Amazing Technicolor Population: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|'''Saves A Fox:''' Okay, now try a skin-colored one.
'''
'''Saves A Fox:''' I mean an '''''orange''''' one!|''[[Goblins]]''}}
In the real world, the color range of human skin is fairly limited. We largely come in varying shades of {{color|brown|brownish}}, and even the most generous will generally only give humans four distinct "colors": {{color|pink|pink}}, {{color|brown|brown}}, {{color|red|red}} and {{color|gold|yellow}}. This is to say nothing of proper [[Race Tropes|ethnicity]].
This is not so in cartoons. Animators, whether they're drawing cartoon characters or building models for a video game, have the freedom to make or draw anything they want. Thus, the normal range of human skin colors needn't have any bearing on the appearance of cartoon characters. Want your characters to be {{color|blue|blue}}, {{color|orange|orange}}, and {{color|silver|silver}}? Go right ahead! Want a dude with a {{color|purple|purple}} face to live next door to a [[Green-Skinned Space Babe|green-skinned, not-from-space babe]]? The freedom's all yours, pal! If the characters are [[Genre Blind]], their unusual skin tones will probably go unnoticed. If not, this may be [[Hand Wave
Giving your characters unrealistic skin tones sounds like a great way to avoid [[Race Tropes]] and [[Unfortunate Implications]], doesn't it? Well, sometimes. [[A Worldwide Punomenon|Unfortunately]], it doesn't always work like this. If a character is meant to be of a specific ethnicity, they will most likely have the "correct" skin tone for their ethnicity, regardless of anything else. It seems as if [[Humans Are White|only "white people" get Amazing Technicolor Skin]]
Compare
▲Compare Japan, which seems to do the same thing with [[You Gotta Have Blue Hair|hair]]. See also [[Ambiguously Brown]], for when the skin tones are within the realms of possibility, but not clearly "defined".
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{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* Zentradi in ''[[Macross]]'' (and thus the first ''[[Robotech]]'' saga) mainly have natural human skin tones, but quite a few of them have been seen to have {{color|purple|purple}}, {{color|green|green}}, {{color|blue|blue}}, or {{color|gray|grey}} skin. In ''[[Macross Plus]]'' and ''[[Macross 7]]'', we only see them with natural and {{color|gray|grey}} skin color, and by ''[[Macross Frontier]]'', they all have natural skin colors.
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* In ''[[Star Blazers]] / [[Space Battleship Yamato]],'' Gamilons are shown with human skin tones ''until'' the episode where humans first encounter one face to face. From that episode on, they're all shown to have sky {{color|blue|blue}} skin. Members of the second season's evil Comet Empire are all a rather icky shade of olive {{color|green|green}} (except Invidia, for some reason).
** In fact, so many anime extraterrestrials have {{color|blue|blue}} skin that it seems to be a kind of cultural shorthand for alienness.
* For inexplicable reasons, Meg's rival Non in ''Majokko Megu-chan'' has an unhealthy looking white complexion. No one seems to mind, though.
== Comic Books ==
* Pops up occasionally in the [[Marvel Universe]]. People with gamma-radiation based powers will usually be {{color|green|green}}-skinned, the Atlanteans and Kree are {{color|blue|blue}}-skinned, and, occasionally, mutants have technicolor skin.
** This got lampshaded in ''[[
** Let's not forget Karolina from ''[[Runaways]]'', who is an
* ''[[Teen Titans (Comic Book)|Teen Titans]]'' has gold/{{color|orange|orange}} Starfire, {{color|red|red}} Kid Devil, and {{color|green|green}} Beast Boy and Miss Martian.
** Of course, [[Fantasy Kitchen Sink|both Starfire and Miss Martian are aliens, Beast]] [[Justified Trope|Boy is a mutant, and Kid Devil was turned into a demon]].
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** The {{color|green|leaf-green}} Poison Ivy surely does.
