Basic edit tips and tricks!

Hopefully someone will find this useful. This is solely to do with appearances, and not logic/parameters. Also all personal opinions and like logic, appearances are meant to be experimented with.



SKIN TONES:Skin tone 1 is great for unconventional edits who are often not human—go nuts with the oranges, greens, reds, whatever. Skin tone 2 is good and solid for white people—like, standard-ass American white people, most white Europeans, really pasty white people, etc. You can get away with skin tone 1 for, say, a Sheamus, but it's hard to nail down the colour.



Like warm and cold colours I'll get to in a sec, skin tones are warm and cold too. Skin tone 1, again, is kinda unconventional, while two to four seem to go from warmest to coolest—it's about how the "palette" so to speak, absorbs light. Two is the warmest, whilst three is somewhere in-between the extremes, and four is the coolest. There is variation in them, and variation in skin tones, so don't be afraid to experiment. And just because someone is black or white doesn't necessarily mean their shade of black or white looks the same as other people. Again, experiment to give your edits some variation, especially when it comes to non-white wrestlers.







Keep this in mind and experiment. Not all shades of white and black and everything in between are the same. Consider your wrestler's nationality/heritage, or even their gimmick/who they work for/the time period they worked in. Take, Hulk Hogan and John Cena for example. Hogan's white, but he was TANNED AF. Tans were the thing of Hogan's time. Though logic dictates he could use skin tone 2, that tan says skin tone 3—or a very "orange" hue in skin tone 2 to me. Cena's a lot more reflective of the times—not tanned af. Just a normal-ass white dude skintone.



Skin tone 3, it seems, is generally agreed upon as a good basis for most Asian wrestlers. I've found this is a great skintone for Mexican, Latino, Middle Eastern, and Native wrestlers as well. It can also work for tanned wrestlers. A Hogan, for example. I have a male stripper wrestler who is white as fuck, but because his whole thing is that he's a male stripper who uses tanning machines, I use skin tone 3 for him—I act as though his skin isn't white. I've tried to experiment with more "Olive-toned" wrestlers here as well, but don't know if I'm sold on it yet. I'd probably lean towards tone 2 for more "Olive-skinned" wrestlers.



And finally, skin tone 4 is the skin tone to use for black wrestlers.



I personally find that when I'm creating a white person I tend towards pink/red tones as a base, then with Asians, it is a mixture of brown/yellow, leaning more towards yellow. With Latin people it's more orange-ish, for the most part, and black people, it's brownish-orange, leaning more towards brown. Again, there's variation in everything, and I try to pay close attention to heritage and gimmick affecting skin colour. For example, an Italian-American is going to be a different shade of white than an Irishman. When I said I use more orange-ish tones for Latin people, that's a bit of an oversimplification. For example, a lot of people may "present" white, and there's a lot of variation in that skintone. So don't be afraid to play around. For skin tones, it's only a few ticks in one direction is often more than enough to produce drastic results.



For all skin tones, I find that it helps to picture a real wrestler or person as a basis, have a picture up of them as I'm creating a wrestler, and just keep experimenting with the shade until I'm happy. Generally speaking, I also just leave highlighting on "H1." "H2" might be good if you're really going for an oiled-up dude/dudette. If you're going for a completely unconventional skintone, like, say, an alien, then go wild with highlighting.



Also, very small thing, but something I've totally done before. If you're using another wrestler as a base for a new wrestler, MAKE SURE that you're adjusting skintones if they're a different skintone. I can't tell you how many times I've forgot to do that, then discovered after I made someone that, say, everything is skintone 3, but I was a dumbass and left their thighs as skintone 4.



BALD CAPS: omfg use bald caps, especially for masked wrestlers. If you've got the layers, use a bald cap, because from some angles you'll see little holes and it will be a weird little niggling thing that will absolutely infuriate you.



BLACK AND WHITE : don't use 0, 0, 0 and 255, 255, 255 unless you absolutely 100% are deliberately doing it. Especially for black. Get some grey up in that bitch so we can see some shading, unless you're trying to make it DARKER THAN THE CENTRE OF A BLACK HOLE black.



And white: instill a little bit of grey/shade from whatever colour you're complimenting the white with to just give things some pop/realism. It'll help balance things. Again, you just want some shading to everything.



In printing (something I am very, very familiar with), there's a common practice when it comes to black: DO NOT USE 100% BLACK. Your black ends up printing out like a very muted, faded grey. And that doesn't exactly happen in Fire Pro if you use 0, 0, 0 black. But the same kind of effect happens. You don't get a deep, rich black so much as you get "an absence of light." So, in printing, you generally throw some cyan up in that bitch, and you produce a much deeper, and ultimately darker black. You won't produce a darker black in Fire Pro than 0, 0, 0 with, say, 15, 15, 15, but you'll produce a much more natural and rich-looking shade of black that picks up shading.



