Forgive me if this topic has been discussed recently, but I've been participating in a great thread regarding skintones in CWs by , and I really think some discussion on transformable options for CWs is merited!

Body mods are hugely popular for CWs right now, but anyone who's drawn or released one knows how cursed it is trying to reposition the HA's hands. Right now, our options are 1) cover the hands entirely, 2) position the (transparent) hands in such a way that the HA's skintone can show through, or 3) make the hands a solid skintone, which will only be usable by HAs with that specific base color.

Ultimately, pose options end up extremely limited thanks to these constraints, and/or the mods end up unusable to all but one skintone. The only work around currently available is to submit a separate recolor for each skintone, which is obviously never going to happen because whoaaa, way too expensive.

I would personally be in favor of reworking the CW submission form to allow for uploading multiple versions of the base to allow for transformable CWs. As an artist, I would be happy to include recolors for all 10 "natural" skintones for free with any mod I made, if the pose called for visible hands, to allow for more diversity/inclusivity, edit: but I understand that all the extra skintones would take time to edit and resave for each mod, so I think pricing should be left up to each individual artist, to suit their needs.

I'd love to see some discussion here among creators, releasers, and staff!

that would be so amazing if it was transformable like some of the normal item :D especially if you can switch it easily like some of the other sp items

I LOVE THIS IDEA. ___

transformable cw things pleaaaase subeta <3 . It may make certain items take longer to submit/ approve but, it would be worth it in the long run I think.

Think of all the new possibilities ;A;

For realllllll. So many possibilities!

I would understand if staff decided to impose some rules/limitations, or charge a little extra for submitting transformable items, but it would be SO AWESOME to have the option!

I can imagine it being hard to regulate this for make up blushes though, but body mods should be an easy start.

Yes, blushes I think are better suited to just doing multiple recolors normally. It's up to the user to decide if a pale pink works on their darker HA, or if a dark burgundy looks good on a pale HA. Perhaps as artists we could be a little more cognizant of blending/transparency on the edges of blushes and highlights, so that edges aren't so stark on contrasting skin tones, but yeah - not sure if some makeups would be suited for the transformable option.

Keith mentioned a little while back, somewhere (probably in the beta wardrobe thread?) that is he already working on limbs/colors solution! n_n he didn't say anything else to my knowledge so it's hard to guess exactly what's being done but it was on that same topic of "hands recolors"!!

Good to know! I remember hearing something about the new wardrobe being more mod friendly, but I was under the impression that it would be some way to remove or blank out areas of the HA. For example: "deleting" the legs so that you could have animal booties without using a huge tail to cover the HA legs.

I'm just speculating though, since I didn't see Keith's actual comments! Thank you for the input. :)

Thanks for the ping !

I think having skin tone 'options' would be a really great feature to add everywhere (onsite & cws alike) as they would be a lot more inclusive and flexible overall. Since skin tones are a base option in the wardrobe, it would make sense that items can adapt to them as well.

The issue I see with CWs is the overall time it would take to do all 10 base colors at 'no extra cost'. Personally I'd imagine most artists would charge extra for this because it's still extra time (and it's not just 1-2 bases, we're talking 10 bases). If there is also an extra fee to pay while submitting, I think it would overall raise the cost of the item/recolor itself. There's also the matter of cw CIs. Official items have different item art for each skin tone. Once transformed, the CI transforms, too. But what about cws? Does it mean the skin tone shouldnt be reflected on the icon at all? Should it be one skin tone only? Should it be 10 different icons? What if some people only want to submit 3 different options while others want to submit all 10?

That being said, it would still be a lot cheaper than making new cws for every new skin tone available, so it's already a win. I just think it's worth considering how it would affect the mechanic of the 'solution' and if there's other alternatives that could cover all grounds effectively (maybe making recolors cheaper when multiple skin tones box is activated?)

I'm less certain when it comes to blushes/makeups personally. While it would be a great idea, these type of items often have several layers and various opacities. It would be a lot more finicky and time consuming to adapt the overall style to all 10 skin tones (or even 5, if we want to group each skin tone by pair of 2 in terms of similarities). I know that if I were asked to adapt each blush/makeup for all skin tones, I'd raise the recolor price which ultimately might deter people from asking them in the first place.

