that goes into nationalities as you've stated, I just lose my m i n d when people forget multiple things come into play
i mean don't get me wrong but i really hate when people "racebend" white/asian characters and make them black (yes I'm black myself) and then say "its not as bad as whitewashing" when it really is. changing the race of someone's character//an already existing character isn't okay to me. i feel as if you want to draw an character a certain race, then make your own character just inspired off of the other character... it seems disrespectful tbh almost as if the character wasn't fine originally. i really dont see the difference between 'white Washing' and changing a characters race to African American or whatever// 'blackwashing' as some would say. i only understand if its like a challenge to make a character look like you. (yet, again this is just my opinion so pls dont attack me LOL) Also as an artist who has somewhat of a okay following 💀 i try to be as accepting and diverse in my art as possible, and idk but i dont really think i would like someone changing my oc to look different just to satisfy themselves. everyone is beautiful and it seems to be (to me) when you racebend, non accepting// taking away from the oc, and (at times) a little racist ifykyk. idk if i worded this properly but i hope someone understands :p and ew typos
Saying whitewashing is the same as blackwashing is really ignorant. Whitewashing has a lot of racist history behind it, an example is cultural whitewashing, which is common in the media, in which a culture's traditions are tweaked to satisfy Western stereotypes, such as in the popular film Step Up (wikipedia). Cultural whitewashing is similar to the whitewashing of fictional characters in a way. The whitewashing of black characters is done to erase ethnic and racial features of a character to be "more appealing to white folk". I don't understand why so many people compare blackwashing to whitewashing and say it's at the same level when it is not and history says the same thing. Blackwashing is usually done because of the lack of representation of blasians or black people in general, characters who are 'blackwashed' are also usually self inserts, so where's the problem? I've haven't heard any argument that isn't "they're the same thing because they're both races" so please enlighten me.
@@ok-sg8tw Black Asians do exist, but unless the character/author says their nationality or their heritage, you cannot go ahead and claim "this is blasian because I said so". That's called "headcanon" and won't change a thing or two to the author/company.
You also can just "copy" art style of certain anime you like and draw your OC in this style I did it with Haikyuu, I just used to draw my OC in Haikyuu s4 style and it looked amazing, fr
Colorism is a thing that exists and it’s just as infuriating, especially as a mixed race individual. This is what is happening in art when people try to say that a character isn’t dark enough to be this race or light enough to be that race, and is especially true when talking about black characters. It is refreshing to see that people care enough to try painting different skin tones more accurately. It sucks that people are so rude that it makes artists worried about drawing black characters or give up on drawing them all together. It’s counterproductive to allowing artists to make more representation in their art. I for one am so happy that more artists WANT to draw people like me, and want to do it in a respectful way. So please, if you want to draw black characters don’t be intimidated by the haters. There are those of us who are happier than you could ever know that we are included in your art.
Yeah I'm mixed (and Latina) and it really bothers me the idea that drawing white people badly is fine but drawing other races poorly (not racist caricatures, just poorly) is unacceptable. Experimentation and practice and referencing is how people learn, and the mainstream art world is white enough right now without encouraging it to get worse.
Thank you so much for addressing this! It's always so frustrating to me when I see established characters race-swapped and people cheering for it in the comments of the post. It shouldn't be touched or encouraged by anyone and especially since doing it one way is considered to be "good" and another to be bad. As an Asian, to me it's better to show representation by creating OCs and spreading art of POC characters that are actually POC. It's really that simple.
Honestly I don't think _every single black-edit_ is bad especially when done right like using the correct facial features, hair, body type etc and it's approached with "I just want to see what _insert fictional character here_ would look like as another race" for FUN it's like genderbending, it's just a fun "what if". I like to think of it as 'if a black person was cosplaying as this Character, this is what it'll look like' scenario... Or better yer making an OC. *BUT* Their is a very big difference between creating a black OC in a specific Anime with that animes powers(like a black Saiyan), OR taking a character and racebending harmlessly and taking a preexisting character and completely deconstructing everything about it. 1) blatantly and purposefully _Erases_ the characters original race/ethnic/culture and paints over it with and says "That's better" bc that character is 'better' or "should be this race" bc they say so. E.g ATLA live action, the water tribe that is supposed to be Innute (Dark Skinned!) is now white, the Fire Nation is CLEARLY supposed to Japanese, instead its Indian, it was dark washed bc M.Night Chamalan is Indian and in HIS opinion the Avatar universe that isn't his own should all get their races changed and bc The fire Nation is his favourite so it should be Indian, his own race.... 🤦♀️ OR 2)When they don't even change _anything_ and just _make_ the dark-skinned for LITERALLY NO REASON other than personal preference 'cough' delusion 'cough'. E.g there I am on Tumblr and I come across Sasuke fanart from this one specific artist, (now I _already_ hated it bc the style was eh and didn't suit Naruto characters at ALL but this was also Sasuke x Kurapika... Which the EWwww! Side of shipping) And lo and behold Sasuke is Dark skinned. Just Dark-skinned nothing else about his features are changed. Now that struck me as odd bc... Why? Just why?? Then I check out other arts from thus person and wouldn't you know, all the Sasuke pics I came across were Dark-skinned, AND THERE WAS ABSOLUTELY NO REASON FOR IT. It just made me feel so uncomfortable bc It's so blatantly unnecessary and unnatural and the more I tried to justify it or write it off I couldn't bc. it just. Doesn't. Fit. So I ask again Why? See here's the thing if there was ONE clan from Naruto that's UNQUESTIONABLY _supposed_ to be completely _Japanese_ (ya know other than the fact that it's ANIME! _Swimming_ in *Japanese* culture and folklore) it's the Samurai and the *UCHIHA* everything about them from their dress, clan symbol, district architecture and _Especially_ their features- black/dark eyes and dark/black/brown hair and their pale skin and shape of their eyes SCREAMS traditional Japanese. Add to that there are ALREADY various skin tones in Naruto including darker skinned characters in Naruto (Iruka, Naruto, Sarutobis etc) that are still Asian AND actual BLACK characters. The difference is respect and understanding. Instead of doing what sensible ppl do when they like an anime and want to see themselves in it, they MAKE AN _OC_ POC with whatever anime powers. This person just made Sasuke darker for no reason other than they felt like it and clout most probably bc I'm 90% this artist wasn't even black. Nah thats 👆 just plain DISRESPECTFUL Blackwashing and YOU. ARE. WRONG.
I drew Antonio from Encanto once, never really had experience with drawing POC (even my own race which- kinda sus) so I was kind of nicely surprised that it actually looked really good (for a first time). But to be honest, I’m glad I don’t dwell in Twitter’s Art realm where I don’t have to get blasted for drawing an Asian “wrong” when.. it’s literally a self portrait or something.
One race-swapped the felt super weird to me was in the Vampire Diaries. in the books, Bonnie is a celtic druid, it's a very important part of her character, her backstory, her magic and basically it's at the center of a lot of things that happen to her and around her. When they made the TV show, they had to change *everything* because they made her black, so they changed her whole backstory to be related to voodoo I think and just? so many other characters literaly didn't have backtrosies that were heavily linke to their origins I'm still confused as to why they swapped literaly *the* character that had them re-write erything about her
Yeah, that was confusing as hell. I only read one book and also looked up how the characters were in the books and more about their origins, due to not reading every book or having the time to, but it was definitely different from the show and I got pretty confused. lol The show was still okay, but it did make me wonder why they didn't stick to the story that was written in the books and why they needed to change the characters and their backstories. It made zero sense to me.
I don't understand why if they had to make her black they had to change her powers to like?? Can't black people also be Celtic? and them changing it to voodoo is such a weird thing because apparently black characters can only practice voodoo
It's complicated-This problem is almost exclusive to fan-art and the screenshot edits. This whole problem can be minimalized if there was a sudden major interest(or necessity) for original content/characters, but this solution feels like it tackles the "fanart vs original art" issue more than *this problem*. In that case, I'd have to agree with the person who said , don't alter characters that aren't yours...
Yeah, the best answer is to support more people that do original works, specially if they have the representation you like. But while is not impossible to make original work and publish it, is a bit hard to get the public to get interested in your art at first, and then comes the problems with schedule, if you do a villain but has certain ethnic stuff, if your characters are/aren't a-b-c, etc. That's why most artist with original work do not want to post their work on Webtoon or Tapas or Twitter, to avoid any backlash :/ Artists should understand that you cannot please everybody.
As a mixed black/hispanic dude, "Races shouldn't mix" is very real and I've been judged for it by close-minded elder black and other hispanic folk. Even worse is that my accent is more "radio-like", so I often got asked back in elementary and secondary "Why do you speak so white?" by other kids. Shit was rough, but people got better about it when they started understanding that everybody has different backgrounds... although a little late, they fucked me up mentally for a while. Another neighborhood friend went through similar yet worse experiences being Jamaican/White and gay.
jc dude that sucks, I'm sorry people feel like they are allowed to do that kind of thing. maybe sometime people will understand that racism is a mindset and not a skincolor...
I've wanted to create more black characters in my work and even though I'm trying to be mindful to get colors correct and to not step on any toes I still feel like there will be people out there who simply call my characters racist or get upset at the depiction regardless of what I do. I currently use pixel art as my medium but that probably won't stop them from being upset either...
I've never cared about skin colors, and I never will. I will never understand this obsession some humans have with it. I didn't get to choose it, I had to have some color or I'd be invisible, and it damn sure isn't the end all be all of who I am. I'm a human. Not a white one, not a black one, just a human.
@@Bl4ckVeilPrinc3ss I am not denying their existance, I am denying their relevance. Eye and hair colors also exist, and no one deems them relevant, how is skin color any different?
True art doesn't have to make sense. Many art styles do not "make sense". Modernist art, post-modernist, gothic, romantic, cubist etc. Inspiration can come from anywhere. Good art makes you feel. Good art makes you ponder. Good art makes you wonder. If you want to draw a character a certain way then do it. Creativity should not be constrained. As long as its not for some shallow reason like representation, when you can make a new character that does the same function where it makes sense to the overall artistic vision. And if someone race-swaps a character for a reason that doesn't fit the plot, message or themes of the piece, then by all means judge the art poorly. But maybe that was the emotion the artist wanted to instigate in the audience. You could be playing into their hands. If they were doing it for fun, or because that's the point where they are creatively at then we have no place to judge them.
I once got berated for "whitewashing" the character Alura from Voltron- wgat they didn't know was that I literally colour picked her skin tone FROM A SCREENSHOT OF HER IN THE SHOW! I guess because I put a filter on my work, to make the image more vibrant, like I do with ALL my art, it would habe changed the skin tone aswell, like filters do.. I don't thinks it's racist to use filters on black characters tho
feel you. Honestly, isn't it more problematic if we ignore lighting situations or don't filter as we do with our usual art BC the character is black? like... aren't we trying for equality anymore?
If the whole thing has a filter, color theory is at work lol. The filter doesn’t make them look whiter, because everything else in the isshaded differently
I call it style washing if you have a style and someone redraws it with a "fixed it for you." They fixed nothing, that is how I draw color, this is my level of realism, this is my interpretation. As far as I'm concerned no one should draw to a standard and everyone should see the world as they see fit.
