Dawn's hair

[lamarfll]

I find it odd that Dawn from the games and Platinum from SPECIAL both have black hair but Dawn in the Anime has blue hair.

The only reason for that I can think of is to make her hair the same color as Johanna's hair which does not seem needed with Red's mom having blue to his brown hair, Ash's mom being red to his black, & the GSC mom's redesign hair in HGSS being brown to Ethan's black.

So it does seem odd to me at lest.

 

[The Outrage]

It's because her game's sprite makes it look blue. They do the same thing with Ethan's hair for his sprite.

 

[#Daisuke#]

It could be taken either way, IMO.

If you want to take a realistic approach, then yes, her hair could very well be black. Black is shown to be tinted blue in light.

If you want to be more creative you can say that her hair is blue. It's a Japanese game, there will be people with crazy hair colors.

IMO, her hair in the games is more of a blackish-blue than pure black or pure blue.

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

Just to throw a wrench in the works, Mitsumi from DPA has green hair.

 

[The Outrage]

Black hair shines blue? I have black hair. I around a lot of black-haired people. The only colour I've seen it naturally reflect as is brown, and that's in natural sunlight. The only time a person had a blue tint to their hair was when they actually dyed their hair blue and thought it would show on their black hair (which it didn't).

 

[Enzap]

It's really not that bad. At least it's not like Saturn's hair. There really are a lot of people with crazy hair colors in pokemon. Jessie, James, Jupiter, Mars, even Barry's is a little too yellow for real life.

 

[Somari]

Dawn's hair is bright blue in the games.

Look at her game sprites, VS sprite, her intro sprites, and her back sprite.

Or almost any of her artworks, Sugimori drawn or not.

Only two (excluding her main one) draw her with either dark blue or..Purple.

For some reason Sugi went through a Hair Color Dissonance stage, especially in her Platinum artwork. Actually, it even looks like he just drew her hair with a darker shade of blue, navy blue from the looks of it, then her actual color. It's still blue.

Heck, Sugimori has drawn Dawn with a lighter blue tone.

Also, on Platina, her hair looks dark blue to me.

the GSC mom's redesign hair in HGSS being brown to Ethan's black.

Lyra has brown hair you know. Ethan hasn't been shown as the protagonist for HGSS.

 

[Rainbow]

It's really not that bad. At least it's not like Saturn's hair. There really are a lot of people with crazy hair colors in pokemon. Jessie, James, Jupiter, Mars, even Barry's is a little too yellow for real life.

Well that's the point. It's a video game. People can have any colour of hair from blood red to bright pink. I'm pretty sure dawn's hair is blue-black too.

 

[Caitlin]

Her hair being black in the games (for some of her sprites at least) was likely a palette limitation. That's all I can think of.

Her representation in the anime is most likely the character designer's original intent, since they're not limited in colors when it comes to TV.

 

[The Outrage]

Dawn's hair is bright blue in the games.

Look at her game sprites, VS sprite, her intro sprites, and her back sprite.

Or almost any of her artworks, Sugimori drawn or not.

Only two (excluding her main one) draw her with either dark blue or..Purple.

For some reason Sugi went through a Hair Color Dissonance stage, especially in her Platinum artwork. Actually, it even looks like he just drew her hair with a darker shade of blue, navy blue from the looks of it, then her actual color. It's still blue.

Heck, Sugimori has drawn Dawn with a lighter blue tone.

Also, on Platina, her hair looks dark blue to me.



Lyra has brown hair you know. Ethan hasn't been shown as the protagonist for HGSS.

Considering that Sugimori is the one who draws the official game artwork, her hair is black. The other people are taking artistic liberties due to her hair colour in the games. Ethan has blue hair in the games when he clearly has black hair, his beta sprite was originally a solid black but that was changed, probably because they found that a bluish tint looked better (and didn't clash with his black hat). That's probably the reason for Dawn's origional blue tint. Her shirt is black, if her hair was black, the contrast wouldn't be that good in the games considering that they probably don't have as much access to different colour shades as official artwork would.

There was no hair colour dissonance in Sugimori's artwork between games. Dawn's hair is clearly still the same shade it was in DP. Her Platinum hair is clearly a shade of black considering that the highlights are shades of gray.

Now really, if you are going to argue Dawn has blue hair, then Ethan does as well because he's in the same situation.

Her hair being black in the games (for some of her sprites at least) was likely a palette limitation. That's all I can think of.

Her representation in the anime is most likely the character designer's original intent, since they're not limited in colors when it comes to TV.

You realize her official game artwork is the one with black hair, and the official artwork for the games are usually drawn better than their anime models most of the time due to some of the show's animators. It's the games' sprites that have shown her hair to be blue

For a place that's "not limited" to colour, they sure made Volkne's hair so dull in the anime as compared to his game art when it came to shading. Of course, the games are limited in colour as they made Volkner's hair incredibly bright in his sprite and of course, that's where Dawn's hair had first turned up blue.

