Creatures Caves

I just sent a long explanation of how color genes work to Geat_Masta. Here it is for you, Tohru - this will help you understand colored Norns. If you want a Norn with non-default colors and don't want to wait for mutations to happen, you'll have to edit a genome to make it colored. You use the Genetics Kit for C3, or whichever other genetics editor you'd prefer, and open the genome you want to use. Then edit the color genes as described:

"I don't know if you know much about color theory. I am going to type this assuming you don't know it just in case. If I cover some things you already know, please bear with me.

So, pigment is handled in two ways. Pigment genes affect the coloration of the sprite directly. Like all graphics displayed on a monitor, the sprites are ultimately made of red, green, and blue. Each pixel is a varying combination of those three colors, with the amount of each producing the visible color our eyes see. This is not the same as paint mixing. Blue plus red makes purple still, but yellow is not a primary color in light - it is a roughly even mix of red and green. Orange is the same mix but with much more red light in the mix. And violet, as opposed to purple, is actually a pure spectral color, though monitors cannot display it due to how they work, using the primary colors RGB to mix the rest.

So each sprite has default colors created by the graphic artist that made it. The default scenario is that all three primary colors are shown as normal for the sprite. This is the 128 middle setting on the pigment genes. If the slider is raised, more of that color is added to the sprite, and if it is lowered, some of that color is removed from the sprite.

Adding color this way is where those ugly colors come from. The ones where they look soaked in dye or like they're standing under a strongly colored light source instead of being colored that way naturally. But if the added color isn't too intense it can still look good. I prefer to remove colors, though, as the visual result is much better most of the time. They still look naturally colored, it's just differentâ€‹ because one, two, or all three colors have been minimized. You can't completely get rid of a color, so even "black" creatures have some color to them. But it's very, very dark, dramatically different than 128 in all colors.

Here's an example of how I use this. The Draconian sprites are mostly green with yellow and a shade of brown that is actually a very dark, dull yellow or orange. So if I drop green pigment, leaving red and blue at 128, the result is as follows. (If you want to see it, search on the downloads here for an uploaded Norn named Artistry.)

The green portion becomes a very, very deep blue-purple that looks black or blue-black to most people. This is because the green portion had high G, a little B, and very little R. So removing G leaves little pigment of any sort left in those areas.

At the same time, the yellow belly becomes bright red, as the G is gone and no blue is used to mix the yellow. (Although on females the â€‹red comes out very sightly pink, meaning a bit more blue is present.)

The yellow eyes become more orange, as the amount of green left is just enough to prevent it from being red.

So to get a fiery-eyed, black and red dragon, all I have to do is edit the Green pigment genes so the slider is on the far left/the 'bottom'.

The bleed genes, meanwhile, are a little more complex in how they work. There are two components to a bleed gene. Rotation and swap.

Rotation is the one most people have the hardest time understanding. Basically, picture a simple RGB color wheel. Rotation spins that wheel, changing the colors in a predictable way. Reds become greens become blues, et cetera. I have heard conflictingâ€‹ statements about whether it affects green or not though. One source says it does, but another claims it affects only red and blue. I think the former is correct but I have not actually experimented to test that yet. It's on my list of things to do someday.

Swap, on the other hand, does affect only red and blue. It does what it says - swaps one to the other gradually. It also works by degree of difference from 128. That is, it doesn't matter whether you move the slider right or left. 0 and 255 are the same degree of distance from center, so have the same result. On that black and red dragon, full swap turns the red parts blue and the blue parts red, so that the belly is bright blue and the dark areas now have a reddish tinge instead of blueish.

I was actually working on a set of images and notes for simple color variants for the dragons. It has pictures of each variant and a description of the genes needed to make it happen. I can post that on my blog of it would be helpful?

This works the same for all breeds, of course, but the base colors of the breed change the results. You couldn't make a black and red Chichi just by dropping G, as they aren't green by default. In fact I don't think a G knockout Chichi would look all that different than a normal one as they are largely purple."

A yellow Norn like Dawn probably has elevated levels of both red and green, and possibly reduced blue.