I agree with this. There have been times where people tell me that my version of Sonic is too tall and his hands are too small and I'm just like ok??? I'm not changing my art style just because someone doesn't like it
Most of the time, the people claiming that something is "whitewashing" aren't even digital artists. I can name so many ways how different colouring styles, layer combinations or just. lighting. can make black characters look lighter EVEN IF their skin tone is directly colour picked from a reference. Sometimes, even the colour picked colours can be innacurate if the person is using a rendered image or made a mistake in picking a highlight instead of what would be closest to the base colour. Not to mention that certain screen displays can make images look washed out, or the artist could be wearing glasses that makes colours slightly off to them (I have a friend for this specific example). I'm sick and tired of people who can't sit down to just think of the possibilities. Also! As a Filipino who takes more from their white dad but grew up around filipino culture, NOT ALL DARK SKINNED PEOPLE ARE BLACK, AND NOT ALL LIGHT SKINNED PEOPLE ARE WHITE. I'M LOOKING AT YOU GENSHIN COMMUNITY- This is a very specific rant, but the way some people treat Xinyan especially pisses me off since SHE IS NOT BLACK! From what I heard from southern asian people, she could 100% be southern chinese. Liyue (the region she comes from) is based off of China, so it adds up. I myself pinpointed her as middle eastern when I first pulled her, but that's just because I didn't know about southern chinese people having darker skin at the time. Dark skinned asians, in my opinion, are the people with the least amount of representation/appreciation and are the most white/black washed, since they're never light or dark enough for people. Most of the time (and I'm referencing korean and filipino cultures, i don't know how it is in China or other asian countries) darker skinned asians are whitewashed in their own culture/beauty standards, as well as in media to an extent, while the internet says "nonono you're black, the artists designed you wrong", and while this can be the case sometimes, most of the times it's false. Just let dark skinned asians have their mid skin tones goddamnit PLEASE I'M BEGGING
agreed especially when it comes to the whole dark skinned asians bit. i've seen dark skinned asians get called black on places like Twitter , unless they have fair skin, but they'd sometimes get called white instead. it's just that some overly-privileged people are too chronically online that they can't comprehend the idea that not all dark skinned POC are black
As a black person, I used to see why people would do blackwashing, but after much thought and a slight adjustment in viewpoint... The problem is not JUST that mainstream society tends to have a history of making racist charactures of ALL non-white groups of people (while we are focusing on artistic depictions of black/dark skinned characters in this case). It's not JUST the fact that people tend to struggle depicting BIPOC characters. The issue is multifaceted and complex at times yes, but we also make it more complicated as people.. If anything the true issue is the fact that even if some people try to make a diverse cast from a place of genuine care, other people are jumping down various artists' throats to draw things in a way THEY deem acceptable and not coming from a genuine place of help or wanting to educate. Instead people go in HARD at putting people in this box of being "racists" or "shitty people" and then allow NO space or even comfort to possibly learn anything of positive worth from that discussion. Because there is nothing positive to learn from that approach. Dude, there have been times where *I* feel self-conscious about my own OCs and designs that I make that are darker skinned or that I deem closer to what I may look like as a BLACK PERSON. I admittedly don't know the best way to draw box braids and it comes with this sucky feeling of "shouldn't I know how to do this because I am black??" Then it only leads to a fear of trying and failing and people that I don't know and who don't know me squaring up to fight me. And that hasn't happened to me at all, yet the thought of it MAYBE happening is enough for me to keep to myself. And again: I am BLACK. I am the demographic of which a lot of people are apparently fighting for lol. I get wanting to see "myself " in the worlds and stories I watch and read. But I don't have to make a black, plus-sized version of already existing character to do that. I would rather draw ME in that world. What do *I* look like as a character in these worlds? What is my personality, my powers or weapons, in certain cases? Who am I and what is the character or person I want to see myself as in that context? Personally, THAT takes a little more thought and introspection of oneself and an ability to get creative design wise. And then THAT could possibly lead to make YOUR own worlds and stories and characters that you want to see and share with others. If we frown at white people who whitewash characters for the sake of "being more relatable" to them and easier to consume and see themselves in, then what is the real difference in doing that with blackwashing? If anything we are removing characters that have other ethnicities/races (looking at anime as an example) just so we can feel better. If it felt shitty for us, why do it to someone else? At least that's my thoughts lol
I'm so glad more people are picking up on how strange this is. I was so upset after seeing XinYan be recolored to be black including a change in her eye nose and lip shape because it's so rare to see dark skin Asian representation. The fact that they could not leave an amazing peice of rare representation alone made me sad. Just because she was dark she HAD to be black.... I just want to be able to enjoy one of the RARE dark skin Asian characters out there....
Yes, as an tanned skin asian, Xinyan is literally one of my fav character because us tanned/darkly skin asians got rep from her and also her character is very fun and have asian culture in it
I think that this "blackwashing" thing is only okay when the artist themselves are black (or any other ethnicity different to the character) and doing a self-insert. For example, a while ago, i wanted to draw myself as senku from Dr Stone (the picture you see in my pfp.) For that, i chose to change the skin colour but i also added a tooth gap, beauty marks, made the lips slightly fuller and changed the eyeshape to be more feminine. I wasn't making senku black, i was just drawing myself. What i don't think is okay is changing the race of a character for no reason. When this 'trend' started i tried to express my concerns and instead got called whitewashed :/
Yep! I agree with this as an Asian. It's absolutely alright to make self inserts since it does feel good to see yourself as one of your favorite characters, especially if you don't rlly see that much representation. But lately I seen people (mostly on TikTok and twitter) edit a canonically asian character into black and say that it looks better and sometimes they would even caption it as "fixing" which is so wrong tbh. Also I like your art btw! It looks so cool
There needs to be more drawing tutorials on black people! I live in the United States but we’re raised to use the peach “skin color” and make big, wide eyes and skinny noses. I can’t draw other races very well, and I especially don’t know how to color them and not make them look unnatural
It's in the words of a certain webtoons reviewer inclusivity bias you draw a character and change it to fit what you want in terms of representation and then in the process diminish the representation of the culture the character was originally a part of accidentally doing something racist while trying to be inclusive honestly people should be drawing their own OCs if they want more representation to relate to changing the race of a character IS racist it doesn't really matter what the intention actually is on the other hand making your own character gives representation without the racism especially since most race swaps range from changing skin tone which you can at least pass off as being tanned if you stay within a certain range and on the worst end you get the race swaps like the weird sayori one where they load her up with as many stereotypes as they could
I think black washing is okay as an art exercise but what I don't agree with is when people who make the blackwashed characters claim that "This is how they SHOULD look". It's pretty demeaning to both the artist and the race that is being represented with the character to say that in essence they'd be "better" if they were a different race.
"This is how they SHOULD look". I hate when people says that, specially in a character that was never meant to be Black (anime characters, in General. There ARE Black characters in anime and they're notorious). No, that's not how they should look, you're not the company or the author to decide that.
@@remigal899 No, I would hate it too if they take a black character and re-draw it as white character while claiming is ok and that's how they should look. The race bending is not the problem as long is an art exercise or "what if..." like King Boinko says. But if you go and claim "I fixed the character because the other artist is wrong and I'm right, praise ME!" is where the problems begins. >this comment and reply section is so weird. Welcome to TH-cam.
@@edgechan Then you should’ve made that clear rather than implying that Making a character black was the Worst even though other characters are made different races as well.
What annoys me is that people assume anime characters are white just because they are light-skinned. I used to think like that too when I was younger, but think of it like this: anime/manga are written by Japanese authors writing stories in the Japanese language about Japanese people who live in Japan for a Japanese audience. Where do white people fit into any of that? That's why many of these critics - who destructively criticize foreign artists for white-washing but give black-washed anime characters a pass - are being hypocritical. They expect other countries to understand the nuances of their art culture, but haven't learned about the nuances of other countries' art cultures. While white-washing is a damaging practice (especially in professional contexts) I think more understanding and nuance should be applied to criticism of fan work - most fan works are made by amateurs and hobbyists. I don't care enough about black-washing (of anime or otherwise) to be upset about it, I think some of it is appealing. But what I would rather see is support for original art and stories by black people featuring black people.
@@shandya in Bleach people make and say Kunoichi is black, but you compare her to Tosen and you can see how Tite draws characters from different ethnics.
9:05 This gives me some hope because I love Encanto and theatre and I would love to be in an Encanto musical, but I'm worried that it would cause controversy because I'm white and most of the characters are POC. The other issue I have now is that the movie obviously takes place in Columbia and I'm not Columbian. However, I _am_ Hispanic, so maybe that would still be okay?
I think theatre is another theme because the stigma of "blackface", even if Latinos with olive skin can tan naturally and that's not the same as painting your face black and call it a day. And about your nationality, that shouldn't be a problem neither if you know how to act and sing like certain character. See the Selena movie! JLo is not Tex-Mex as Selena was and maaaaaany people complained in making an American-Puerto Riquean singer did Selena's role but Abraham put his foot down and told them "she's perfect for the role and not for her nationality but because she knows how to sing and act like my daughter did". Result? The movie was amazing and JLo did an amazing job as Selena, most of her famiy cried when they saw her during the film.
I’m so glad someone is talking about this. I want to draw more POC characters and release drawings but I’m still trying to get it right. It’s frustrating how critical some people are when people are trying to draw POCs.
"Races shouldn't mix"
All mixed people over the world:
👁️👄👁️
Hello, mix race guy here, it’s hilariously bad. Its either “you dont got a race so you wouldn’t understand” or im playing skin of connivence playing off Hispanic blood with my light skin or self deprecating humor
*disappears*
LMAOO!
I’m mixed race, specifically white and native, I’ve felt like this almost my whole life, either feeling bad that I’m white, or feeling like I don’t belong with my native relatives since I’m not full native (and don’t like hockey like they all do n stuff).
I sad those racist views on mixed race couples still exist.
2:30 yeah I literally a witnessed this. There was a South Korean artist who was asked whey he rarely draw black characters, he then answered the reason was because he was not confident enough yet. He answered it in a broken English because he wasn’t fluent in English. Then people meticulously deconstructed his answer word by word and somehow twisted it as if he was racist. I tried to help him answering the mentions but I got a lot of crap too. It was awful. In the end they just proved why he hesitated to draw black characters from the first place.
Well now they cemented this Korean artist's decision in not bother to draw black characters at all. And I don't blame them.
I'm Asian artist and I don't draw black characters much. Even darkskinned Asians. ( I'm darkskinned asian)
I think it's weird to ask questions like this. It's like asking a portrait artist why don't they draw dogs. They can but they don't
If anyone ever asks me why I don't draw more diverse characters I'm either going to say "because I don't like you specifically" and move along it's gonna be funny
What kind of backwards logic is that, no one tells an artist what to draw and when (unless it's a comision the artist accepted doing, and both parties are respectful)
I am an artist an no one gets to police what i can or cannot draw, art isnt made with the clap of hands
That's actually really sad to think about
I remembered when a person commit suicide due to death threats in twitter because they didn't like a fictional character, looking at you genshin fandom.
I feel bad for that person
@@admiralredaceone5913 the person who's responsible for it also said "they deserved it"
This is why I don't like being part of the Genshin Impact community.. The game is good but most people in the fandom are so toxic. I think I'm pretty disconnected with the community 'cause I only watch a few content creators and don't interact with the actual community.
My god, it had to be the group of "Gotta go get sum milk" kids.
damn!!!!
"Black people don't belong in snow,"
Um, I'm Canadian. We don't really have a choice.
Lmao
That’s rough Buddy lol
The fact some people actually think that is so stupid
I'm black and I LOVE the snow!
LOL
Damn, I guess you have to move countries then. Sorry, I don't make the rules.
Honestly, as a black artist - I'd much rather see more black OCs then edits. I understand why people make black edit art - I do - but OCs NEED more love, support, and encouragement. Hype up the black OCs significantly more.
And crazy enough I've seen people PURPOSELY make terrible "black edit" versions of characters just to piss on the pot. Like damn, who let 4chan sit here.
SOFT AND WET
@@BeyondSurvivor STAR MAN OVER HEAVEN!
Hey @pandaiiji do you even draw black straight couples?
I agree. I never really understood why people did this. I mean with cosplay it's different because you're dressing up as someone. But making a character that's Asian black or another ethnicity is weird to me. Like I get it we need representation but making OCs is better than just taking a character and making them black like you said
Twitter:”You shouldn’t draw black characters!”
Also Twitter:”Not enough black characters!”
I feel like the reason many people have this double standard for "blackwashing" may have any to do with the amount of Black characters in Western media as well as the historical way in which they were used and depicted. It has changed SO MUCH SO since then and I personally do not believe that blackwashing a characters is a smart move to "see yourself" in your favorite roles. I'd much rather see us being drawn in our own original characters in these situations in which we apparently "don't belong" in. We shouldn't shame a person it they do attempt to draw a black or a darker skinned characters and make them a slightly different skintone because mob ostracized behaviors just makes people avoid the topic all together. If the goal is better representation, shielding ourselves from doing such attempts is asinine to the WHOLE purpose of art depicting different people and cultures, and hell, even skin tones. Glad you were able to take about this Mohammed! Also your beard is coming in nice 💪
SOFT AND WET
Legit facts man! I would be so happy to see more poc representation in media. I don’t see why we should change the race of charactes when we can simply just make new poc characters. It would be great to see more animes, cartoons etc with poc in them. But I feel like changing the characters race and saying “it’s better” is kinda a slap in the face to the artist. I think it would be great if everyone could work together and make more inclusive media with poc, lgbtq representation etc.