(Side note : I'm all for staff doing it on official items if they like the idea, since they're significantly cheaper. But I do think that cw-wise, this would be a lot more tedious!)

As well, even though blushes/makeups do alter the skin color, they're not actually a base feature like skin tones. If they can benefit from 'color switching', there's really a whole bunch of other items we could ask for and it will never end. I'm more in favor of having the 'interchangeable option' when they directly modify or alter a base feature (for example, some of the noses have really dark shadows that don't cater well to lighter skin tones. It would be nice to have those shadows modulated so that they always have the same vibe no matter the skin tone!)

All in all, I definitely think there's something to do here so that everyone can use the skin tone they want without feeling restricted. It's just a matter of how it should be implemented and to what boundaries imo!

(okay this is the fifth time I edit my comment, i think im done now!)

I can understand the issue you have with offering recolors at no extra cost - it will be extra work, definitely. I could understand bumping up the price a little bit to account for the time, and I think commissioners would understand that. I think that should be at the artists' discretion, but for my own part I think it would be worth it to include the extra colors, if all I had to do was recolor a very small area, like the hand, for the 10 base tones.

It would be fairly easy to set up a PSD to make it fairly quick and easy to do the hand recolors, the way I'm imagining it. I hope the inconvenience of saving extra files wouldn't be a HUGE deterrent to artists, but I can see that it would have to be left up to everyone individually!

My concern with just making recolors cheaper is that some releasers still wouldn't want the extra expense of submitting colors if they don't have at least the 5 base slots filled for submission. For some of the less used colors, like base 10 for example, it might be hard to get 5 slotters consistently. Then, we'd be left with a releaser who either has to spend their own CSC to get a color on site, or they just won't submit the color at all. Also, it asks that users who want to use a CW with multiple skintones buy multiple copies of that CW, which would end up very expensive.

I do tend to agree with you about your makeup points. Transformable makeup works very well for Delish items/other sp items with things like lips and eyes, but it would be tricky to implement transformable CW makeup since we're limited to things like blush and eyeshadow. And you're right about multiple layers and opacities, there would be no simple option for recoloring a lot of makeups. I'm glad you posted about that!

[Edit] Editing because I just saw your edits! XD

As for CIs, I don't see why each color would need it's own CI. You're right, official items usually do have different CIs for transformable items, but there is at least one example I know of where they didn't:

vs

I think as long as the transforming option is limited ONLY to skincolor, and not altering the rest of the overlay at all, it would be reasonable to allow the same CI to be used for all colors.

That's a lot of fair points as well!

I think it's worth noting that while it would be fairly easy to recolor skin tones, it's still time spent! Because in reality there's really only the base color + 2 shadow layers to do. It's easy, it's simple. But if you do it x 10, for every new body mod item you do, it does add up to being more than just 'a little bit extra work' that, I think, artists wouldn't necessarily do for no extra cost.

There's also the more delicate point of 'cost' that, in my opinion, covers a lot more than just interchangeable options. If we come to the solution that one CW = all skin tones, that's less commissioned recolors for the artist, less csc profit for the releaser. I wouldn't be opposed to that, but it does bring us to the llarger question of 'how much should csc / cws cost in general' too. There's a lot of little things around cws that could be balanced to reflect our current trend and economy, things that might have worked when it started but became more of a burden as years passed. Everyone's saying cws are too expensive, that recolors are too expensive. That's true for every cw out there and if there's a remodulation of how costs are distributed it should be for every encompassing element of the cw economy. While body mods have stedily increased in popularity, blushes/makeups have always been a very big cw thing. If every one of those items were to be 'skin tone friendly', there's a lot of cuts to make on every side.

(random note, most of my makeups have atleast 6 different layers and opacities. Recoloring all of those for every skin tone would be so much more than just changing 3 'static colored' layers that don't need any recalibrating!)

