I searched through 3 pages and didn't find a thread like this, I'm sorry if this was suggested already.

So... I came across a real issue that seems kinda simple to me (since there are already transformable items in Subeta): skin tones recolors for body mods. We see it everyday: recolors of popular mods sell really well, but try to do a recolor of the skin tone only and even between the first 3 skins tones, the most popular ones, you have a real issue ( do you back me up on this? Cat sweaters...). Imagine doing recolors of darker skin tones... Plus you need to send it as another item, so there's another price to pay, another thread to make for slotting...

I'm aware of a common practice that's been trending lately: using the hands with transparency so the chest color appears. But for items that have the mod hands away from the body (or that modifies legs or that encounters the bellybutton or the neck lines) this is a real issue, like the , etc.

The solution, in my pov, would be having transformable CWs that can be changed between V,1-V.10 (like the art prints) or between 1-10 (like the pointy ears).

It would work this way: when sending an item, you may check a box saying "this CW is a body mod and requires skin recolors". Then you have 10/20 fields for attaching files (depending if male/female is different -- or just 20 and you send the same overlay twice if that makes the system more simple), with bases 1, 4, 7 and 10 being required and the other optional (or any 4 skin tones being required, but not sure if people would only release bases 1~4).

As for releasers, I hope that artists will be understanding on this and not increase the recolor price a lot, after all, the details to be recolored are super tiny and there's no dégradé or shadowing (assuming that the shadowing is done on another layer), so I think it'll be worthier to release through this method.

Any thoughts on that? I'd like to hear from staff as well, if that's something that could be done or if that's just too dreamy. maybe you could ping staff responsible for CWs, pelase?

You're pretty right about the bodymod issues, really. And I think that any releaser who ever tried to release them can back you up on this. As an example, my were never* made on other base colors than 1, 2 and 3 because it was impossible to find enough interest to fill the first batch. In that sense, I totally support your idea, even though I'm afraid it might not be feasible considering how the CW/item system works...

• = except one recolor who was comissioned to be a personal CW ()

thanks for the inputs. I really hope that's not too dreamy and may be applied, even if it happens after a year (or a couple haha)

I definitely support this idea! Because not everyone's HA is white, and it really sucks when there's a cute bodymod item, but you can't use it because it doesn't match your darker skin tone. It'll really help bring more inclusivity for us folks who don't have white HAs. :)

yeah, even I, when making an avatar, already had issues bc there are usually only base 1 CWs and I tend to use 2 or 3... Can't even imagine the struggle for someone that uses bases 4-10 frequently.

The struggle is real LOL But I really like your suggestion to make it transformable. I think that's a win-win solution for everyone! <3

This is an interesting and fun idea, and I'm in favor of increasing the diversity of skintone in Subeta. But I can't see it working at it is with the CW system as it is in the OP. Too much of how the concept "recolor" works is tied up into it..

I Suggest that it be allowed to make a CW with transparent holes where the HA's "skin" is supposed to show, and then cheaply like for 25 CSC per skintone minimum ten skintones of the creator's choosing (so 250CSC total if the creator only wants ten), to compensate Subeta (for staff time to administer this kinda thing) to make patches of "skin" to underlayer those transparent zones. In no way do these ten tones have to match any existing tone either realistic or zombie or technicolored, but they must be made and sold and resold only in batches of ten. .
As such, the patches might be very CW specific. Even though it's against the Rules of CWs to make fashion lines or to agglomerate into one CW something that would be part of a set, this sorta thing might work, or maybe make the underlying skintone patches entirely optional and users will have to guess that they need to own them to make the CW work or there must be a marker in the item's description along the lines of BTW you may also need to buy product x".

I am all for changes being made to base mod recolor prices / submissions. I see so few darker bases getting mods, and it makes me very sad as I prefer to use I think it's 7+? I'm honestly just not sure how staff would implement this entirely... if only because I'm not sure how the coding for it would work and if it's possible from a user-submitted perspective. The other problem is... staff has to be paid fairly for their time in the queue. I can't attest to their work efforts because I don't know, but... I'd rather make sure they're paid fairly, than see this happen. I feel like Subeta is one of the few petsites that actually tries to treat their workers fairly and pay them fairly (from what I see as an outside perspective)... and I don't want that to change either. =/ (I've worked for other sites before earning maybe $2-3 an hour and having to work 60+ hours a week. It's.... bad, unreasonably... bad.)