I like the Black characters in the works of Ohkubo atsuhi.
He's a mangaka who I admire for his art style but I recently realized how good he is at portraying diversity.
As a greek myself, all I have to say is: what the fuck
are you fucking kidding me? I grew up watching american and other foreign content because 95% of greek media is shit/not my cup of tea and even if I am a white person, I personally had to deal with the HUGE difference in culture. Did that stop me from relating to characters? Fuck no, I relate and connect just fine to any characters. In fact, in arcane the character I relate to the most is ekko.
It DOES hurt a bit that I never see my culture being represented, so I do get that it can get lonesome when there's no one of your kind, but the "I don't connect" excuse people use to blackwash is ridiculous and I'd dare say discriminating. If you have such an issue, create your own characters!
I am an artist planning to create my own stories and I am definitely not missing the opportunity to represent my countries and the balkans(I am also albanian). Don't expect others to pamper you, get up and make your group be heard
The TH-cam thumin did a much better job. Plus you don’t have to have the same race as a character to relate to them, that’s internalized racism.thumin drew HERSELF as a popular anime character. She didn’t turn the character black.
Something that I've heard of is that people take POC characters and make them look darker to be more POC...? My dad is Middle Eastern and African and he's pale as heck. My uncle one the other hand is super tan.
Conclusion: don't make POC darker to make them "more POC" its just rude and taking away their race.
Just so you know the Middle East is part of Asia (except Egypt which is part if Africa)
@@exlipse3813 Though one thing to also point out, some areas in Europe still classify people from the Middle East (and also further east like Pakistan and India) as Caucasian/"white".
One of these I remember happening a lot is Pepa from Encanto.
I was in Syria, some people had bright skin, hair and eyes. Not everyone in the middle east is dark skinned
I noticed the same thing, constantly. Seems like racist caricatures.
Im half latina and half white so this really resonates with me. I honestly hate seeing people (black/white)wash a character because the creator didn't intend on them looking like that. When ever I do fanart, I ALWAYS try to represent them in the way they were intended to look. I have made plenty Black, Hispanic and Asian characters but if the fanart im drawing doesn't have representation, OCS ARE A THING. MAKE A COMIC! WE'D LOVE TO READ ABOUT THEM!
I draw Goku with darker skin. Yes I have my own saiyan characters but I'll draw and color the official characters how I want. I redesigned Sonic characters just to make them more fun to draw
See, I bypassed this completely, I only draw monsters, cybernetics, plants or etc as characters. So I don’t have to deal with the backlash, not to say drawing people isn’t rewarding, I just don’t want that stress on my plate, and with those kinda ideas you can make something even more different from the norm.
Tbh people dont care about ocs, they dont get attention. (Im saying this from experience)
@@Firekeeper2006 Now that is just sad....
@@Firekeeper2006 this exactly. I'll post of art an it gets half the attention my fan art does.
I mostly draw dogs, but one time when I painted a black girl (the one in my profile pic) I got a DM from a white girl asking me why I didn't paint her skin darker. I mean, if I was painting a specific person or character and I painted their skin lighter than it actually is, I would totally understand this comment. But I literally made up the person in my painting and made her skin tone complement the fox in the same painting. People need to direct their attention to legitimate racists or even someone who may have done something problematic without intending to.
Your art is beautiful btw
@@safala Aww thank you 💖
"Why didn't you make her skin darker?"
"Because this is a legitimate skin tone. Not all people look the same you crazy"
Btw love the art. Didnt even see it was a drawing until I blew it up more.
@@amcvart You're welcome 😊
I am literally around the person's skinstone in your painting, I swear- people constantly forget that not all black people have dark skin. ❤️
I love this painting though it is detailed and pretty and it made me smile :D
I really think more black media needs to be adapted. There are so many untapped stories and folklore from black communities around the world. And yet Hollywood is like, "Nah, how about we don't adapt black culture and I guess you can be this previously white side character"??? It just feels so disingenuous. Black Panther was HUGE, so what's the excuse?
What's worse is Hollywood is doing that to historical figures too
To be fair, Black Panther had the advantage of being introduced in the mcu before he got his own film.
I would honestly love to see more media based on history, cultures and stories of different communities around the world. Instead of inserting one random Asian or Black character (and the same principle goes for sexual and gender minorities), I'd love it if they could make movies and shows about and inspired from different cultures and communities around the world.
Also, on a related note, can anybody guide me to where I can read mythologies and folklore from Black and Asian cultures?
@@safala This might sound weird, but I would try wikipedia. Yes there info is iffy, but if they have links you can see if they are accurate.
@@CMan-x7k Oh, that's a great idea. Thank you! I am now ashamed that it never occured to me to try Wikipedia.
Never forget when someone showed how to properly colour palms on dark skinned characters (paler colour on the palms cause that’s what it looks like in reality) and someone called it whitewashing
I think I know what you're referring to! Someone on Tumblr or Twitter showed people how to paint dark skin properly, "melanin and lighting" etc etc, and someone got mad.
What planet am I on again?
@@InfiNiteDrinksBl00d hell
@@nobitches9828 nah even hell's better
I don't know how to draw palms of a black character. Is it just a lighter tone or is there a specific rule? I want to draw black characters and OCs properly, but I haven't even tried to do it. I'm afraid I'll mess everything up. And I'm usually afraid to ask about such stuff because of how some people can get when they hear such questions.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR CALLING OUT BLACK WASHING ASIAN CHARACTER .
As South East Asian , i want to say it out loud so bad but people always come with excuses like they never see dark skin Asian befor. as an artist , This Cancel anything but black culture is scared the crap out of me to the point the i don't want to make or Draw any dark skin character . Thank you again for call out this stupid behavior as Black artist . I meant a lot to me :[
I love this. I think it's very ethnocentric of Westerners to conflate dark skin with being Black. Asia is a giant place and Asians come in many skin tones ranging from pale to dark.
Ayyo SEAsian gang 🤲🏼 ok but fr some people dont realize we exist 😭
Its like they think Dark skin MUST 100% mean black. Forget Native Americans, South Asians, Southeast Asians and Polynesians/Melanesians man, we don't count apparently.
@@AyeGee721 or grey skin people of Middle East or Balkan or South Italia. I mean if someone is darker doesn't mean it should be darker brown on scale
blasians exist and so do dark skinned asians. weirdo
1. Simply don’t change the race of a character.
2. Don’t harass someone for not knowing how to color a skin tone
3. Redesign, don’t blackwash / whitewash
4. You can still redesign a character and change their race; but separate it from the character
edit: what the hell
LOVE THIS COMMENT !! HERE THE CROWN RIGHT NOW 👑 !!
blackwashing doesn’t exist
Amen to that sis amen!!
What about poc cosplayers?
@@Jana-ho9mu same thing. If you’re white, just change black elements (ex. Afros, braids) into ones that wouldn’t be appropriated.
As a black person myself, I always found both Blackwashing and Whitewashing to be both equally problematic as like you said it's erasing one's ethnicity in place of either a black or white one. Especially for canon Japanese Anime characters who have darker skintones like Mirko from MHA and such on. And another thing they claim that they've made them Blasian when they've erased anything that was Asian about them while characters who are either aliens or nonhumans I'm fine with that since they aren't humans or from Earth but just look like one.
Equally problematic? Oh man....
@@Girldont-ib6vw it is. you can blackwash any character of any race 💀
@@Girldont-ib6vw Personally i think it is, it both stirs problems and makes ppl hate each other i rather have the character just the way they are not whiter or blacker
you can even look it up the future are very mix and diverse, 90% - 95% of them time it will always have mixed futures, only a few being expection to fully looking black or Asian and we also have to take account the fact that Asians can just be diverse within the coumminty because Asia is a big place with lots of diffrent people,
@@Girldont-ib6vw erasing a character's race and forcing a different one onto them, drastically changing art against the original artist's wishes.
They're both equally problematic.
As a black person, im just confused the reason why are they editing the characters to look black instead of making their own characters instead if they really wanna relate to it ?
Yeah, agreed what you said my bro
frfr
create the character instead of editing characters to be black because that isn't gonna do shit, you're not going to get representation out of an edited blasian character
True
When people say that a lot of people say “because it’s hard if you’re so upset about people making POC representation YOU do it” or just call them racist but it’s mostly talking about characters who are Japanese…
@@kokichiouma2 or colorist, that's always a fun one
That first comment hit me hard. I talked on twitter and was like “stop bashing interracial relationships, i didn’t see these when I was growing up so i like it” and I got hit with comments like “you have a fetish for them, we get it. Take that to instagram” and “this tweet is for black people, not whatever you is.” SERIOUSLY??? NEVER talk about interracial relationships on twitter. I get people want black/black couples. I just like the change of pace because it was rare to see growing up.
When I said “we should make it ourselves if we want to see our relationship.” One person’s reply was like “you know it puts the onus for black people to make stories about our relationships” or something like that. YES. We should be doing it ourselves. We SHOULD be setting the example. No other race can portray the black experience like black people can because THEY HAVEN’T LIVED IT. I didn’t want to reply to that because I know people will go on and on trying to prove their point.
On top of it, I saw an artist hating that she was mixed because of twitter people’s opinions. Granted, she has some mental illnesses but still sad to see her changing her opinion on herself because of twitter.
Can’t wait to get cancelled for drawing my poc main oc with his two white boyfriends. Goddamn.
@@patch2932 ikr? There’s a game dev who bashed interracial relationships constantly. I want to support her game because we need more black game devs. However, seeing a game dev throw up such opinions was tiresome. Funnily enough, the one white character she added ended up being the most popular.
@@hatguyfan22 Yeah, I’m white but I’ve been in several great interracial relationships with men and women so it really pisses me off when people say, “races don’t mix,” like dude? You okay?? Lmao. People need to learn the “mind your own damn business” skill. People are beautiful in all shapes, sizes colors and identities so why should I *not* want to be with them? Some people’s logic makes no sense at all
my mom straight up told me to find chinese boyfriend to continue our chinese lineage
i agree with you, people can date anyone they want and have any preferences they prefer
if they prefer to date someone of the same race, it should not be forced onto other people.
Thoses peoples make me feel really funny as a quarteron. I already thought that really racists white people could think that either A) quarteron is the solution to erase blackness definetly and could be used to erase everything non white too or either B) quarteron are tainted white people with black blood. But sometimes when I started to watch some Black empowerment channels (?) and see in the comments black people saying shit like "races shouldn't mix"... I just wonder if for them mixed Black and White people are an abomination that can be "saved" if they marry Black people ? And that quarterons aren't black ?
One day they will bring back apartheid and say shit like it's to create space where POC can feel safe or something. Not that I think people shouldn't have their own space, but there's a limit between having a space for a certain group of people and segregation.
Anyway, people are clowns.
I once saw a "black month" post, where they legit drew characters from different fandoms black. I was speechless. Especially so because they made asian characters black! I commented on it saying it was weird, and people told me I was racist
Let me guess, was it blacktober? /genq
@@v0m1tg0r3gutzzprobably
They really go out of their way not to draw characters that are originally black 😭😭
@@v0m1tg0r3gutzz I have to mute blacktober month on twitter
Sometimes they say that blasians exist and it annoys me
I think raceswapping any characters at all is just disrespectful to the character and their creators. Clearly the creators decided to make the character a certain race for a reason. I would love to be seeing more of peoples black OCs than seeing the 50th corporate raceswap
im confused what’s the design choice reason behind peach and daisy being white 😭😭 the og designs are already basic corporate designs by triple A studious, why should the artists stay 100% true to the designs?