Even in the anime how blue Dawn's hair is in the black-blue spectrum seems to change up a bit.

 

[Pidgeot]

These threads are the threads that really annoy me. It's just a hair colour. There's many reasons why her anime hair is blue, but it's nothing to make a thread of.

 

[Ino-Chan]

I thought it was blue since it would probably look better than black. Thats it.

 

[anthony123]

hey

 

[Takoto]

Pretty sure her game-hair is meant to be blue.

 

[RavenKingSage]

Dawn's hair always looks blue to me, not black.

Just to throw a wrench in the works, Mitsumi from DPA has green hair.

 

[Somari]

Her hair is blue in the sprites though and in one of his artworks. It's blue hair, just like Johanna. Even if the official art were to clash with her sprites, the games are what count.

I put Dawn's DP artwork in GIMP and it came out as a dark blue. I put her Platinum one in GIMP too, two times when I put it on different parts, and it still came out as blue. Though the latter is more so grey but it's in a shadow area so..

Her hair and blouse/vest are two different colors.

Ethan's hair is black in all his sprites, excluding his VS sprite and Pokethelon sprite. Even his main sprite (it looked like blue but when I got up close it was black)

However in his official art it's almost the same shade as Dawn's. 'Wonder why. Doesn't he have a variety of colors to chose from?

Platina's hair is also apparently blue. Platina's, game!Dawn, and anime!Dawn. Not Mitsumi, or whatever her name is, though.

 

[Dawn~]

I for one have always seen it as blue. Always. x.o;

 

[Glitchipedia]

I've always seen it as being a sort of dark blue. I never really thought about it that much.

 

[The Outrage]

Somari, I don't understand your logic. You are saying Dawn's hair is blue because its blue in the games, but Ethan's hair is blue two out of four times (and in those two, the sprites have the most hair shown), and yet you don't agree with the classification for him?

Spoiler

This is Ethan's back sprite. Clearly black. This is his actual sprite, and this is Dawn's sprite. Same colours.

You don't really need something as fancy as gimp to check colours. You can use paint. Anyway, using Win7's paint, the colour for Dawn's Sugimori art for Platinum yields black, and I checked in more than two places. I basically checked wherever the colour changed. It corresponds with what a visual inspection tells me. You know what else coresponded with a visual inspection? That Sabrina's Gen I work (the head shot from the manual) had green hair.

Yeah, sure when you look at where the cursor is, its on the blue end of that spectrum going horizontally, but guess what? There's no black on that colour spectrum. Technically there isn't a black colour when you refract light. But notice how the cursor is down there where the hue practically becomes black? Yeah, its because they're going for black. In any case, notice how the colours when analyzed give a number for red, green, and blue? (Yours has them too as R/G/B). Blue is always higher on that spectrum. There's a reason for that. You get much more naturally black hair tones when there's more blue than the other colours. Just screw around with the cursor on paint, keep the vertical llength of the cursor the same, toggle it left and right, and you'll notice that having less blue makes the colour look different. Going towards the red spectrum actually makes it look brown. Not really going to post pictures since this is something everyone can do. Red, green and blue are what we call the additive colours, there what we use to make every other colour we see in our eyes. They used more blue to make that black shading effect.

Now this transitions us back into the sprites. They don't have as much colour at their disposal as the official artwork. We've shown that the black hair colours they use compose mostly of a bluish hue over red and green, so obviously what colour are they going to default to when they need to give their characters more hair tone?

We'll call what we did there examining hair colour on the micro scale. On the micro scale, her hair is clearly blue. But on the macro scale, her hair colour for her official artwork is black. What appears to our eyes naturally from the Sugimori artwork is that it is black. Her anime chose blue, but again, the anime themselves don't seem to have as much colour working for them compared to the still pictures of the game's official artwork (and the anime change Volkner's hair a bit). Dawn's hair in the Sugimori art has like three different shades visible to the naked eye. Her anime has like, two, now put on top of that the already black clothing.

Also Lucas has the same back sprite hair colour. Norman's manga rendition also has blue hair.

It's obvious this series substitutes blue in for black a majority of the time.

A bit tl;dr-ish but meant for Somari to read since its a counter argument to the user's analysis of hair colour.

Really, if you want to argue its blue because of that, go play with the black hair on the wikipedia pages. The guy alone had the cursor jumping from blue to green on the spectrum. The girl's hair is reflecting blue light. Also reading along that article:

Black hair can therefore be slightly rufous, soft black, or blue-black. Sometimes black hair can appear to shine silver-blue in the sun.[1] In English, black hair is sometimes described as "jet-black" or "raven black".

You know, people always say Wikipedia isn't a good source, but the difference between this and our bickering is that they actually link to references and have an editorial board.

And pictures since the girl's hair shines blue there too.

 

[Yamakage]

Maybe they made her hair blue in the anime for aesthetic reasons? Plus, how many black haired characters are there in the anime besides Ash?