* Once famously lampshaded to discuss racial matters in [[Green Lantern]]/[[Green Arrow]], where an elderly black man gives Hal a [[What the Hell, Hero?]], saying that
{{quote|
** And then, some years later, reversed (in a fairly light-hearted way) when a bunch of {{color|purple|purple}}- and {{color|orange|orange}}-skinned aliens visit Earth to complain that GL is neglecting the rest of his space sector to look after Earth; they use the same words with the colours swapped. Poor Hal just looks to the sky in frustration.
* [[Watchmen (comics)|Doctor Manhattan]] is {{color|blue|blue}}.<ref>[[Comically Missing the Point|Somebody should cheer him up.]]</ref>
* [[Depending on the Artist|When the colorist remembers]], Domenic of ''[[ClanDestine]]'' has light green skin. His older brother Walter's [[Hulking Out|transformed state]] is consistently a pale blue color.
== Film ==
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== Literature ==
* In [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[Strata]]'', the heroine is able to change her skin color at will when she feels like it; two examples are {{color|silver|silver}} and jet black.
* In [[Larry Niven]]'s Known Space universe, "flatlanders" of Earth are a technicolor population, but it's just fashionable skin dye.
* Steven Erikson's ''[[The Malazan Book of the Fallen]]'' has people of all colors that exist on earth, plus {{color|blue|blue}}. (Which is mentioned very off-handedly and thus is very puzzling at first.)
* In ''[[Monster (novel)|Monster]]'' by A. Lee Martinez, thanks to a survived basilisk bite, the titular character wakes up with a different skin color every day, accompanied by a random magical power. He keeps a notebook to track the powers that come with each color — up until he gains a measure of control over this condition with the aid of the story's [[MacGuffin]].
* Serroi, of Jo Clayton's ''[[Duel of Sorcery]]'' and ''Dancer'' trilogies, has {{color|
* [[Isaac Asimov]]'s "Forward the Foundation" has a (human) judge with faint {{color|blue|blue}} skin — the color gets more pronounced when she's angry.
* The {{color|blue|blue}}-skinned carnival freak from Mitch Albom's "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" (mercury poisoning caused his unusual skin color).
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* The Uglies series hints at this in Diego. It's made clear that more 'Extreme' fashions aren't allowed in New Pretty Town but in Diego anything seems to go
* In the web-novel ''[[Domina]]'', Simon has {{color|purple|purple}} skin, while his sister has jet-black. Probably just another [[Bio Augmentation|cosmo]]; no one bats an eye at it.
* The human inhabitants of {{spoiler|the moon in}} ''[[The Darkangel Trilogy]]'' can have white (''not'' pale beige), black (''not'' dark brown), {{color|#cc5500|copper}}, {{color|gold|amber}}, {{color|blue|blue}}, {{color|green|green}}, {{color|teal|teal}}, or {{color|purple|purple}} (possibly {{color|#E0B0FF|two}} {{color|#8E4585|different}} shades of that last, no less) skin. {{spoiler|They were almost certainly [[Designer Babies|deliberately engineered]] for it.}}
* The inhabitants of Tormance in David Lindsay's ''A Voyage to Arcturus'' have many different possible skin tones, some of which [[Fictional Color|don't exist in our spectrum]].
== Live Action TV ==
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== Tabletop Games ==
* Being inspired by pulp sci-fi, the ''[[Dungeons
** Starting in second edition, a number of existing humanoid races became more colorful, such as giants and genies who could now be {{color|green|green}} or {{color|blue|blue}} or what have you. Prior to this, their skin and hair color had just never been mentioned.
* ''[[Exalted]]'' has a few of these to go with the [[You Gotta Have Blue Hair|surprisingly-common blue hair]], such as the Djala ([[Fan Nickname|nicknamed "Panda People" by the fans]] because of their white-with-black-patches skin).