@Enna Sy and I'm confused about why it's so damn hard for people to respect the skin tones of non-black characters. Here is my thoughts on it- if it's not okay to draw black characters with the wrong skin tone then it's not okay to drawn non-black characters with the wrong skin tones either. Just draw them how they look
@@Iggika cus people like to have fun and see themselves in characters they like? what’s so wrong with an artist drawing a dark skinned peach? who is it harming? +why didnt you answer my question?
@Enna Sy so does that mean it would be okay for someone to draw someone like Falcon as white or Asian because they want to see themselves in thay character? Also how am I meant to know the reason why Peach and Daisy are white- do I look like I work at Nintendo? I'd rather see people make black Princess OCs to have interact with Peach and Daisy
@@Iggika flop reply
one of my OC's is black. I felt guilty for creating her because I'm white and was worried if I did something wrong that was offensive. In the past I've seen comments like, "Why is her hair straight" "why is she the villain"
edit: atp idc. If I make a dark skin character and think she's pretty, I'm gonna use her. Argue with the wall.
If they srsly complain about straight hair I finna laugh. Black people can have any hair color, hair type,eye color, etc. Also there are plenty of black people who can be villains too, any people of any race can hurt ppl. Im black and I got ur back💗
If she's your only OC that's black and you just so happen to make her the villain I can definitely understand why that could draw some questions.
Try not to make ALL black characters the bad one in a story, that will definitely be viewed as controversial.
sorry but "racist fighters" are clowns
cus ur oc is very ordinary
I've drawn a self portrait of myself and posted it on Twitter and got called out for 'whitewashing'. I drew myself with a dark-light skin tone since I'm Malaysian and Malaysia has a lot of races like Indian, Chinese, Muslim and other indigenous races. I'm an indigenous Malaysian but also have a Chinese bloodline and I am mostly lighter than darker but of course, the Western side of Twitter condemned me for having a slightly lighter than darker skin tone in my self portrait. Not everyone should be black in the world, every skin colour exist and of course they'll call you out for not being black and that it's ironic that they never realise how that came out as racist also 😒
U should’ve take a selfie of yourself n post it to counter their argument
How dare you not be black?
@@dinkymak My pfp is a selfie of me but ofc some ppl just don't bother to look sometimes
@@smji5269 I guess I need to be under the sun more according to them
People forgot that Olive skin exist
I don't understand anymore-
If character is black, draw him BLACK
If character is white, draw him WHITE
...why do you need to change their whole races?
FR
seeing people say "blackwashing and whitewashing are in the sense same but in history black rep was minor and this is changing that!!" Like bro ur not changing history and you still replaced a character's race with another 😨
Because people are too lazy to make their own original characters for "representation" so they gotta change the race of other popular characters
@@Lordy-Lord That is part of it, but it's also popularity and money. Corps like DC and Marvel have learned new woke characters don't work so they don't want to make new ones, instead they just woke-ify existing characters and just label anyone who doesn't like it or has valid criticisms as bigots because it's easier than making and banking on a new character doing well.
On the other hand the woke scolds do it because "If I force the thing that everyone likes to be like me, then that means everyone will have to like me too!" suffering from the same issue where they want to change existing characters because they want the POPULARITY and ICON status of the OG character... without actually putting in the work with an OC to reach that point.
@@deltagearadvanced5140that's bs, miles Morales is actually a better written character than Peter. In fact, miles Morales IS the spiderman. Peter is now an old fart raising kids lol
As a black creator, my OC has had some fans already, mainly due to her design. (her clothing nowwithstanding) I find it pretty nice, but I also get the opposite of "Why don't you draw x you're racist!"
But I love the attention my girl is getting.
Your oc doesn't even look Black lmao, looks like a white girl with a tan and thats the only reason white people like it.
@@witchplease9695 didnt you listen to the video? POC people have skin tones that vary. black people can have lighter or darker skin tones and yet still be black. like doja cat. doja cat exists
@@witchplease9695 POC have varying skin tones, especially when mixed. don't be disappointing like this dude.
Let a Brutha see the sauce
@@witchplease9695 have you never heard of mixed or light skinned people? And did you even watch the video??
"mixed races shouldn't exist"
North Africans like me : *baby I'm not even here I'm hallucination*
Latin America: *Fades away*
(Most) Filipinos:**asends**
Literally everyone on earth because nobody is 100% of anything: **human race extinct**
Me: Mother fu:::: ::: ::.
Every single (with the tiny exemption) Filipinos: ahhhhh- **fades**
It’s a lose lose game. You either draw black characters of which Twitter seems you can never do good enough unless your black yourself or you avoid drawing black characters to not upset the mob of which they come after you anyway for not drawing them. I think the only healthy answer is to draw what you want and ignore the people being annoying.
I'm afraid of them tbh that's why i only draw people with white and tan skin :(
@@cherry3139 please shut up you weirdo 💀
Don’t be? Draw what you want. Black folks don’t care as much as you think they do. I think it’s just Twitter scaring the shit outta you as they always do. For me, as long as it’s not a red lipped, deep black character eating a watermelon we good
-an African American
@@ok-sg8tw no you shut up, did you piss in your bed because someone is scared of getting shitty "advice" from shit heads like you and they should be since you get all pissy when they "drew your race wrong"
@@cherry3139 what the fuck? Racist lmao
imagine a day without twitter ✋
lmaoooo absolutely drama free!
The end game we need 😌🙏🏾
Imagine the rest of time without Twitter.
No need to imagine if it’s banned in your country 🥱
That's not enough time.
Edit 4/28/22: No I don't hate black people just because I have experienced racism from some black people, please consider that before telling me I "hate my black side." Thank you, much love.
As a Black/White person, it's actually really common for black people (and other races too but I've mostly experienced it from black people) to hate on mixed people and interracial couples for tons of different reasons.
Since you asked I hear reasons such as "Mixed kids aren't really black," "Mixed kids try to speak on behalf of the community but it isn't their place" "MIxed kids act too white," "Mixed kids aren't helping the black community," "Mixed kids should identify with their culture more," "You shouldn't be dating the oppressor," "There's plenty of black men/women and you chose a white one you're a race traitor."
These are just a few things I've seen over Reddit and Twitter (the reasons I mean, I've heard it all in real life yes) but there are probably more reasons,
Thank you. When I was growing up I used to hear from my mother that somehow Black people and Asian people tend to not get along at times (like a stereotype or something) but here I am because my black father and filipino mother loved each other. What hurts is that Mixed people get flack for not being this one race enough and they’re already trying to figure out wtf they even are as they explore their ancestry. Some black people devalue the struggle as “a little bit of a identity crisis” and some say that they need to “know their place” or “stay in their lane.” Most black people ive seen are wonderful, but It’s fking disgusting how racial prejudice exists even in the community, and some of their members just don’t wanna hear about it because they’re more focused on fighting the oppressors than the hatred and mindsets they’re exhibiting towards other poc when they should focus on both. How can we as poc fight oppression and racial prejudice if we can’t even respect each other?
Yes, but biricals are still not black though, they are not lying 😂
@@MysRyuza Yeah it sucks to see people claim to fight for equality but still hate on other people. I agree entirely with your statement.
@@telepups28 I am black but I'm also white, not one or the other I'm both.
Wth? The blk community is probably the most accepting to mixed people, even uplifting them above monoracial black people, even to the detriment of colorism. So I'm really confused by this. Also mixed people aren't just black, that is the one drop rule. Mixed people are both of their parents races not just one.
as a south east asian, i really wanted to talk about this but id be called "racist" lmao. guys, just stop. leave things be and itd be better if you make your own characters than take the ones that are for us asians because damn.
ironically enough its mainly Americans who call basically everyone else racist. I get pissed whenever they complain about Encanto fanart. Like its not their country, not their culture, nor family. And the Colombians love the fanarts. I honestly don't care wether they have a lighter skin tone or not. Cuz Colombia is very diverse with their ethnicities and people and it makes me happy that people are interested in the movie and maybe even my family's culture.
I've literally seen people race-swapping Mulan. Not even Asian characters whose identities actually matter to them are safe from the race-swappers
@lun whitewashing and blackwashing are both real and bad.. and that is final.
@lun it's all wrong and illogical cus the author don't make their character black or queer or anything else, so please respect the author's choices and design of their characters:>
@lun maybe find a proper counterargument instead of mindlessly making assumptions about other people? Like have you ever seen this person get mad at anyone for headcanoning Isabella as a lesbian? Or are you just making baseless assumptions?
“Races shouldn’t mix”
Me: oh, i didn’t know **disappears**
The whole Brazil: Oh sorry, my bad- *disappears*
Hispanic people **evaporate**
Latin america: gaster disappearing sound*
What? **disappears **
Latino: AAAAHH...[desaparece]
I'm actually mad at "Blasians exist" excuse. I'm sorry but have you LOOKED at mixed race people? Paranakan people can have slanted Chinese eyes while having the dark Malay skin tones. They are MIXED, their features should be MIXED. If you erase all the defining racial features of an Asian character and replacing them with Black features, you are not drawing a Blasian, you are drawing a Black person. You wanna make them have curly hair, big lips and darker skin? Fine. But don't say they're mixed race when you erase literally every racial feature to put in another. Admit it when you make a non-BIPOC Black and stick to it instead of hiding behind this weak excuse.
Totally. I remember a Tiana cosplayer that had tanned skin and white racial features, so of course people called her "white people cannot cosplay Tiana" or "don't you dare!". She posed next to her father and guess what? he was black, with a warm dark skin. People should understand better on how mixing ethnic or genetic works in general because, like you say, If you erase all the defining racial features of an Asian character and replacing them with Black features, you are not drawing a Blasian, you are drawing a Black person.
hm i can kind of understand where you’re coming from. I don’t believe in blackwashing it isn’t a thing i just wanted to point out if we’re talking anime characters “blackwashed” a whole lot of them don’t have asian features to begin with! also mixed people don’t have to literally looked “mixed” all the time they can be darker, lighter, etc. i can understand if it was only ever very blackpassing blasian edits but there’s a wide variety of edits.
@@gooch3097 I'm talking less on edits and more on redraws.
My issue is people calling them mixed race when _every_ feature is changed to one race/ethnicity. Then they aren't mixed.
@@mastertofu oh okay but still mix people come in many different shades you can’t say one is not mixed because they don’t look mixed that’s not how it works. if every mixed edit looked like that then i could understand but there’s then again many different varieties of edits/redraws.
blasians can have curly hair, big lips, and dark skin??? what are you on LMFAO
I’ve had people dm me and tell me I’m not allowed to have a poc OC because I’m white. I’ve also asked for advice on how to draw more ethnic features and textured hair but people have literally just told me I shouldn’t draw my main oc because they’re darker skinned. I’m trying my best but without other experienced artists encouraging and giving me help instead of yelling at me and insulting me then I’ll have to figure it out myself.
Just do what makes you happy. Learn from reference. I'm black and don't care what color your oc. I do think it's cool if they are dark though.
@@ShinDMitsuki Yeah. i’m trying to study more ethnic facial features. I learned how to draw dreads and cornrows lately so that’s a big accomplishment for me.
Imo i think non poc ppl can drsw ethnic features aslong as they learn how to do them well
@@yeetlol3537 Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do. It’s especially hard because my art style isn’t all that realistic so all of their noses and lips look about the same, the only difference is the eyes, I have a white/asian oc who has monolid eyes so that’s something I’ve practiced a lot. Just trying to find my art style still, *while* trying to figure out how to draw different features is pretty difficult.
@@patch2932 how about the way you do lips? have u tried doing the lips more prominent or shading them or? (Obviously not all black people have bigger lips but my style ain't realistic either and just the lips and eyes can make a big difference when it comes to guessing which race my character is🤷🏾♂️)
As a dark-skinned asian person who is also an artist, it pains me when people take away characters I relate to due to race and race swap them. They are our representation! We want to see ourselves too!
I've literally seen people race-swapping Mulan. Not even Asian characters whose identities actually matter to them are safe from the race-swappers
i dont support this if its editing another poc
@@Lol-tr6cuwdym?