Edit: because you pinged back to my edit haha! See this is a lipstick, and the color of the lips won't change - it works! If staff wanted to do more recolors of this, chances are they'd release it as a SUBQ ith different tints (and different matching tinted CIs, too)

But say we use makeup. Unless we do a closed makeup box with no overlay-oriented color, there's already a thousand makeup boxes and they're all starting to look alike. What usually differenciates them is the ability to change extra details on the icon to reflect the color on the overlay. I'm a bit concerned that we would stray away from the current cw icon rules in place if we are permitted to do generic fits-all-colors icons!

(we're having this great icon debate here but honestly if staff altered skin tone options for official items, they've already been known to recolor all the CIs too!)

It definitely would be tedious to do a the 10 skin tones per body mod, and for every recolor of that mod, I agree. I'm sorry for being flippant and suggesting it wouldn't be inconvenient or a significant amount of extra work. Ultimately, that burden would be on artists if body mods were made to be transformable, so it's something to consider. Just like artists individually choose to do certain types of items, and choose what their prices will be, I think it should be left up to each artist to choose what they want to do and how much they'll charge for it. I fully support that!

Also, that's a good reason why a transformable option for body mods should be optional. not required. Leave that up to the person submitting the mod, if they want to create or commission additional overlay colors.

Your comments about the CW economy and the impacts a transformable option might have are very in depth and I appreciate a look into that side of things!

Hahahaa the more I think about transformable CW makeup with the comments made here, the more I see that it just won't work in general. The example I gave in my first post is probably one of the few makeups that would benefit from having a transformable option for skintone, because the highlight around the eyes and cheeks is meant to blend in with the pale skin around it. But most CW makeups don't work that way, and making them "transformable" would only make them into a free recolor, as you've said. I think I'm going to edit my original post to make this discussion purely about body mods, as I think those are actually achievable. XD

I still don't think I'm understanding your argument about CIs? As long as the title indicates what base color the overlay is (like the Delish lipstick I linked above), would that not work?

I wouldn't be in favor of having to do an individual CI for every single base color for every single recolor of an overlay. That would take forever ahahahaaha.

the more you elaborate on CW CIs, the less I want them to happen too, honestly :P

The best example I can think of right now is vs They're the same icons, serving the same currency purpose, but having a different outcome. Except if you look at them, they're just really the same. I feel like staring at 10 icons being the same but having a different name is going to lead to mishaps, both in submission and while slotting/purchasing. It's just all the same, at some point it'll be hard to differenciate what is what. It's like how it should be obvious that you need to click on a confirm button to purchase something, yet tons of users accidentally purchased things they didnt mean to. If there's a shop with 100 cws which are really only 10 cws in 10 skin tones, it's going to be really wild!

Also, the idea behind the 'optional' feels a bit skewered because as long as it is possible, most people will want it. Sure people wont have to, but if someone wears, say base 2 and the other wears base 5, they'll both request it. In the end, the only people who really wouldn't be affected by this would be the artists releasing their own items (I think? Maybe im wrong! Peer pressure idk haha)

Gosh no kill it with fire if I have to make 10 male overlays, 10 female overlays, and 10 CIs for every single body mod item LMAO. I'm not a masochist! XD XD XD

I think I see what you mean now! But if the item is transformable, then it wouldn't matter if you bought the "wrong" copy, because you'd just transform it into the base color that you want. Right? I can see what you mean about a shop filled with 100 cws that are all the same except for the base color, but I think in practice it wouldn't end up that way.

Of course, I don't know anything about coding, but I would assume that after a transformable item is accepted on site, the copies that would be available for sale would be one single default - base 1, maybe. Then buyers would buy their copy, and transform it from base 1 to whatever color they wanted, and add it to their wardrobe. If they chose to sell their copy later on the r200 forums or whatever, then yes - it would be a different name, perhaps. But there wouldn't be any reason for a single user to amass multiple copies of an item if you could transform it into whatever base color you wanted.

And yeahhh haha, I put that it should be optional because I don't think it would be fair for the site to require that all mods have 10 base colors available, but I imagine that if the option was available that MOST people would want the transformable/all 10 colors option, you're right.