Colours in general: the advice about black and white applies to colours, too. Don't go to the absolute max of a colour unless you absolutely are doing it for a very certain effect. Get some shading in there, dawg. Even just moving a little bit towards white/black will help immensely.



Here's the colour spectrum. Remember it.




More than just contrasting colours on the colour spectrum, experiment with the "temperature" of certain colours. Say, for example, you have a very bright shade of red and you want to use a similarly warm colour like pink. Maybe don't use a very bright shade of pink because the colours might bleed together. That said, if two colours are on very opposite ends of the spectrum—yellow and blue, say, you can be a bit more liberal about using a deep blue and a deep yellow if that's the effect you're going for. And never shy away from using the same colour as long as you're experimenting with shading within that colour. For example, a dark, almost-black shade of purple and lilac purple is one of my favourite colour schemes. And a deep, "royal" blue and baby blue? *chef kissing sounds* Amazing.



WARM AND DARK COLOURS: don't be afraid to break the mould, but just as a basic guide, if you're stuck on making an edit's appearance pop, adhere to the guiding principle of WARM AND DARK COLOURS. And at least at first, make the contrast as obvious as possible. Dark purple and, say, a vibrant, popping yellow. Black and virtually anything.



Or, a more subtle example: Chris Jericho's more recent run.



Purple and blue, at first glance, shouldn't work. Purple is just a shade of blue, after all. But Jericho uses a lighter, vibrant shade of blue. The material of the blue is also shiny/sparkly, whilst the material of the purple is a more "natural" shade, which helps the blue to stand out. Don't be afraid to experiment with the highlighting in the game to get this kind of effect. Say, for example, you could use "N" or "H1" on the your base trunks, with a "H2" or "H3" or even "H4" on your "accent" colour/design to get the desired effect. I personally find H2 to be the sweet spot for "normal" sparkly designs, whilst H3 or H4 are a very deliberate effect and depending on your colour, can wash it out. H4 can look very washed out, which is fine, but adjust your colour if you need to. The use of black in this design is interesting, too. It helps "ground" the blue and makes it feel like it isn't just floating there on the tights.



Also, I find "H3" a good sweet spot for a kind of "vinyl/leather" effect on black pants. You can go a bit darker on your shade of black than you normally would because of this.



The fallback for me when it comes to designs, personally, is black with a virtually any colour—but if you're using, say, a more "cool" colour like purple or blue, and you still want them to pop, just use a lighter shade—a nice baby blue, or kind of lilac purple, say. Or, again, use the highlighting. White can look really good as a base colour too, but be sure your white has some depth to it rather than just "OMG THIS IS BLINDING" white.



Orrrrrr be crazy and use a darker shade if you want. Just do it deliberately, for a very specific effect, rather than losing the colour.



Also, don't be afraid to use a "warm" colour as a base for your trunks/tights/etc. Just, again, make sure, your contrast is evident.



Say, CJ Fresh's alternate attire:



Pink isn't exactly the most "warm" colour like a burnt orange or a red, but it isn't a cool colour either. I utilized a deeper purple to give the attire some contrast. More importantly, though, I gave the shade of pink more of a "pastel" vibe to contrast the purple. Look at, say, his other alternate attire here:



This pink is very vibrant, very "popping." But if I this shade of punk in his other attire, it the purple would get lost because both the pink and purple would be too vibrant and bright. Meanwhile, on this attire, even though the pink and green are both very vibrant, they're on such different ends of the colour spectrum that it works.



Also, for that first alternate attire with the "pastel" pink base, I played around with highlighting, too, which helps contrast the purple and pink.



What else? Let's take another look at Jericho and why something that shouldn't work on paper ends up looking pretty rad.




What I call his "Rainmaker" attire because Okada has a very similar approach with his attire. The purple and red in this attire are very similar—how do I describe it? They're very "basic", very... just clean shades of purple and red. But they end up working because there's enough variation in the design, and the shiny "gold" and black helps break up everything enough to make it work. It's not as "clean" as say the purple/blue attire, or various other attires he's worn, but I like it. Even just in real life, as you can see, the black isn't, say, "0, 0, 0" black. And the gold on the sides helps break up the red and purple, where as black on the sides would have been overkill. If you're going to use colours that may blend together, use some designs to break things up. And don't be afraid to throw in a third or even fourth "base" shade to help ground things—generally I'd lean towards a shade rather than a colour, so I'd use black, grey, or white, if the main focus of your attire is a colour.



Using Jericho, again, you can see how he uses black and white to anchor everything so the gold doesn't get lost in the red. The black and red are not only design flairs to give the gold a "canvas" to rest on so to speak, but they're used as accents throughout to break up the monotony of red and just act as really good "trim" for everything.



Also, subtle thing, but if you want to give your blacks and whites "texture", don't be afraid to throw in a very dark grey or slightly lighter/darker shade of white and use the camo, spots, or stripes designs. You can even use the same shade as your base colour if you'd like, and play around with highlighting.



Cool? I hope so.