I tend to avoid drawing characters who aren't white because of how harsh Twitter is. Like, if I made one mistake I'd probably be bombarded with death threats, which results in most drawings I do only containing white characters
SOFT AND WET
I feeel you and I'm mixed (black and white, but more on the lighter side) and I don't want to draw really dark characters at all bc of them:( even if its my mom. Really sad how a lot of people don't want to draw dark people bc of them.
A white character you can go absolutely nuts with giving them any facial features, proportions or even skin tones (tanned people do exist). But drawing POC has me feeling like their is a knife hovering over my shoulder even if I’m alone drawing in my private sketchbook. Though I still do practice them because I enjoy it
@@mrpizzacat8273 same, i feel like if I don’t draw my ocs a certain way, i’ll get attacked. The worst part is most of my stories take place in a fantasy world where hair color/texture works differently than irl, which means that a darker-skinned person in my world could potentially have naturally straight hair. (I’m black)
Plus even if u followed the guidelines perfectly u would still get attacks from racist idiots
What really gets me, is when a character's whole personally is changed. Not even race, just they become not that character and just have their name. In that case, why not just make a new character to replace them? O!! Along with their outfit design too, where when the two characters are compared, they are no longer alike or even have remnants of their old design. Not even time skip wise or something like that.
I think race-bending characters in general is mostly pointless and asking for trouble and drama, and I also think people of colour deserve better than an edit of a frame from an animated film or Ariel the mermaid turned black when there are countless legends, rich folklore and mythologies to explore that actually represent poc culture and heritage. Also the hypocrisy of the people blackwashing Asian characters and saying anime isn't rep or that Japanese characters from anime look white... yeah, that's definitely something that should be spoken about.
I only feel a bit conflicted about race-bending and hypocritical when I look at it from my perspective of a queer man who enjoys queer shipping, even when characters aren't technically gay or queer. I feel like it's a bit of a different scenario with LGBT identities vs ethnicity but can't exactly put my finger on it.
I think the biggest difference between having a race headcannon (that drastically changes the skin of the character) and a sexuality/ nurodivergent headcannon is that the former actively changes the design of the character. And as an artist, it’s pretty disrespectful to change character designs drastically like that.
Personally I think we should treat racebending similarly to how we treat gender-bending characters. Where it’s more of just a fun design challenge thing, but it’s no longer really the same character and should have its own tag and stuff.
@@goobmook good points!
I really like the idea of treating race-bending like gender-bending, it actually gave me a whole new perspective on it!
I've seen artists treat racebending like an AU and I thought it was really cool! Someone I follow did a "what if this anime were set in Mexico" that had a lot of thought put into it and didn't feel like it was trying to "fix" the source material at all. Which I think is the thing that makes it weird, especially when the character being "fixed" is Asian. I'm East Asian, and well...I sympathize with the need for representation, but when it's with that particular intention it feels like the artist thinks all pale characters are white and therefore overrepresented, and people like me just don't exist.
I think LGBT headcanons don't have that fixing element to them, so they don't feel uncomfortable? Or at least they can be a different flavor of uncomfortable? Like when people change aroace characters to be something more shippable- even then, it's straight-up erasure and not like they think they're fixing the character. From what I've seen, at least.
I think princess and the frog should've been adaptated instead
@@strawberrymochi118 I suppose the question is
Is the race bend an attempt to “fix” the character or just an attempt to see them in a different culture and style?
Tbh I’d love if many stories were reimagined from different cultures, I mean it happens with live action and plays and to see small artists do that is so cool to me so I feel like there’s so many sides to this
Making characters black is most problematic when the original character is also a minority with barely media spotlight (specifically south east asians with dark skin tones)
There are way too many people claiming that the character is black or makes their skin darker than it should be … nothing wrong with black characters, but just draw yourself cosplaying the character… dont change the skin tone and claim them as a black character ..
- from a southeast asian with tanned skin
this !
the fact that art work in fiction is the problem
@@K1ttyGam3r there are black Dominicans why are you forgetting that
@@hbsupreme1499 you know what… good point. I don’t think I was the right person to talk about this. I’m not even Dominican, honestly.
I must’ve been tired when I wrote that comment. Sorry.
Very lucky to not have any drama with my art account, and knowing how skin color affects with my shading.
hahahaah you have figured a way to navigate twitter successfully!
Hello there, all races can mix tbh and the fact that these toxic people will say that is just straight up racist. 🤦🏾 and that's coming from someone who is black myself, my auntie's bf is white but she's black and that is ok, anyways I hope you agree with this. Have a nice day ✌
SOFT AND WET
Thank you! I've been feel down about this lately and it feels nice to hear someone say it! ~Mixed person
My mom is white or « chabine » and my dad black
Insecurities, differences in social structures due to unbalanced historical advantages, stereotypes, lack of personal experiences with real friends who are black that had a positive effect in their earlier life, upbringing with racist family or friends, etc...or just being a douchebag. It's easy to get away with being an idiot if your the majority unfortunately. Tears everyone apart.
@@JokeHatesItHere mr. i blame black people for hating mixed people when it was white rcaist that created the systems
i honestly agree with the whole "don't change a character's ethnicity if it isn't yours" cuz like why??just dont blackwash OR whitewash.
Blackwashing doesn't exist..
@@hailove222 what do you mean,there could be an Asian character and someone could literally color that character black.And yes,it exists.
@@hailove222 then what do you call it when people make a non black character black?
@@magk2524 literally that. Also it's not harming anyone
@@Angelfaeiry that’s making the character blasian lol, nun wrong with that
I can't lie, the concept of Blacktober always felt off to me. Like if you want black rep do it yourself, you have the power to make your own characters instead of forcing it onto other ones. Hell that'd even be a fun design exercise in creativity.
Literally u afe
@@MAIONNAISE Idk what that means but I hope it's good!
have you seen blacktober recently? there was more ocs than gross edits. the miku incident is another one of such trends that felt off to me.. why would want to make a whole trend just with the excuse of making her black?
Im of the strong opinion that, now here me out, dont be an ass about the skin tone. Lets understand, skin tone is amazingly confusing and any number of factors change the color
exactly what i said in the last video....with more context
SOFT AND WET
Imagine drawing hands in a dark skin tone? Sounds like a new artist's living nightmare
Yeah. While I'm no pro, I consider myself a pretty solid digital painter. I still have a hard time getting skin tones, for any race, right while copying portraits. It's really hard.
@@yoshistover5881 Hey I have the same problem omg, sometimes I'll just get the picture of them on my screen and copy and paste it, but sometimes that's hard too because their skin tone doesn't always look the same
Tbh I don't mind if people draw characters as a different race or ethnicity, it can be fun to see them in different ways!
If they're not pulling the "I fixed the character :) " bs then I have no issue with it.
But I do feel there should be more black ocs and characters.
SOFT AND WET
@@BeyondSurvivor 😳
You bugging bruv💀
If you're going to redesign a character at least change the features like hair, skin, face, and type of clothing. Using a paint bucket tool and calling it a day is just like those donut steel oc type of shit, doesn't help at all.
@@SuperDuperSigmaMale ur bugging
I feel like as long as you're redesigning a character to relate it to you for fun then you're fine. But if you're doing it to fix a character then that's wrong. I'm bipoc and I've drawn myself as lighter skinned characters and I've gotten heat for that :/
Literally this! I got harrassed once because I edited Starfire to look like me for a fun pfp even after I explained why I did it. Unfortunately people who do edits tend to get lumped in with people who "art fix" and it's so sad
Genuine question, I'm a bit confused on the whole issue since I agree that race-swapping characters to 'fix' them is strange at best, what about people who draw and/or redesign certain characters to look more themselves, because they relate heavily to the character? Asking because I've done that myself and I just want to see other people's opinions on it.
Why can't people just draw what they want
because twitter says it.s not cool and we all gotta do what twitter says
@@MohammedAgbadi I'm black. Got an Asian friend. She's been my friend for over 10 years. BLM gets big and she doesn't talk about it on her Twitter because it's only for art. She gets dms telling her silence of racism or something, and worriedly comes to ask me if she's racist. Twitter is something else, really.
It feels like a new age of censorship of sorts, but this time not by the government but by other people on social platforms. People are saying you can’t draw triggering artwork, people are saying you can’t make political cartoons or draw a race that you aren’t part of. There should be no censorship of art, even if it makes you uncomfortable, it is art. Some art is MADE to make you uncomfortable and that’s the message of it. Even if you don’t agree woth the message being sent out, it’s unethical to censor art because that’s censoring people’s personal expression. So now it’s become, “Express yourself but only how I feel comfortable and how I say you can.”
@@ShinDMitsuki And from the same people that hashtag "stop asian hate", I bet. Bunch of hypocrites, all of them!
@@edgechan you’re funny LOOOL, just cause she’s asian that means they’re pulling an asian hate crime on her for asking her to speak up about black issues? you’re fr weird
I'm a mix race artist and like others in this comment section have said it can be awful. I don't see a space for mixed race characters in the art world and drawing characters that are white or black (my personal mix), or even other races, seems to be full of peril online.
Oh gosh, I have this anxiety. I'm mixed race too and trying to draw a character like me can be stress inducing, but I think I just realized that people who see race as divided into clear groups and have to be either one of the other are weirdos and our art isn't for them.
@@dreamsicle3113 I like that perspective
I'm white but I find it super weird that people are so upset over drawing mixed characters. I don't even know what my character's races are and yet people will get upset. If I don't know then how do you know?
Honestly!! I’m mixed and I make mixed characters of all kinds, It’s just what I know. Race isn’t just clear concrete groups? I hate how people try to make things black and white. The world is diverse.
I’m also mixed race and honestly I make a lot of my characters mixed but a lot of the time when other people draw mixed (especially black and white) they really romanticise it for example, drawing mixed people with that golden-brown curly/wavy hair, light-mid skin and green eyes… which is fine, those kids exist out there but it’s like… there’s nothing else… ? I probably don’t make sense pfft sorry
I’m curious, what is your opinion on “Blackwashing a white/asian character is okay, because black people need more representation in media.”?
I hear this a lot and when I try to explain why it’s still not a good reason to do it, I got people calling me racist because of my opinion
Would love to hear your thoughts in the near future if possible
As an Asian this stuff really bothers me. Of course, the skin color itself isn't the issue but changing skin tone in general. Like when an Asian character is edited to be "blasian" and has almost every original detail erased and turned into a different character. I feel like that sort of takes away our representation in Asian media and it makes themselves feel better.
@spaghetti 🍝 The Best answer to all of this ___washing bs
As an Asian myself, I’m really bothered by this. I have seen many people think it’s controversial to draw black characters white (it is), but when they see artists “blackwashing” a white/asian character, they actually encourage this action. I believe there’s nothing wrong with drawing black characters, it’s the “changing skin color” part that’s problematic. Clearly the black can get more presentation, it’s just they put the presentation on the wrong character. And when others disagree with them, they immediately guilt those people as racist and harass them.
dark skinned South East Asian here, I'm offended by that as it does nothing to the representation. The characters are still whites or Asians no matter how many layers of color they painted on. It's like some kind of pointless activism that harms other races and does nothing but to bring more controversy.
@@keetard god i hope they dont confuse the aetas thinking that they are black instead of DARK SKINNED ASIANS
One of my favourite arguments about changing a character’s race, gender, sexuality etc. is Spider-Man. So many people want a black Peter Parker or make him gay or trans or whatever when it’s so easy to make a whole new character who is those things. There’s plenty of alternate Spider-Man characters like Miles Morales, Gwen Stacy plus there’s the spider-verse where you can make your own Spider-Man and you can’t really argue with it cause “It’s an alternate universe”
honestly into the spiderverse was genius with that.
I just want it louder for the people in the back "EVERYONE CAN BE SPIDERMAN BC WE'RE ALL PEOPLE"
"Take it easy, it's just a drawing"
- Dirty Dan
lmao
Fr lmaoo
IM DIRTY DAN
As an Asian, I saw photos of people race bending Asian/anime characters (such as mha characters) to be black, and when I saw the comments, it honestly pissed me off. I don’t mean to sound rude, but evryone was saying “omg black bakugo is sooo hot” or even “am I the only one who thinks black bakugo is better?” Like, it’s ok to try to cosplay yourself into a character, but saying that it’s better, is honestly disrespectful. Us asians get hate too, I was once told “go back to your country dog-eater” as in stereotyping asians. I’m japanese, and this hurts me.
