-- Snatched from my previous thread. Thank you to the mod who pointed me over here! I wasn't sure if it would fit in with the general discussion -- I have some concerns? Regarding the 'recent'ish albino changes. Of course, no shade to the artists at all. I just.. don't see why so many albino sprites have been changing to objectively "worse" colour palettes. At least in the sense that they.. definitely aren't albino. They seem to all be going to this gray'd blue/green/pink palette. I just think it's kind of odd. Last time I was active here some of my albinos looked completely different, but i've since gotten rid of them due to that weird shift of aesthetic. I think Lucario and Scrafty are really good examples of this trend. And I mean.. why? Sure, some pokemon look really good with this new palette, but the majority are.. odd at best. And well, why are they still called albinos..? this isn't what that looks like at all. I'd honestly be much less bothered if they just made a new "variation" that you can acquire with these palettes. Just some thought. I know melans have gone on this weird palette route too, but I honestly pay attention to them less so I have no input. Though I am disappointed with the newest melan changes, too.

That's your opinion. And you're entitled to it. But an opinion is not objective by definition. While originally the concept/design was "white with red eyes", we found that that got real boring, real fast. So in the rework, it has shifted to "alternate colour with a lighter tone". Think of it as a second Shiny colouration. However, the name "Albino" has stuck because that's what they've always been called - this is true both in-universe and out-of-universe! You've just described "every pale colour that exists". Every pale colour is either pale blue, pale green, or pale red ("pink"), or some combination of those. So in my opinion that means the artists are doing a good job of including every colour! Again, you're welcome to your opinion, but this is the direction we've decided on, and we won't be going back to "white with red eyes" like they started with, just like melans won't be going back to "black with neon highlights". They just don't look good overall, and we want things to look good collectively.

i really like the new hisuian sprites + sprite revamps! they now look a lot more dynamic if you know what i mean. while i am a bit sad about the changes in melan alolan decidueye's line, the colors on its melan hisuian form work really well in my opinion. however, i think dartrix's left wing looks off? it looks as if it's bent really weirdly while waving(?). its official art appears to be waving as well, but it appears more natural in that case. perhaps if the left wing was held straight like the official art it would look more natural? i apologize if i'm being presumptuous towards the art staff!

When one person has an opinion it's subjective, but when lots of people share simillar opinion it's becoming more objective. (Sure it doesn't apply to everything, but those are just coloured pixels.) Just because you think they are good doesn't mean they actually are - as you said it's just your opinion. Besides you said some time ago that you don't have any love or passion for this site - I think it's not good when it comes to decide on how new recolours look like. Don't feel attacked (I noticed that every critique is taken as an attack when it's clearly not the intention and people just express their feelings) it's just my opinion and as you said - I'm entitled to it.

Well that's not true, for one, and for another thing I don't micromanage my artists, I provide them a general direction and then trust them to do it well. And they do.

So once this current palette for Albinos get's boring, you'll rework them again-? If the goal was to make them less same-y then it definitely has not worked, just by looking through all of the updated albino sprites. I understand that you're set on this direction, but I think its odd and somewhat frustrating. And I know that other users share my outlook. A lot of albino pokemon have completely lost their appeal to a lot of the userbase. And thank you for bringing up melans. Even though I don't pay attention to them much myself, a lot of users do. And just by looking through the discussion, I notice that people have been repeatedly disappointed by these new melans, too. These sprites have -just like the albinos- lost a lot of flair, and I'd argue that this does the opposite of "make them look good overall". - I'd also like to add that changing melans so drastically is just.. frustrating for the userbase. Melans are very expensive, and people may feel they've put their currency down the drain when their pokemon turns into colours they dislike. I'd use Decidueye as a good current example. I'd also like to echo Vesp and say that this isn't a personal attack on you or your art team, lol. Just trying to voice opinions that i've noticed a lot of people on and offsite share.