* [[New Horizon]] has Wafans, [[Ridiculously-Human Robots]] in any shade you can imagine.
* [[
** The Orks have {{color|green|Green}} skin and the Tau have {{color|blue|blue}} skin
** Tyranids, to a degree, also have this, mainly because they're biologically engineered. Still, one wonders why a hive mind would consider flourecent pink with reflective metals to be good for camouflage.
== Video Games ==
* ''[[Saints
* [[Artix Entertainment]] is always known to have it
** [[Hero Smash]] has Yergan, a character with {{color|yellow|yellow skin}}
* ''[[Psychonauts]]'' features a lot of {{color|blue|blue}} and {{color|purple|purple}} characters. It interestingly averts the "race" clause of this [[Trope]]
** Chops is a Black Canadian with {{color|red|red}} skin and {{color|green|green}} hair, though. And Milla Vodello is a Brazilian whose skin and hair are actually fairly realistic, if a little dark in the skin.
*** {{color|blue|Blue}} skin also tends to mean "bad news": Both of the [[Final Boss
* The minor character Yoa in ''[[Beyond Good & Evil (video game)|Beyond Good and Evil]]'' is {{color|blue|blue}}. It's implied that she's "not a local," though she's still considered "human" to the game's [[Enemy Scan|scanner]].
* Bosco of the Telltale ''[[The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police|Sam and Max Freelance Police]]'' games is "light {{color|purple|purple}}", but has an African-American voice. His mother is a more typical "black" medium {{color|brown|brown}} though.
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** [[One-Winged Angel|Turning into dragons]] wasn't obvious enough?
*** Again, it doesn't really come up in idle chatter, and {{spoiler|the protagonists' parents get turned into a dragon}}, so what does ''that'' mean?
** The Beastmen of Morgal in ''[[Golden Sun: Dark Dawn|Dark Dawn]]'' also tend to get pretty outrageous fur colors, especially since they're supposed to be... well, animal-people. The band alone contains a bubblegum-pink [[Catgirl]], a teal green fox, and a dark blue wolf. The king of Morgal is also blue-furred and ''has brown hair''. Rather disconcerting. {{spoiler|After the firing of the Apollo Lens, everyone left in Morgal apparently has [[Hair of Gold|fur of gold]] now, bar Sveta who wasn't there during the firing.}}
** Also in ''Dark Dawn'', Blados of Tuaparang has blue-white skin. He was initially assumed by fans to be from Prox, but lacks the pointy ears and scales (and, you know, [[Captain Obvious|is from Tuaparang]]). Another character from his hometown looks entirely human aside from having [[Anime Hair]] and ''horns'', so again, "not entirely human" might be the cause.
* [[Inverted Trope|Inverted]] in indie-developed [[Xbox Live Arcade|XBLA]] game series ''[[The Dishwasher]]'' - everyone has completely white skin, regardless of actual race. [[Chef of Iron|The]] [[Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"|Chef]] is, [[Word of God|according to the sole creator]], quite black, but appears just as ashen as everyone else.
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* In a world where every car has a different paint job, the [[Putt-Putt]] series is bound to play this straight. It gets even better when you find you can change his color. It always starts out {{color|purple|purple.}}
* [[Pajama Sam]] has light {{color|blue|blue}} skin, as with most of the other "normal" characters in the series.
* In ''[[Jak and Daxter]]'', the Sages' skin colors correspond with the type of eco they're the Sage of. So Samos Hagai, sage of green eco, has {{color|green|green}} skin, the Blue Sage is {{color|blue|blue}}, and the Red Sage is, unsurprisingly, {{color|red|red}}.
* Possible in the character creator for ''[[Nioh]] 2'' with [[Good Bad Bugs|a little work]]. A clear case of [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]], just like playing a non-Japanese character, since the main character's historical figure father and [[Yokai]] mother don't change their appearance.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
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** Justified, since they are all monsters living in a monster-only world.