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I'm going to get real ranty here, and I'm sorry if this wasn't what you meant, or intended but, I feel so few artists step up and say something, so I'm going to be an artist who does.

I see this... a lot, as a CW artist. I get asked a lot "Will I get this cheaper because it's so small" or "Will I get this cheaper since it has a matching item" etc. My prices for a basic recolor are $5/500 csc and this seems to be from what I've seen, the lowest price point in the market any artist goes? And what I've learned over the years is that... people seem to think that a recolor can be 'whipped up real quick', as if this is a 5-10 minute process. And it's not. In the case of base mod packs like this, I could certainly see maybe artists putting a price in place for the mod pack itself based on the effort and amount of work you'd be getting, but I don't see it being the same as a basic recolor, as it's not the same amount of work to have to get all that ready. (So maybe for example, just throwing a random number out there, they offer $10 for the recolor and it includes a total of 4 base recolors, or maybe $40 comes with all 20 bases or something. But I couldn't, and I wouldn't offer more than one base for $5 total.)

A basic rundown of what you're actually paying for, when you commission a recolor: The artist takes your information. If they have any questions they have to do back and forth until they have all the info to even get started. (Most people, I find, forget info unless you have a form and even then, info can still be forgotten.) They then need to color drop / get color info for what exactly you want. They recolor the item for you. They make previews of the recolor for you. They deliver the preview and verify if it's correct. From here they can either get payment and send files, or... what happens also frequently is the "This doesn't look like I thought it would." which then turns into more questions, more edits, more previews, and a lot more time. Once it's finally approved, the artist needs to send payment information (paypal / invoice / trade lots / etc) and then they need to save files. For one recolor this doesn't take too much time, but for what is being suggested here (20 different bases, potentially with male and female versions, this could take... a very long time just to save the files.)

The quickest recolor I think I've ever done took me about 45 minutes total between all I needed to do. The size of the item doesn't honestly matter, especially if it's a basic recolor. They take about the same amount of time give or take a few minutes (at least for me), but it's the other stuff that takes the longest. I've had recolors take me 5+ hours to get to the commissioners liking. That means I earned about a dollar an hour.

Artists aren't machines, and you're not just paying for files. You're also paying for customer service and everything else that comes with that.

I know people don't want to see this type of chat / get lectured on this but I'm just at my wit's end with how CW artists have been treated, especially this last year. I've seen artists leave because of how poorly some commissioners act, and it's painful seeing such loss in the community.

I see and I understand your point, but in this case, exclusively, you won't have all the steps you mentioned, so it might take the same amount of time of a single or two recolors, since there's already info on the color in the WR (the commissioner just tell you which bases they want to recolor), and the delivery/verification may be done all at once. About the male/female issue, the hands shouldn't change the position, so opening two tabs in the editor and just copying the skin color layer, pasting on the second tab and dragging it down to the position it needs to stay should do it. So I think the proccess would involve more the saving and customer service parts, really.

Anyway, I think it could be done once so the artist may notice how much time it took, add a couple dozens of minutes to have an average for the times it'll take longer, and charge based on the hours it took them to finish all the recolors at once and the delivery of them.

[edit]About the staff payment, I really can't say anything on that matter because I'm not even aware about the fairness of it, but as you mentioned, subeta is one of the few petsites that actually pays their staff and try to do it fairly. Maybe some extra CSC could be charged you choose the transformability option as it tries to cover the payment for the extra time it'll take for staff to review the skin tone recolors.

I think that patch thing would be harder to do, since the patches should get the areas where the mod limbs pose, so it'd be necessary 10 differente patches (one for each base) for each item released.

has a very good point, in that the artist themselves should get paid for their efforts properly, so the price point I mentioned probably wasn't a good one. I am sorry , and 500 CSC is not a wrong price to ask.

If the base colors in your pack are as the given base colors that Subeta has, then it's a matter of saving out an outline layer (and it doesn't have to be a good one unless the transparent part is all by itself and out-pointy and naked without any clothes or special effect surrounding it) and doing a colorfill. Still not without investment of time and effort. Doing a color pack of bespoke colors would of course be more expensive and priced accordingly.

You're right, you might not need all the steps I've listed, but at the same time you may even need more steps than listed. If I do a recolor for the commssioner + all the recolors and then they say "Actually this red isn't what I wanted, could we go with this darker red" then I not only need to recolor the main recolor, but ALL the bases with it. And keep in mind denials. If there is a denial, I could have to edit 20+ files, which is included in the price. Lowering what I made even more.

