Image Designer Archive
Thread: Zabrak Skin Color
I did specifically ask about red or black skin for Zabraks and have no idea what they've ended up with. What was mentioned to me was that there was a problem with pure black in general when they were testing it on hair. Something to do with the specific art stuff they have going on. Note by my use of the word "stuff" that I have no clue what I'm talking about 
Apparently the thing being made blackjust looks solid black and cartoony with no texture.Um...actually Darth Maul's body IS one huge tattoo. Amongst the harsh & extreme culture of the Zabraks, all of whom tattoo themselves (an almost unique thing in the galaxy...humans for example do NOT tattoo)....Darth Maul was a cesspool of hate & singleminded destructiveness who lived for NOTHING except to kill Jedi. His all-over tattoo is a reflection of this. He did indeed have humanlike skin under there at some point. He's like a poster for the dark side.
That being said, it would be fine to see some non-real world skin tones. There are, after all, many racial variants amongst most races, at least humans. There are what they call "near humans" that are human in all respects save a few superficial visual things (kind of like cat breeds...same species, different look). I'm pretty sure Aurra Sing is a near-human (with pure white skin).
At any rate the absence of actual solid black has been much lamented amongst my more cookie-cutter minded clients but it's very clear why this is, & will not change. Even the greyish-black hair or Zab tattoos we have, tend to look flat & frankly, awful. If it was solid black, light would not give it shape & it would look invariably like 16-bit console graphics at best. To put it simply, solid black cannot be SHADOWED & thus looks horribly fake. When you are in most lighting, the blacks we already have look black enough anyway. The present stuff could stand to be tweaked a TAD bit darker though.