User blog:Binkatong/Recolor Infestation

It has recently come to my attention that there are waaaaay to many characters on this wiki that are just recolors of the main Ben 10 cast. Don't believe me? Here, have a list of examples:
 * Aaron
 * Allie Gold
 * Colin Kotarski (Not even recolored!)
 * Courtney
 * James Tennyson (Yes, there are hand-drawn pics, but it's still just a palette swap.)
 * Nick
 * Jonathan
 * Noah Segurason
 * Tara
 * Azila Seven
 * Brandon 10
 * Gordan Tennyson
 * Ned 10
 * Kanishk Chandra
 * Josh Kennyson

And that was after about 10 minutes of looking, I'm sure there's tons more.

The point is, do any of these characters really stand out in the crowd, and I mean in a good way? Not really. There's more to a character's design than color and clothing patterns. Shape matters too! Hairstyle, hair length, eye shape, short or tall, thin or fat, scrawny or bulging muscles. The jacket/tee/jeans combo has been done to death. For girls, what body shape, apple, pear, hourglass, stick? How about face shape, oval, round, square, rectangle, triangle, inverted triangle, diamond, or heart?

Look, I know that most of you aren't artists. But the least you can do is give them a written description that varies from the norm. Or, when you ask me to draw them, give me something fun to work with.

Now, some of you may be going "But my character is Kevin's cousin! It's okay for him to be a recolor!" Really? Do you look exactly like your cousin but with different clothing colors? In fact, do you look exactly like your brother with different clothing colors? Heck no. It makes sense to give them some family resemblence, for example the same eye color and face shape (as is the case with Ben and Gwen), but there should be profound differences. Maybe Kevin's cousin is on the chubby side with glasses. Or Gwen's long lost sister has a pixie cut and wears sundresses. The sky's the limit.

A lot of you are probably complaining that you can't draw. Well, here's some things you can do:


 * Try drawing anyway. We won't make fun of you, we promise. :3


 * Make a written description.


 * Use an online character maker, such as Gaia Dream Avatar (http://www.tektek.org/dream/) or the Subeta Wardrobe Wizard (http://arvee.org/sofetch/). This won't really get the face and body shape things I was talking about, but it allows a lot more freedom with the clothing thing.


 * Ask me to draw them when I have requests open. Which I don't at the moment. XD

So yeah. Hopefully this enlightens you all a little maybe probably not. (Also, if you have any more recolor examples, feel free to post them in the comments.)

Also, this means no offense to users who have recolors. It does not mean your series is a bad series, it's just that I feel like a little variety could really spicen things up.

[/rant]