Well, I understand consistency for melan recolors and albinos, but please understand that you haven't moved away from making them look 'the same'. The new colors still all look the same, except this new baseline is oversaturated muddied colors that are now darker than you would expect from an albino or lighter than you would expect from a melan to the point where they would work better as shinies :( I know a lot of people preferred the baseline of cream/pink pastel albinos to whatever is going on now... I know I do... These I wouldn't even be able to tell were albinos instead of shinies unless you told me Old/new sprites

I guess am on the fence with the whole re-colours as some Pokemon I like the change of and others not so much. The examples given above (mostly Darkrai there) I prefer the new sprite. Mainly because bright colours hurt my eyes and I felt a lot of the older albino Pokemon where just too bright. The old Pikachu for example I liked the white but the red eyes seemed to saturated. Now onto one I am not so keen on, melan Shinx. I liked the older sprite more I won't lie and I dislike the colour green. That's more a personal preference to which all of this is. I still hunted for my melan as its my fav Pokemon. I just want to say I appreciate the art team for there hard work though and I look forward to seeing the new albinos/melans.

i will give my opinion too, i do feel some albinos look very similar in color and i will have to get used to them, i did like the pail pink colors but i understand how some people got their eyes hurt because they were so bright (and i really like pink so-) i have lost some albinos i did like for example the pichu line, i liked the white fur alot but other have improved a ton like the albinos for the buneary line and how they arent all white and have other colors to complement said white in their fluffy parts im not into melans that much so i can not say a lot about their changes i hope i didnt come off a rude, if i did i apologize

i definitely don't like the new albinos (and melans tbh) and really haven't for a while. for a lot of albinos, the new levels of saturation just don't work well, and consequently make them look Bad. the bright greens, pinks, and purples clash pretty strongly on most of the new albions, and a lot of the time they end up looking fairly muddled. instead of being pale like they used to be (which is cliche "albinism" - but this is a pokemon game, it doesn't have to be realistic and match up to the exact definition of the word), they're brighter and have so much more, in my opinion, needless colour. they just don't look Good. they're too bright and the colours often just don't work and make the pokemon too harsh and stand out far too much, in a bad way. i've never been a fan of the "toothpaste" or "cotton candy" coloured albinos, especially not the harsh pink and blues that a lot of them have. green and yellow albinos are also not good at all imo, they really just don't look good and it's pretty jarring to see how badly they clash compared to the old sprites. i absolutely prefer the lighter albinos, because they almost always worked and just looked a Lot nicer. yellow and green albinos especially are just so visually unpleasing to look at. they so rarely work, and it's so obvious when they Don't work, which is incredibly often. albinos now are so saturated and jarring, they don't look good and they really just don't work imo. melans are pretty similar. i definitely loved the neon melans and the monochrome melans from before. they were just super nice to look at and you really couldn't go wrong with them. the melan swablu line, for example, was a melan that i specifically hunted because i fell in love with the colours. the base greyish-black colour with purple wings was literally stunning, it was gorgeous and it looked so good. plus, the purple wasn't even all that harsh. it was bright, yeah, but it wasn't neon. it looked amazing, and i felt immeasurable disappointment when it changed to be green and...grey? a light purple that's nearly grey? and the yellow highlights aren't a good look on it either. it was so disappointing to see a melan i had hunted specifically for the colours get revamped into something i absolutely didn't like at all. a lot of the newer melans are similar, unfortunately. i don't like the green and purples that a lot of them are revamped into, and for the most part, a lot of the green melans just don't look good. the dark green is just bad, the purple is too saturated to really look good, and a lot of the red melans also suffer from this issue. the red looks more like brown in a lot of cases, and when the melan is actually brown, it just doesn't look good, it looks muddled. the grey and black melans were easily the best, personally. i loved the way that they looked and they almost always worked. i loved the uniqueness of a lot of them, i loved the subtle neon additions that weren't overwhelming, but definitely made the melan pop and have a lot more personality without being Too Much. i'm just generally disappointed with a lot of the revamps. i don't understand the push for "consistency" at the cost of making sprites visually and aesthetically appealing. imo, aesthetic >> consistency. there's no point in hunting a pokemon that has sprites that don't look good.