Design Glossary

Below you will find some concepts and definitions that may help you better understand the design guide pages. If you have suggestions for items that would be helpful to include here, please let us know!

Brightness and Saturation

There are a few areas in the design guide that specify a minimum or maximum allowable level of brightness or saturation.

Generally speaking, the brightness scale goes from black to white with white being maximum brightness.

The saturation scale goes from pure grey (no color) to a maximum amount of color. Some programs may use the term "Value" instead of saturation.

Brightness and saturation may appear visually different on different screens, and are measured differently in different image software. In this group we use a percent (%) scale which goes from 1 to 100. Other programs may use a different scale, but you can know that 50% should be the same as halfway to the top on whatever scale your software uses so you can still estimate or calculate where the limits are.

Photoshop menus shown for the below examples but similair menus can be found in any image editing software. Other software may use different terminology or scales.

33% Brightness (B)

66% Brightness (B)

33% Saturation (S)

67% Saturation (S)

Saturation in SAI 2

In general, art programs read colors in a mode called HSV (sometimes called HSB) - this means colors remain the same across different programs, although there might be differences in how monitors display them.

If you’re using SAI, however, its default setting is V-HSV, which reads especially saturation quite differently. We strongly recommend switching it to HSV in order to see the same saturation numbers the admins are seeing, which will make both guides and potential corrections easier to understand!

Here’s how:
In SAI, there’s a little check mark above the color wheel. The default is V-HSV, and you’ll want it to say HSV.

How will I know if I’m looking at the correct saturation?

The easiest quick check is to color pick any liver swatch on the top row - they should sit at the very right edge of your color square. For example:

Saturation and brightness

Very simply put, whenever a guide says something can’t be more saturated than the base coat, it means that it shouldn’t move to the right on the color picker tool. The best option is to move your picker upwards and to the left.

Color Swatches

This group provides color swatches for some things such as base colors, color modifiers, and flesh tones to give an idea of the range of acceptable colors.

Unless specified, in this group the color chosen does not have to be color-picked directly from a swatch. The swatches serve as an illustration of the allowable range. For example, when choosing a color for a black based Rukaan, you should choose a color that is no darker than the darkest swatch option and no lighter than the lightest swatch option. You should also stay within the range of hue and saturation of the swatches as well. Of course, you are always welcome to use the options directly from the swatch if you find that easier!

White Marking

Like tobiano, overo or sabino in horses or piebald in deer. White markings are caused by a gene that prevents pigment from forming in the skin cells or the hairs attached to those skin cells, leaving that part of the animal pink skinned and white coated. No other markings can occur over a white marking because a white marking is literally the absence of pigment in that area (much like albinism over only a portion of the animal).

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