I believe that we shouldn’t race-bend characters in the first place, and if we do, keep it to ourselves and don’t post it online.
its reinterpretation why are you so offended, the artist aint at fault ofr comments
shut your mouth if you won't understand the struggle💀
@@hbsupreme1499 This was from 8 months ago, I completely forgot about this 💀
But anyway, I’m not saying I’m offended but I’m saying that they should try to make their own characters.
When it’s a cosplay, I don’t care. However, when they change and absolute asian character to be black, it doesn’t matter if it’s for representation, it’s still wrong. I’m saying that instead of changing characters, they should maybe make new ones if they want representation. By changing an already made characters skin tone, it doesn’t rly do anything to affect the actual problem. They should be making new characters and try to let other people know of it, so that way in the anime world more races are shown.
@@hbsupreme1499mang's comment is for the people who think black people = better than Asian. Honestly j think blackwashing is boring af. It's basically just changing their appearance and maybe adding the culture of black people into that character. You can literally do that to anything and it'd just be the same. If you switch back to the characters original version then you can just see that the characters traits (other than their appearance) did not change whatsoever. If you need to make poc characters there should be personality, but the blackwashed characters personality remains the same. It's as if drinking water, but instead of drinking in the glass you decided to put it in a bottle, it doesn't matter, it's the same and nothing changes for the best.
But fr, it's ok to think it's cool but saying it's better is so fcking weird. Personally I see it as redesigns as long as you're not changing characters who's backgrounds are connected eg changing Mikasa, even if it's a mixed edit, is wrong because her being Asian is important to her character.
I feel like the rise in black washing anime characters kicked off with the rise of cosplaying. Black cosplayers got tired of being "that one black character" from a show so we start just cosplaying who ever. And i think that in turn sparked the idea of making black version of characters that black cosplayers could cosplay happily and comfortably to make up for thd gap in options.
Yeah
The racism in the cosplay and anime community is just awful. Some black cosplayers even quit because of how bad it is
I think the problem with that thought process though is most anime characters are asian like even the black now obviously some exceptions do apply so to put simply a white guy doing Son Goku cosplay really isn't different than a black guy doing it because neither are asian so being honest trying to cosplay based on race was always wasted effort because most cosplayers aren't getting from the get unless they were asian
@@addex1236 but the making black versions of characters doesn't change the canon of the design and story. It just lets black people online have an outlet to feel represented. Like you said there isn't a difference between a white person cosplaying Goku and and black person. But the black person gets harassed online and the white person gets praised. That's where the problem lies
@@crablegs1 your never going to solve that problem people are cunts there will always be cunt and frankly it's the internet mean words are not could not matter less on unless someone is divulging were you live then you no problem. The problem now is because of this we are creating a culture of skin deep narcism which will in the long term set the entire human race back for decades if it dosent die soon
I actually felt uncomfortable for years drawing anyone who wasn't white because of how scared it made me due to twitter. In the end I tried to research more about drawing and painting different skin tones and now one of my favourite characters I've created is black, and I'm incredibly proud of the detail and care I put into colouring her skin.
Thanks for covering and clearing up sensitive art topics... you do a very good job of being concise and practical 👍
SOFT AND WET
thankyou so much. I appreciate that!
I'm seeing this with a lot of people who are making fanart of the movie Encanto, it seems like every skin tone is always wrong. A lot of artists are complaining about this, they are constantly getting hate comments
yeah Encanto uses a lot fancy lighting and it kinda fucks up getting a pure skin tone (in my experience at least)
As a Colombian, the funniest part is there's no real "right" way to paint most of these characters' skin tones (except for Felix, Antonio and Pepa). It might sound wild, but us mixed people's skin color fluctuates a lot based on how much sun we get, so we might look lighter or darker on any given day and don't have a "pure" skin color, like the commenter above put it. Our skin tone is literally a spectrum and it doesn't actually matter at all if any of these characters is portrayed a bit lighter or a bit darker, but, y'know, Twitter gotta do what Twitter does best.
@@RezzSubs I totally agree (I'm also mixed) there really isn't a right way to colour let's say Camilo or Luisa skin because the can change under lighting, overlay or depending on how much sun they have.
@@RezzSubs Ohhh this is so true!! I am Honduran and, because of the pandemic, I hardly go out, so I was really pale. But i had to go out in the sun last week and suddenly I am a more of a mid-tone person like my mom. It also matters and changes on a person to person basis. Some people just tan faster than others.
@@RezzSubs I'm Chilean and I facepalmed hard when someone commented "stop white people drawiing white people in Encanto" like... Have they even seen the whole country at all? Latino America is a huge mix and you WILL find a white person born and raised there. It not makes them less latino because "ew he was born white".
Getting all riled up for the shading of a characters skin and using that as justification to cancel and ruin someone's life is one of the most pathetic things I've ever seen. The people who accuse artists of whitewashing are nothing but opportunistic vermin who think destroying a human being's life somehow makes them look heroic and accomplished. I'm an artist and I quit Twitter years ago. That place is a toxic shit-hole that I hope one day will burn to the ground and disappear. But even if it were to die, some other platform will take its place and the cycle will continue once more.
they have the rights to be upset, if you’re gonna draw a poc character then draw it right tf isn’t clicking?
@@ok-sg8tw Just because they have the right to be upset doesn't mean they also have the right to bully and harass the artist.
@@kristofgriffin384 educating and criticizing isn’t bullying and harassing but okay
@@ok-sg8tw I know that. There's a difference between offering constructive criticism to help the artist grow, and pointing out said flaws are justification to ruin their lives. What I was trying to say is that there exist scum out there who take it too far.
@@kristofgriffin384 “ruin their lives”.....they’ll be ok lol
The idea of reimagining a character as someone from another culture/setting isn't actually a bad idea, there's a Ghibli movie called "When Marnie Was There" which was from a British novel taking place in Norfolk, but in the anime it takes place in Japan instead and most of the characters have become Japanese as well, and it was just beautiful. Personally I think the concept is creative and fun as long as it's done with respect, like I enjoy seeing art of Marvel Superheroes reimagined as Indonesian folk tale characters or as Japanese Feudal Era fighters, and honestly I do find some art of characters reimagined as black also beautiful and creative. At the end of the day though, it's the mindset and entitlement that comes with the art that gets really stupid and toxic, instead of the art itself :/
But the characters were originally white, but when you take a poc person it can be erasure
@@hallucination3704mainly because the characters being white doesn't affect their story or them being white doesn't impact their story at all. As POC, our race is tied to our stories more often than not eg Spawn, Black Panther, Storm
Yes, that's why it makes no sense to change the appearance of entire cultures, it's disrespecting their ethnicity and their distinctive history.
In the rings of power they practically took away the main physical characteristic of the elves, which is that yes, they were all white. As there is an intolerance to an entire culture being white, they made them look like a mixture of different races in terms of skin and aspects of their faces where most do not reach the level of whiteness of the original films, except for the ears that to look like elves, they had to be pointed.
It is as if in Wakanda the physical culture of Black Panter was changed by pure ideological whim "anti Afro" and they had been bleached.
Another unpleasant change is in the infamous avatar life action, Katara and Zoka have been made to look as if nothing happened with their ethnic history!
Physical asoect, whether they want to or not, IS CHARACTERISTIC OF A RACE, one can't just come and change it on a simple caprich.
@@Gohan-Bestia ok one question but like elves aren't always white in fantasy, so is it like an exclusive thing in the Rings saga or?? If so then that's weird af to change. And in BP isn't the point the fact skin color isn't the only part of diversity and that's the reason they're all black people from different tribes like in Africa??
As an artist who draws black people with ashy skin sometimes because I like the way it looks, I’m genuinely scared ;-;
I never seen a drawing of a black person with ashy skin. Nice 🙂
@@Pika-Chu64 we exist you know :(
I'm scared too, I don't draw (post) much black people because I'm scared of people coming to make a fuss, like yikes, if I did something wrong you can politely correct us lol
@@dragoonssrbguilty4719 Same! Even tho I'm black I'm constantly scared with how I draw black people! This actually causes most of my art to be people with light skin tones ;-;
People on Twitter are the real circus. Once I've drawn an alternative version of Gamora (Guardians of the Galaxy) and posted it on Twitter, immediately got called out for racism because I didn't draw her skin tone in dark green rather violet. :/
This is the same people who starts crying when they see a pastel color palette and start canceling the artist accusing it from ''colorism'' and ''racismm''.
I'm sorry can you explain what "colorism" is I don't know what that is? (or the pastel pallete version)
lighting a characters skin tone to fit your “aesthetic” is dead wrong bro, you can still draw dark skinned characters with pastel clothing
@@ok-sg8tw Artists can use a pastel pallete on the characters and twitter users will try to cncel them for that lmao.
@@ok-sg8tw you can draw dark skin with pastel but the color will be lighter, as long as the skin isn’t the only thing that lightened you can see it’s a pallets
@@marcoscruzherran7385 i’m implying that lightening the skin tone is wrong.
Ah shoot,here we are again
CJ be like:
POV you're cj:
@@MohammedAgbadi real tho 😳
SOFT AND WET
Ikr
If whitewashing exists, which it does, then blackwashing exists. Of course, if you wanna make a black/white version, then go ahead but the moment you call it “fixing” is where it becomes washing. I’d even argue if you don’t acknowledge the fact it’s a different version it’s washing.
But basically,
just don’t change it. Make OCs.
PREACH!
The only problematic thing about changing the race IMO is calling it “fixing”. It is not a bad thing to imagine and visualize what a character would look If they were another race. (And that goes both ways)
And if simply changing the race is problematic, then wouldn’t that mean changing gender and sex is as well??🤔
@@wake5307 Saying “I drew a genderbent version of [character]” is different from saying “I drew [character]” and changing the race without saying anything.
@@Corfright at first I didn’t understand what you meant but I think I get it, and oh yes definitely. Vastly different. And I agree!! Though my point was that people (well, Twitter) get upset at ANY sort of racebending of a character. And on the next side of the extreme, people who claim to “fix” characters are bad too.
But to continue on from what you were saying, If the artist just said “racebend version of (character)” or “my idea of what (character) would look like as another race” then what’s the problem? Personally I think that’s okay. just don’t claim you are making a character “better” or “fixing” it
This is why I love fictional characters who don't have normal skin colors.
I like stylizing those characters and headcannoning what they look like if they did have a normal skin color. It's fun.
That's why I love Spooky Month, their skin is all completely white and the creator says they're a blank canvas in terms of race. It's great
This reminds me of equestria girls
Yellow skinned characters baby!
I think my issue is how people take Anime/Game characters, who are canonically asian (usually japanese), and just make them black... Erasing another underrepresented group of people...
Editing already existing characters mever sits right with me, wether white- or blackwashed...
Just make OCs !!
Make your own characters and stories and have fun with that !! 😭
Coming back to this video after the dandadan fanart drama on Twitter
When I was young it was rly fun re-imaging characters you like as another age, race, gender or even as yourself.. also tricking a little their stories to fit...
It was a fun activity in the art community and no one putted those over the original character... but US obsession about races kinda spread like an infection to the rest of the world thanks to twitter...
i don't really mind blackwashing when it's just for fun, it seems like an interesting drawing exercise and people often come up with pretty bomb designs
it just irks me when people justify racebending anime characters that are obviously japanese by saying "they look white, so it's ok" like What? and then they act like they have the moral high ground as if they've magically created real representation in the industry instead of just a really neat fanart
Twitter...
edit: Alright so people are interpreting this as me saying "blackwashing is only bad when done to asian characters", which wasn't my intention at all because as I said, there's a lot of very talented people out there doing a lot of really cool fanart and there's nothing wrong with them having fun. A lot of the time black fanart or edits of anime characters come from a real place of love and passion for these shows and yk what? good for them! In my original comment I was trying to bring attention to how "x looks white so it doesn't matter if I change their race" is a pretty nasty sentiment and how its used as an excuse to treat asian people/characters in fandom spaces as "white people lite", which I do think is a real problem. Feel free to disagree, though.