Prior to my hiatus I had stopped making body mods while we were waiting for a solution for this. Maybe the next wardrobe will fix this problem but I'm not holding my breath it'll get released soon. I would love to see staff allow us to make transformables for a cheaper price to make it easier on releasers + slotters to get what they actually want. I'd buy hella more mods if this became a thing because there are a ton of great ones with gorgeous art but I don't wear base 1/ base 2 and I probably never will so.... eh.

Also this is semi-adjacent but the skin tone options on Subeta are garbage and 6 skins for caucasians and 4 for people of color is...... embarrassing. I'd like to see them add more colors AND give better guidelines / allow CW artists to submit items like this; OR even their own actual skins as long as the skins have no facial features.

did you have any denials or issues when making this item? I saw this when looking for the little doll just now and I was very confused because body + head makeup wasn't allowed when I drew this; so I'm like ??? do need more FB tints /blushes like wow.

There are more site examples in regards to the CI issue, just as a heads up:

[item=Delish Vir Sleeves (Base 1)][item=Delish Vir Sleeves (Base 10)] etc - all of them are the exact same CI. I believe this was supposed to be the start of staff doing more things that way.

Also I'd like to address some other points, because I've actually had this discussion a lot and brought up this exact point before about how allowing a submission of more than one base for an item would be beneficial.

Also - I'm never, in a million years, ever going to commission recolors for every base color. It's a sum total loss of profit for the artist of $0 because I will only ever get base colors I use - and I usually won't do the same item in multiple because it's too much money, especially when some mods don't even fill a single batch for me. That means I've paid for the recolor, paid a huge chunk for submission (or paid the entire 2500 submission myself) and then to consider paying for yet another recolor where I only get the skin tone changed? And to something I'm unlikely to ever use? Not gonna happen. My one hands inclusive mod had to be altered in order to even fill batches at all. BUT - if I could pay an artist (hopefully at some sort of bundle price - like double/triple the normal single recolor cost) to do all the base colors because it's transformable? Far more likely to pay an increased initial cost for that. On average, most of the recolors I buy are $5-6 unless there's a significant change. I'd happily pay $15-20 for a mod recolor addition that had all of the other bases.

And it's heartening to see that quite a few artists would happily be into doing something like that rather than expecting $5-6 for every single skin tone on an item that mostly stays the same.

I will fully and 100% agree that CW makeup/blush items be excluded from the discussion. While it would be bomb if there was like, version A and version B based on what looks good on light vs dark bases, I'm pretty sure this is also just a thing where recoloring straight up would work. I've seen a lot of folks release huge arrays of recolors in makeup and blush and I don't think the CW market has as much of an issue with that (although it can be hard to find some of them, based on availability and limits) though I'd love to see staff do this for all of the future Delish/CS Boutique sets.

As for the whole issue with only the item name changing etc - I'm pretty sure it would be fairly easy to handle. Whatever your 'main' color choice would be the primary item - when it gets submitted, when it gets slotted, etc etc, it's all on that (like Delish Vir Sleeves is the main item name). If you transform it, it gets the added (base number) but I doubt that would create much confusion because you bought the initial base item. And so many CIs don't even have a limb visible for mods that I don't think worrying about the skin tone visible there would matter because they usually don't have it anyhow.

I think the Vesnali coin isn't really a great example because it legitimately is 2 totally different items that look identical. This is the same item, just transformed (and it can be transformed back just like all other on-site transformables). There wouldn't be 10+ versions in a shop, it would just be the main submitted version.

And it would be up to the artist still whether they offered any kind of deal for this or not, if this was optional and not a mandatory change (which is what we're discussing, the option to make them transformable for skin tone only). If they say no to a request, they say no and the commissioner does it the regular way.

If it was something that would be a mandatory change, I would imagine then the site would need to require all modded human limbs to be submitted as transparent and they'd be responsible for filling in the color/shading for every single base - otherwise they'd risk running the artists off by demanding more work from them. I highly doubt they'd be willing to do this, but oh how nifty would it be if only the outline of the hands or legs had to be added and then we could use it with any of the available bases (because I don't even use a normal base at all haha).