* The background characters in ''[[Supernormal Step]]'' are far more colorful than the main cast, and that's really saying something.
* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' has an engineered offshoot of humanity called "Purps", whose purple skin performs a type of
** A less cartoonish image of a purp is [https://web.archive.org/web/20170312062622/http://www.planetmercenary.com/the-planet-mercenary-role-playing-game/ on the cover] of ''Planet Mercenary'' RPG book.
* ''[[Girl Genius]]'': Agatha, Gil, and Tarvek change color every two panels in one of the arcs, due to a strange disease. Jägers can be any color from a "normal" human skin tone to green or purple, and some, [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20120502 like Mamma Gkika], [[Chameleon Camouflage|change it at will]].
* ''[[The Law of Purple]]'': Caligulan natives sport a rainbow of random skin colors amongst their total population - it's a species trait. So far, this includes blue, green, red, white, pink, yellow, silver, purple, and probably more.
* ''[[Bloody Urban]]'' makes unrealistic skin tone a common trait of vampires. Even some of the human characters are odd coloured- Robin's friends Cherry and Myrcedys are greyish-pink and red, respectively.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20131023213824/http://www.notmadcomic.com/ I'm Not Mad] started off with an Amazing Technicolor Population and then abandoned that after its second year (called season in the comic) reboot.
* The gang of Blue Boys from ''[[Waterworks]]'' is composed of, you guessed it, four blue individuals. {{spoiler|Except for Slick, who is only wearing a blue suit.}} (Curiously, we see two of the thugs in a flashback and they're white back then, like all other people in the comic.) The protagonist [[
{{quote|
'''Slick:''' THAT'S RACIST }}
* One strip of NSFW fantasy comic ''[[Oglaf]]'' shows a Land of Indulgence where the population is this trope.
* In ''[[Goblins]]'', the goblins have multiple skin colors, even among the same clan (though there are hints that said clan is more cosmopolitan than most). This leads to the page quote.
* Justified in ''[[Dreamwalk Journal]]'' and its spinoffs, because the planet Cyeatea's inhabitants are anthropomorphic insects and spiders. Between them they display all the colors of terrestrial insects and spiders, and more besides.
== [[Web Original]] ==
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** Krusty the Clown causes continuity errors with this trope. Depending on the episode, his unusually pale skin is either clown makeup or his natural color. However, that only seemed true in earlier seasons, and now it's implied to be due to Krusty's harsh, self-destructive lifestyle, with all his childhood flashbacks having him have normal skin.
*** The shorts on [[The Tracey Ullman Show]] featured background characters who were blue, grey, or orange.
* [[Doug]] and his family were just about the only "flesh tone" people aside from Mr. Bone, Roger's cronies, and Mayor
** For instance, Roger was green, Chalky was yellow, Bebe was purple, Mr. Dink was purple. Since Skeeter was blue (more like a dark teal, really), the prevalence of the [[Black Best Friend]] trope caused many to assume that blue is the equivalent of black in that world.
{{quote|
'''Doug:''' That's Skeeter! }}
** This was explained by the creator in a bonus feature from [[The Movie]]'s VHS release. When first drawing the main cast (as a child!) he often lacked flesh tone, and therefore substituted other common colors for other characters' skins.
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* The somewhat obscure cartoon ''[[Angela Anaconda]]'' featured people with oddly toned clip-art faces.
** Everyone had grey skin, and their hair and clothing would be in color.
* All the humanoid "sprite" characters in ''[[
** AndrAIa and Ray Tracer are borderline, since they're different shades of orange, a color which often results from cheap self-tanner in the real world.
** Enzo runs into [[Fantastic Racism|racial prejudice]] at the start of season three. For while, Mainframers will happily accept green merchants and scientists, though a green guardian is [[Does This Remind You of Anything?|apparently beyond the pale...]]