Nothing says creating real representation by creating digital blaekface and using black fishing/ stereotypes by their own standards towards real life people as justification am I right?
blasian
@@Saltedroastedcaramel most Asians have white skin, so of course they look white!! What the hell do people want, have every single artwork of Asians with a yellow tint to their skin because of the stereotype? God damn
@@Akalim *A character from an anime with a eastern name but white skin*
Twatter: Yup looks white to me!
Then again these people think would someone with a darker skin is black. Skin tones are more complex than that
@@Saltedroastedcaramel TWATTER I LOVE THAT HWNR
but yeah. I mean the skin tone itself is white (at least to me), but there's so much more that goes into nationalities as you've stated, I just lose my m i n d when people forget multiple things come into play
I'm just here to tell 1 thing.
If you're character is getting a race swap then you know you're doing something right.
apt!
i mean don't get me wrong but i really hate when people "racebend" white/asian characters and make them black (yes I'm black myself) and then say "its not as bad as whitewashing" when it really is. changing the race of someone's character//an already existing character isn't okay to me. i feel as if you want to draw an character a certain race, then make your own character just inspired off of the other character... it seems disrespectful tbh almost as if the character wasn't fine originally. i really dont see the difference between 'white Washing' and changing a characters race to African American or whatever// 'blackwashing' as some would say. i only understand if its like a challenge to make a character look like you. (yet, again this is just my opinion so pls dont attack me LOL) Also as an artist who has somewhat of a okay following 💀 i try to be as accepting and diverse in my art as possible, and idk but i dont really think i would like someone changing my oc to look different just to satisfy themselves. everyone is beautiful and it seems to be (to me) when you racebend, non accepting// taking away from the oc, and (at times) a little racist ifykyk. idk if i worded this properly but i hope someone understands :p and ew typos
blasions exist
Saying whitewashing is the same as blackwashing is really ignorant. Whitewashing has a lot of racist history behind it, an example is cultural whitewashing, which is common in the media, in which a culture's traditions are tweaked to satisfy Western stereotypes, such as in the popular film Step Up (wikipedia). Cultural whitewashing is similar to the whitewashing of fictional characters in a way. The whitewashing of black characters is done to erase ethnic and racial features of a character to be "more appealing to white folk".
I don't understand why so many people compare blackwashing to whitewashing and say it's at the same level when it is not and history says the same thing.
Blackwashing is usually done because of the lack of representation of blasians or black people in general, characters who are 'blackwashed' are also usually self inserts, so where's the problem? I've haven't heard any argument that isn't "they're the same thing because they're both races" so please enlighten me.
@@ok-sg8tw Black Asians do exist, but unless the character/author says their nationality or their heritage, you cannot go ahead and claim "this is blasian because I said so". That's called "headcanon" and won't change a thing or two to the author/company.
@@edgechan girl i did not ask
You also can just "copy" art style of certain anime you like and draw your OC in this style I did it with Haikyuu, I just used to draw my OC in Haikyuu s4 style and it looked amazing, fr
Colorism is a thing that exists and it’s just as infuriating, especially as a mixed race individual. This is what is happening in art when people try to say that a character isn’t dark enough to be this race or light enough to be that race, and is especially true when talking about black characters.
It is refreshing to see that people care enough to try painting different skin tones more accurately. It sucks that people are so rude that it makes artists worried about drawing black characters or give up on drawing them all together. It’s counterproductive to allowing artists to make more representation in their art. I for one am so happy that more artists WANT to draw people like me, and want to do it in a respectful way. So please, if you want to draw black characters don’t be intimidated by the haters. There are those of us who are happier than you could ever know that we are included in your art.
Yeah I'm mixed (and Latina) and it really bothers me the idea that drawing white people badly is fine but drawing other races poorly (not racist caricatures, just poorly) is unacceptable. Experimentation and practice and referencing is how people learn, and the mainstream art world is white enough right now without encouraging it to get worse.
i love how this dude is just chill, getting his point across without being rude putting others down or raising his voice
This reminds me of those lazy "drawings" of anime characters where they'll just trace over the character and then change their skin color lmao
"Races shouldn't mix"
All Latin America:
😐😐😐😐😐😐
Why do people still say races shouldnt mix? People have always traveled and always found love wherever they did so, races have always mixed.
“Hey I’ve seen this one [controversy]!”
“What do you mean you’ve seen it? It’s brand new!”
lmaooo
This is why I draw characters with non-human colors (pink, yellow, green, blue...)
hahaha pretty much saving yourself the hassle of arguing later on! i feel it
hi! just wanted to say that people can be blue (methemoglobinemia), but I get what you're saying, like, not racialized colors
@@1kaz1 I've heard about that lol 😆
Thank you so much for addressing this! It's always so frustrating to me when I see established characters race-swapped and people cheering for it in the comments of the post. It shouldn't be touched or encouraged by anyone and especially since doing it one way is considered to be "good" and another to be bad. As an Asian, to me it's better to show representation by creating OCs and spreading art of POC characters that are actually POC. It's really that simple.
I made Goku darker actually. He's not even human so there's no issue
Honestly I don't think _every single black-edit_ is bad especially when done right like using the correct facial features, hair, body type etc and it's approached with "I just want to see what _insert fictional character here_ would look like as another race" for FUN it's like genderbending, it's just a fun "what if". I like to think of it as 'if a black person was cosplaying as this Character, this is what it'll look like' scenario... Or better yer making an OC. *BUT* Their is a very big difference between creating a black OC in a specific Anime with that animes powers(like a black Saiyan), OR taking a character and racebending harmlessly and taking a preexisting character and completely deconstructing everything about it.
1) blatantly and purposefully _Erases_ the characters original race/ethnic/culture and paints over it with and says "That's better" bc that character is 'better' or "should be this race" bc they say so. E.g ATLA live action, the water tribe that is supposed to be Innute (Dark Skinned!) is now white, the Fire Nation is CLEARLY supposed to Japanese, instead its Indian, it was dark washed bc M.Night Chamalan is Indian and in HIS opinion the Avatar universe that isn't his own should all get their races changed and bc The fire Nation is his favourite so it should be Indian, his own race.... 🤦♀️
OR
2)When they don't even change _anything_ and just _make_ the dark-skinned for LITERALLY NO REASON other than personal preference 'cough' delusion 'cough'. E.g there I am on Tumblr and I come across Sasuke fanart from this one specific artist, (now I _already_ hated it bc the style was eh and didn't suit Naruto characters at ALL but this was also Sasuke x Kurapika... Which the EWwww! Side of shipping) And lo and behold Sasuke is Dark skinned. Just Dark-skinned nothing else about his features are changed. Now that struck me as odd bc... Why? Just why?? Then I check out other arts from thus person and wouldn't you know, all the Sasuke pics I came across were Dark-skinned, AND THERE WAS ABSOLUTELY NO REASON FOR IT. It just made me feel so uncomfortable bc It's so blatantly unnecessary and unnatural and the more I tried to justify it or write it off I couldn't bc. it just. Doesn't. Fit. So I ask again Why? See here's the thing if there was ONE clan from Naruto that's UNQUESTIONABLY _supposed_ to be completely _Japanese_ (ya know other than the fact that it's ANIME! _Swimming_ in *Japanese* culture and folklore) it's the Samurai and the *UCHIHA* everything about them from their dress, clan symbol, district architecture and _Especially_ their features- black/dark eyes and dark/black/brown hair and their pale skin and shape of their eyes SCREAMS traditional Japanese. Add to that there are ALREADY various skin tones in Naruto including darker skinned characters in Naruto (Iruka, Naruto, Sarutobis etc) that are still Asian AND actual BLACK characters. The difference is respect and understanding. Instead of doing what sensible ppl do when they like an anime and want to see themselves in it, they MAKE AN _OC_ POC with whatever anime powers. This person just made Sasuke darker for no reason other than they felt like it and clout most probably bc I'm 90% this artist wasn't even black.
Nah thats 👆 just plain DISRESPECTFUL Blackwashing and YOU. ARE. WRONG.
I drew Antonio from Encanto once, never really had experience with drawing POC (even my own race which- kinda sus) so I was kind of nicely surprised that it actually looked really good (for a first time). But to be honest, I’m glad I don’t dwell in Twitter’s Art realm where I don’t have to get blasted for drawing an Asian “wrong” when.. it’s literally a self portrait or something.
4:38 what is happening on the TV back there...
I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO NOTICED HELPP
One race-swapped the felt super weird to me was in the Vampire Diaries. in the books, Bonnie is a celtic druid, it's a very important part of her character, her backstory, her magic and basically it's at the center of a lot of things that happen to her and around her. When they made the TV show, they had to change *everything* because they made her black, so they changed her whole backstory to be related to voodoo I think and just? so many other characters literaly didn't have backtrosies that were heavily linke to their origins I'm still confused as to why they swapped literaly *the* character that had them re-write erything about her
Yeah, that was confusing as hell. I only read one book and also looked up how the characters were in the books and more about their origins, due to not reading every book or having the time to, but it was definitely different from the show and I got pretty confused. lol The show was still okay, but it did make me wonder why they didn't stick to the story that was written in the books and why they needed to change the characters and their backstories. It made zero sense to me.
I don't understand why if they had to make her black they had to change her powers to like?? Can't black people also be Celtic? and them changing it to voodoo is such a weird thing because apparently black characters can only practice voodoo
Well generally ethnic Celtic druids aren't black. No disrespect.@@bubblycups
4:12 wat the tv doin?🙈🙉🙊
It's complicated-This problem is almost exclusive to fan-art and the screenshot edits.
This whole problem can be minimalized if there was a sudden major interest(or necessity) for original content/characters, but this solution feels like it tackles the "fanart vs original art" issue more than *this problem*.
In that case, I'd have to agree with the person who said , don't alter characters that aren't yours...
Yeah, the best answer is to support more people that do original works, specially if they have the representation you like. But while is not impossible to make original work and publish it, is a bit hard to get the public to get interested in your art at first, and then comes the problems with schedule, if you do a villain but has certain ethnic stuff, if your characters are/aren't a-b-c, etc. That's why most artist with original work do not want to post their work on Webtoon or Tapas or Twitter, to avoid any backlash :/ Artists should understand that you cannot please everybody.
As a mixed black/hispanic dude, "Races shouldn't mix" is very real and I've been judged for it by close-minded elder black and other hispanic folk. Even worse is that my accent is more "radio-like", so I often got asked back in elementary and secondary "Why do you speak so white?" by other kids.
Shit was rough, but people got better about it when they started understanding that everybody has different backgrounds... although a little late, they fucked me up mentally for a while.
Another neighborhood friend went through similar yet worse experiences being Jamaican/White and gay.
jc dude that sucks, I'm sorry people feel like they are allowed to do that kind of thing. maybe sometime people will understand that racism is a mindset and not a skincolor...
I just noticed you put in-built subtitles and i must say thank you so much, helps to focus with adhd sooooo much better
I've wanted to create more black characters in my work and even though I'm trying to be mindful to get colors correct and to not step on any toes I still feel like there will be people out there who simply call my characters racist or get upset at the depiction regardless of what I do. I currently use pixel art as my medium but that probably won't stop them from being upset either...
I've never cared about skin colors, and I never will. I will never understand this obsession some humans have with it. I didn't get to choose it, I had to have some color or I'd be invisible, and it damn sure isn't the end all be all of who I am. I'm a human. Not a white one, not a black one, just a human.
Yeah, we're all humans, but saying that "colors don't exist" is like saying that the problem of racism doesn't exit
@@Bl4ckVeilPrinc3ss I am not denying their existance, I am denying their relevance. Eye and hair colors also exist, and no one deems them relevant, how is skin color any different?
@@logicplague oh sorry for misunderstanding
@@Bl4ckVeilPrinc3ss no worries :)
I get what you mean but some of us still have to live with racism though. I can’t just be human, bc ppl look at my skin, my lips, my hair differently.
True art doesn't have to make sense. Many art styles do not "make sense". Modernist art, post-modernist, gothic, romantic, cubist etc. Inspiration can come from anywhere. Good art makes you feel. Good art makes you ponder. Good art makes you wonder.