As a customer, I almost NEVER buy mods unless they're shifted all funky so that the hand/leg/whatever area is transparent because I don't use the typical base 2/3 that gets used as the standard. I use b20 or I use one of the darker bases. I'd buy soooooo many more mods if they were transformable. So many more. I love so many of them but just...won't ever use them unless they adjust to a base I use, and so few people can afford to get the recolors, let alone submit for just one or two people on stuff like that.

All I can think of is that, as I'm a relatively poor Subeta user who can't dump hundreds of literal dollars into this site, how the potential for a transformable CW costing more would drive me away from the prospect entirely.

okay I misunderstood a bit the first time, sorry! I think it's because official items transform into different matching icons and somehow i imagined CWs would work the same (because that would be really awful to recolor QQ)

I feel like 'transformable' cws would need to be clearly labelled as such, and would fall into a sort of.. new almost? cw category due to their nature/functionality.

I don't think it's hard to code so much as hard to balance out so that there arent exceptions and flaws all around what can and cannot quality as transformable, as it affects its price tag as well!

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Responding to your question with the makeup - nope not really! I had actually submitted this as a fullbody/mod/something the first time, and they told me it counted as makeup (which I guess surprised me since.. it's a full body blush!).

However, in order to be accepted as makeup it had to be 40% or lower opacity. I had for example submitted one that was a lot more opaque and I was told it wouldn't work out because that resembled a lot more a 'new' base feature rather than a blush addition!

(Truth be told on the matter, I do believe they've mollified on their restrictions there because when I started CWs im certain they wouldn't have approved of it. Heck there's items that were once refused, who were accepted later on with very little modifications. I don't know if it's staff adapting to submission styles or inconsistency (or both tbh) but I hope this helps!

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From the delish vir sleeves you showed, I personally find them confusing. Sure I can hover up (that's what we already do) but I still don't find it very effective. In this regards, I do think the vesnali coin was a relevant example because it shows how different items/options being the same icon can be confusing. You know, maybe it's just that im very visual (and very picky) that I like things to be distinguishable. Maybe it's just me haha

I wholeheartedly agree with body mods being an additional fee but including all body mods. As I've said before, it's still a big win because it saves on submission cost and overall slotting (since yes, it's very likely darker skin tones will get less - but still very much deserved - attention!)

That being said, I do want to say that I understand the struggle as a releaser as well. I know cws are costly (and im first to say they should be overall cheaper) and discussions like this are a great starting point to finding solutions and alternatives. I hope some of them are considered because cws have been a bit of a stale mate for a while :(

I raised the 'cost' point because while it would be great to have some sort of bundle for body mods, I think it should also be true for a larger spectrum of cws (recolors in general? Basic recolors? Same patterns? Submitting x amount of recolors at a discount?) Singling out body mods as being too expensive would be putting aside the fact that there's a lot more things that feel obsolete!

(but yes, I think it's silly that you need to pay full slot price for every single skin tone existing. It's restrictive both for the releaser who may not buy the less popular tones and also the buyer who wanted that less popular tone)

I would prefer if the display name on the sleeves reflected the base, personally (and I feel like that is a possible thing that could be done) so that at least it's very clear whether it's the default or what base it's set up as. The sleeves I consider different to the coin because regardless of what version they're currently in, they can go back to default or to any other version whereas the coin is either one coin or 50 coins, it doesn't actually change, and it should have a completely different CI to note that because it would be very easily to accidentally sell/discard/offer the wrong item that way. With the transforming sleeves, it's the same item, you just might have to take a step to make it the base you wanted, but it doesn't lose any money.

And yeah, it's just...not feasible how it is right now to make every mod in every skin tone. It's expensive to commission and expensive to submit, and I think that's one of the biggest problems with getting more tones on site. I wanted so badly to offer my mod in multiple skin tones, but unless I'd switched it to B3 just to start, I couldn't even get it on site. So it had to be reworked entirely in order to be transparent instead (which is another hassle and really hampers what kinds of mods we can have when hands can only go so many spots or have to be hidden entirely).

I do appreciate that staff has tried to listen to our concerns in the past and make some adjustments to make things easier for all of us. I really hope we can get some more reasonable discussions going in the future with them on how to improve the market and make it more cost effective for everyone and more accessible to more customers too. I really think something like this could make a huge difference.