** Interestingly, this all suggests a kind of inherent caste system. Guardians are blue, the Matrices and probably other system-based sprites are green, and web-based sprites are orange.
* In ''[[Voltron]]'', the people from the evil planet (planet Doom in the English translation) are all different cool tones, including almost pure white, sky blue, deep cobalt blues, and even a green or brown
** Serendipitously, this was true not only for ''Golion'' (Lion Voltron), but ''Dairugger XV'' (Vehicle Voltron) as well.
*** Blue skin seems to be Japanese cultural shorthand for "alien". In America, aliens are little green men; in Japan, they're tall blue dudes.
* ''[[The Cramp Twins]]''. Lucian has "normal" flesh-toned skin, but his brother Wayne is ''purple''-skinned. Must be fraternal twins... However, [[Mind Screw|both their parents have green skin]].
* ''Cupido'' is set in a town with white (as in snow-colored), red, blue, and yellow people, who are divided into ghettos by an evil council. The [[Character Title|titular character]] and his two friends are the only characters with realistic skin colors.
* ''[[The Thief and the Cobbler]]''. The thief is green, the [[Evil Chancellor]] Zig-Zag is blue, and the cobbler is gray. The only person who has anything like a normal skin color is Princess Yum-Yum.
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*** Penny becomes blue when she "goes bad" in one episode. Apparently, if you ask the Disney channel, [[Fantastic Racism|red or black aren't the "evil" colours -- blue is.]] Perhaps like the [[Yellow Submarine|Blue Meanies?]]
**** Many dark-skinned black people who have ashy skin can sometimes appear as being a light periwinkle, almost faded greyish-black in the most extreme cases. Considering that [[The Proud Family]] is a cartoon with rather colorful art direction, it could be inferred that this was one of the most blatant exaggerations for artistic license.
* ''[[
* The gargoyles in ''[[Gargoyles]]'' have skin in just about any color. It's genetic, like hair or eye color.
** The Children of Oberon (at least, the humanoid ones) run the color gamut, too. Puck is white (as in Caucasian), Oberon is light blue, and Titania is kind of green.
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* Some of the background characters in ''[[The Problem Solverz]]'' have colorful skin. The town's several mayors have had yellow and red skin, and in one episode, the gang was freaked out by a teacher who was purple.
* In ''[[Thundercats 2011]]'', the titular [[Catfolk|Cats]] of Third Earth employ the principle of [[Fur Is Skin]]. Panthro, who codes as a [[Bald Black Leader Guy]], is pale blue-gray with black hair (a phenotype shared by [[Flash Back]] character Panthera, who, like Panthro, has a black voice artist). When the series reveals that more unconventional [[Humanoid Aliens]] also populate Third Earth, pink, yellow, and purple-skinned creatures appear, most notably, the lavender-complected [[Rubber Forehead Alien]] the Duelist.
* ''[[Pirates of Dark Water]]'' antagonist Bloth has skin that [[Depending on the Artist|varies]] between pure white, and very pale green, but either way he counts.
== Real Life ==
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*** Neither one is a "nice shade" of blue. The usual comparison is to a bruise.
** On a related note, prolonged contact with copper will turn your skin green. It's not a myth or something made up for that episode where the main characters get scammed on their class rings, it really happens and it's the primary reason why you won't see many copper ring bands, earring hooks, or anything else that stays tight to the skin.
** Stan Jones, who unsuccessfully ran for Senate as a Libertarian, consumed home-made colloidal silver out of fear of [[
* Eating nothing but carrots for an extended period of time will turn your skin orange, most obviously your palms and the bottoms of your feet. The effect will wear off once you change your diet.
* The [[Blue Man Group]]. Granted, it's really greasepaint, but still.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Graphical Tropes]]
[[Category:Cartoon Characters]]
[[Category:Personal Appearance Tropes]]
[[Category:Amazing Technicolor Index]]
[[Category:Improbable Appearance Tropes]]
[[Category:
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
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