If you want to draw a character a certain way then do it. Creativity should not be constrained.
As long as its not for some shallow reason like representation, when you can make a new character that does the same function where it makes sense to the overall artistic vision. And if someone race-swaps a character for a reason that doesn't fit the plot, message or themes of the piece, then by all means judge the art poorly. But maybe that was the emotion the artist wanted to instigate in the audience. You could be playing into their hands.
If they were doing it for fun, or because that's the point where they are creatively at then we have no place to judge them.
I changed Sonic's skin tone because why not. So now I draw all Sonic characters with darker skin/fur
I once got berated for "whitewashing" the character Alura from Voltron- wgat they didn't know was that I literally colour picked her skin tone FROM A SCREENSHOT OF HER IN THE SHOW! I guess because I put a filter on my work, to make the image more vibrant, like I do with ALL my art, it would habe changed the skin tone aswell, like filters do.. I don't thinks it's racist to use filters on black characters tho
feel you. Honestly, isn't it more problematic if we ignore lighting situations or don't filter as we do with our usual art BC the character is black? like... aren't we trying for equality anymore?
If the whole thing has a filter, color theory is at work lol. The filter doesn’t make them look whiter, because everything else in the isshaded differently
I call it style washing if you have a style and someone redraws it with a "fixed it for you." They fixed nothing, that is how I draw color, this is my level of realism, this is my interpretation. As far as I'm concerned no one should draw to a standard and everyone should see the world as they see fit.
I agree with this. There have been times where people tell me that my version of Sonic is too tall and his hands are too small and I'm just like ok??? I'm not changing my art style just because someone doesn't like it
Most of the time, the people claiming that something is "whitewashing" aren't even digital artists. I can name so many ways how different colouring styles, layer combinations or just. lighting. can make black characters look lighter EVEN IF their skin tone is directly colour picked from a reference. Sometimes, even the colour picked colours can be innacurate if the person is using a rendered image or made a mistake in picking a highlight instead of what would be closest to the base colour. Not to mention that certain screen displays can make images look washed out, or the artist could be wearing glasses that makes colours slightly off to them (I have a friend for this specific example). I'm sick and tired of people who can't sit down to just think of the possibilities.
Also! As a Filipino who takes more from their white dad but grew up around filipino culture, NOT ALL DARK SKINNED PEOPLE ARE BLACK, AND NOT ALL LIGHT SKINNED PEOPLE ARE WHITE. I'M LOOKING AT YOU GENSHIN COMMUNITY- This is a very specific rant, but the way some people treat Xinyan especially pisses me off since SHE IS NOT BLACK! From what I heard from southern asian people, she could 100% be southern chinese. Liyue (the region she comes from) is based off of China, so it adds up. I myself pinpointed her as middle eastern when I first pulled her, but that's just because I didn't know about southern chinese people having darker skin at the time. Dark skinned asians, in my opinion, are the people with the least amount of representation/appreciation and are the most white/black washed, since they're never light or dark enough for people. Most of the time (and I'm referencing korean and filipino cultures, i don't know how it is in China or other asian countries) darker skinned asians are whitewashed in their own culture/beauty standards, as well as in media to an extent, while the internet says "nonono you're black, the artists designed you wrong", and while this can be the case sometimes, most of the times it's false. Just let dark skinned asians have their mid skin tones goddamnit PLEASE I'M BEGGING
agreed especially when it comes to the whole dark skinned asians bit. i've seen dark skinned asians get called black on places like Twitter
, unless they have fair skin, but they'd sometimes get called white instead.
it's just that some overly-privileged people are too chronically online that they can't comprehend the idea that not all dark skinned POC are black
As a black person, I used to see why people would do blackwashing, but after much thought and a slight adjustment in viewpoint... The problem is not JUST that mainstream society tends to have a history of making racist charactures of ALL non-white groups of people (while we are focusing on artistic depictions of black/dark skinned characters in this case). It's not JUST the fact that people tend to struggle depicting BIPOC characters. The issue is multifaceted and complex at times yes, but we also make it more complicated as people..
If anything the true issue is the fact that even if some people try to make a diverse cast from a place of genuine care, other people are jumping down various artists' throats to draw things in a way THEY deem acceptable and not coming from a genuine place of help or wanting to educate. Instead people go in HARD at putting people in this box of being "racists" or "shitty people" and then allow NO space or even comfort to possibly learn anything of positive worth from that discussion. Because there is nothing positive to learn from that approach.
Dude, there have been times where *I* feel self-conscious about my own OCs and designs that I make that are darker skinned or that I deem closer to what I may look like as a BLACK PERSON. I admittedly don't know the best way to draw box braids and it comes with this sucky feeling of "shouldn't I know how to do this because I am black??" Then it only leads to a fear of trying and failing and people that I don't know and who don't know me squaring up to fight me. And that hasn't happened to me at all, yet the thought of it MAYBE happening is enough for me to keep to myself.
And again: I am BLACK. I am the demographic of which a lot of people are apparently fighting for lol. I get wanting to see "myself " in the worlds and stories I watch and read. But I don't have to make a black, plus-sized version of already existing character to do that. I would rather draw ME in that world. What do *I* look like as a character in these worlds? What is my personality, my powers or weapons, in certain cases? Who am I and what is the character or person I want to see myself as in that context?
Personally, THAT takes a little more thought and introspection of oneself and an ability to get creative design wise. And then THAT could possibly lead to make YOUR own worlds and stories and characters that you want to see and share with others.
If we frown at white people who whitewash characters for the sake of "being more relatable" to them and easier to consume and see themselves in, then what is the real difference in doing that with blackwashing? If anything we are removing characters that have other ethnicities/races (looking at anime as an example) just so we can feel better. If it felt shitty for us, why do it to someone else?
At least that's my thoughts lol
I literally made a video about black washing on tiktok but they all bullied me calling me racist dming me death threats
And others
But TYSM for making this video
Tiktok is full of low value people.
And it's safe to say I made a VERY similar video to you're video
I'm so glad more people are picking up on how strange this is. I was so upset after seeing XinYan be recolored to be black including a change in her eye nose and lip shape because it's so rare to see dark skin Asian representation. The fact that they could not leave an amazing peice of rare representation alone made me sad. Just because she was dark she HAD to be black.... I just want to be able to enjoy one of the RARE dark skin Asian characters out there....
the worst of it is that when I went for consolation from an open minded friend she canceled me straight up saying I was anti black....
Yes, as an tanned skin asian, Xinyan is literally one of my fav character because us tanned/darkly skin asians got rep from her and also her character is very fun and have asian culture in it
the whole "xinyan is blk" thingy genuinely make me mad, im a more on darker tone chinese and they are acting like people like me doesnt exist
@@cofecupz_ ikr, it's so annoying at this point...
the artwork looks dark it's a drawing you can't tell between dark Asian or a black.
I think that this "blackwashing" thing is only okay when the artist themselves are black (or any other ethnicity different to the character) and doing a self-insert. For example, a while ago, i wanted to draw myself as senku from Dr Stone (the picture you see in my pfp.) For that, i chose to change the skin colour but i also added a tooth gap, beauty marks, made the lips slightly fuller and changed the eyeshape to be more feminine. I wasn't making senku black, i was just drawing myself. What i don't think is okay is changing the race of a character for no reason. When this 'trend' started i tried to express my concerns and instead got called whitewashed :/
Yep! I agree with this as an Asian. It's absolutely alright to make self inserts since it does feel good to see yourself as one of your favorite characters, especially if you don't rlly see that much representation. But lately I seen people (mostly on TikTok and twitter) edit a canonically asian character into black and say that it looks better and sometimes they would even caption it as "fixing" which is so wrong tbh. Also I like your art btw! It looks so cool
Ur pfp art looks so cool! Do u have like a Insta or Twitter where you post any other art you do?
@@aL-ys1ze Thank you :))
@@aL-ys1ze The only time I've seen this is when those anime characters are canonically white, not Asian.
Same! I have a lot of fav characters and sometimes just wanna be them. But people in Twitter just make a big deal out of it sadly
There needs to be more drawing tutorials on black people! I live in the United States but we’re raised to use the peach “skin color” and make big, wide eyes and skinny noses. I can’t draw other races very well, and I especially don’t know how to color them and not make them look unnatural
It's in the words of a certain webtoons reviewer inclusivity bias you draw a character and change it to fit what you want in terms of representation and then in the process diminish the representation of the culture the character was originally a part of accidentally doing something racist while trying to be inclusive honestly people should be drawing their own OCs if they want more representation to relate to changing the race of a character IS racist it doesn't really matter what the intention actually is on the other hand making your own character gives representation without the racism especially since most race swaps range from changing skin tone which you can at least pass off as being tanned if you stay within a certain range and on the worst end you get the race swaps like the weird sayori one where they load her up with as many stereotypes as they could
I think black washing is okay as an art exercise but what I don't agree with is when people who make the blackwashed characters claim that "This is how they SHOULD look". It's pretty demeaning to both the artist and the race that is being represented with the character to say that in essence they'd be "better" if they were a different race.
"This is how they SHOULD look".
I hate when people says that, specially in a character that was never meant to be Black (anime characters, in General. There ARE Black characters in anime and they're notorious). No, that's not how they should look, you're not the company or the author to decide that.
No such thing as black washing but go off
@@edgechan so you hate it when they say that using any race, but more when they use black people? 💀 this comment and reply section is so weird.
@@remigal899 No, I would hate it too if they take a black character and re-draw it as white character while claiming is ok and that's how they should look. The race bending is not the problem as long is an art exercise or "what if..." like King Boinko says. But if you go and claim "I fixed the character because the other artist is wrong and I'm right, praise ME!" is where the problems begins.
>this comment and reply section is so weird.
Welcome to TH-cam.
@@edgechan Then you should’ve made that clear rather than implying that Making a character black was the Worst even though other characters are made different races as well.
What annoys me is that people assume anime characters are white just because they are light-skinned. I used to think like that too when I was younger, but think of it like this: anime/manga are written by Japanese authors writing stories in the Japanese language about Japanese people who live in Japan for a Japanese audience. Where do white people fit into any of that?
That's why many of these critics - who destructively criticize foreign artists for white-washing but give black-washed anime characters a pass - are being hypocritical. They expect other countries to understand the nuances of their art culture, but haven't learned about the nuances of other countries' art cultures.
While white-washing is a damaging practice (especially in professional contexts) I think more understanding and nuance should be applied to criticism of fan work - most fan works are made by amateurs and hobbyists. I don't care enough about black-washing (of anime or otherwise) to be upset about it, I think some of it is appealing. But what I would rather see is support for original art and stories by black people featuring black people.
Also it’s kind of funny because if you read manga/watch anime long enough, you can actually tell when a character is intended a caucasian.
@@shandya in Bleach people make and say Kunoichi is black, but you compare her to Tosen and you can see how Tite draws characters from different ethnics.
Blackwashing doesn't exist btw
9:05 This gives me some hope because I love Encanto and theatre and I would love to be in an Encanto musical, but I'm worried that it would cause controversy because I'm white and most of the characters are POC.
The other issue I have now is that the movie obviously takes place in Columbia and I'm not Columbian. However, I _am_ Hispanic, so maybe that would still be okay?
I think theatre is another theme because the stigma of "blackface", even if Latinos with olive skin can tan naturally and that's not the same as painting your face black and call it a day. And about your nationality, that shouldn't be a problem neither if you know how to act and sing like certain character. See the Selena movie! JLo is not Tex-Mex as Selena was and maaaaaany people complained in making an American-Puerto Riquean singer did Selena's role but Abraham put his foot down and told them "she's perfect for the role and not for her nationality but because she knows how to sing and act like my daughter did". Result? The movie was amazing and JLo did an amazing job as Selena, most of her famiy cried when they saw her during the film.
11:50 If you have an OC people shouldn’t be drawing your character in the first place without permission
This was a very informative and helpful comments that you made in your video! I appreciate them very much!
Glad it was helpful!
I’m so glad someone is talking about this. I want to draw more POC characters and release drawings but I’m still trying to get it right. It’s frustrating how critical some people are when people are trying to draw POCs.