I have been working on redesigning my fursona recently. I like my witchy wolf femboy but my tastes have changed and I want something with more neutral/normal colors. I’m also changing him from a wolf to a fox. Anyways, I have the tail in the image and matching ears I got at Otakon last year from pawstar. I like the color a lot but I was wondering how hard it would be for an artist to replicate that? What would that coloration be called? I’m having a hard time finding any similar examples in furry art.
I’d describe that pattern as “agouti.” Agouti is when a single hair goes from light to dark, so it is not all one color, and it produces a pattern like this. It’s a common coloration pattern in wild animals. Whether an artist wants to draw that depends on the person and art style, but I think an artist could simulate it without having to draw every hair. As another commenter said, you can always simplify depending on the style you’re looking for.
Well the pawstar website says it is butterscotch colour using wild wolf fur (a synthetic fur they custom made that involves black highlighting through out to give it a more realistic fur pattern.)
The only times I have seen this pattern accomplished, and accomplished well is from artists that do a realistic style or a hybrid of toon/anime/realistic. Good examples are artists like Dark Natasha (realistic) or Kacey Miyagami (hybrid).
Commissioning them is usually hard + expensive.
It is probably better to simplify the color to it’s base colour, butterscotch, for simplicity sake.