Also the way you're suggesting the recolors work is not how I do them at all. (I'm not sure if you recolor stuff that way, but I certainly don't in the slightest. Sai doesn't have the 'editor tabs' you're suggesting as far as I'm aware.) I have to duplicate the entire folder of the wearable and then recolor the parts that need changing (because in the case of a denial, I need to have every single version in case there needs to be edits, otherwise... wow the amount of time it would take to redo everything again from scratch if I had to fix a denial... eep.)

Like I said before, I do imagine artists would find a compromise for the prices of these so it's not $5+ per base and instead is an affordable option, but this tone of "it's easier than you think, it should be cheaper" is really off putting. I don't know about you, but I don't like being told how to do something from someone else and how I should be pricing myself, based on their assumptions. If you can whip out recolors quickly and you're selling them, by all means price yours what you think your time is worth. But trying to tell other artists how to go about their business / adding guilt about prices isn't cool. Believe me, I wish the process was easier and cheaper for everyone all around, but in the current system (and even in iterations of it) it might not be.

If the prices your artist is offering are too high and you want lots of recolors, consider asking them if they'll sell you the recoloring rights so you can do it yourself. If you want a lot of recolors, this could be the cheaper option, especially in the case of base recolors like this!

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[edit] For what you're suggesting, it really depends on how big and detailed the hands are. All of the mod work I've done in the past needed shading, and therefore was not as simple as a 'color fill' beneath the piece. Not adjusting the shading and highlight color can often lead to 'gray artwork' as each skin color is different, and 'gray shading' is a reason for denials in CWs.

oh, no, that'd really be a lot of work, if people change their mind after all the 20 recolors were made. But as a manner of simplifying things for the artist, I was thinking about a 2-parts deliver... Like, you deliver the item in a certain base and make the corrections the customer needs. That's worthy the payment of the commission itself. After the customer approves the final item, you recolor and deliver the skin tones pack, for the extra recolors payment. Also that may be added as a new rule in CWs' shops that sells mods, if this skin tone thing is applied in the future, that if someone approved the final version of an item, then you made the 20 recolors and they changed their mind after that, an extra fee might be charged.

I'm totally not wanting to put prices on others' work whatsoever, I'm just trying to state some things that might be done as a way to make thinks more simple, from what you said that usually takes. To be fair, idk if you stated the 40 dollars for the 10 base recolors (20 if it's male and female) as a random number as you said, but I didn't think it was high, so that might work. Since you said you usually charge 5 dollar for a simple recolor like this and you probably have to make male and female as well, if an artist wants to charge 40 for the whole package I don't think it's too expensive. But also, I'm not a releaser, so that might be expensive. But I've seen some releasers shelving skin tone recolors for releasing them and only selling 2 or 3, so I'm saying that it's fair based on what I've seen, and if you release an item for double the price you would usually pay, but you sell way more batches than before (let's say you closed a batch of base 1, but bases 2 and 3 didn't close a batch, and you made the whole recolor pack and sold 4 batches, but only had to spend CSC to send the items once), I guess that's a win.

Those are good suggestions. I think mostly it would require some sort of TOS from the artist regarding those types of recolors, possibly even extra fees for edits on recolors of this magnitude to encourage commissioners to be extra sure of what they want.

I would LOVE if Subeta provided more protection to it's artists. As it is, in my experience... unless your TOS is detailing every possible circumstance in the world, you will get screwed over and staff cannot help you. That's why mine is long and intimidating unfortunately.

The $40 I threw out was totally a random number. I think it would really depend on the item itself and the artist too. At this time, I have no idea what I'd even charge for something like this, and unless it became a reality, I wouldn't devote time to deciding tbh. I will say though if you only needed to technically submit one item with multiple skin tones attached to it, I'd be... very happy to slot on a lot more mods though. Most, if not nearly all the mods I've liked have been pale colors I'd never use. All the ones I own now have transparent hands, which can suck for certain layering. So hopefully I'm not the only one, and being able to submit like this means releasers could sell more and make more of their money back.

Definitely would love to support this idea, as a consumer who uses bases 7 & 8 most of the time. I guess I'm just so used to this kind of stuff in real life, to never find proper foundation and other makeup stuff, that I never really questioned that a lot of those items I cannot use. But if there was a way to make it easier to find items for darked HAs (which are 99,9% of my HAs), I would be 100% on board :)

thanks for the view as an artist and for the support :)

thanks for the support as well ^^ I really hope something is done on that matter, even if it takes some time