Animation Hair 02-Hair Color

This is a continuation of my Animation Hair Post from several days prior. This time instead of talking about hair styles, I'm going to talk about Hair Color.

There comes a time when you finally clean up your character drawing but you can't find a suitable color for your character's hair. 

This hair color tropes is not limited to Anime which is more common to find this trope but this also affects Western Cartoons as well but with the exception of DOUG, this post will mostly use images from anime such as that Urusei Yatsura image above.

I'm always finding fascinating decisions that are made when characters have different hair colors.

Sure, the different colors of hair is unnatural due to the fact that Life dictates whether we are born with black hair, brown hair, or blonde hair but the fact is, we sometimes need to break the laws of reality and give some character to our own characters personality.

Take Roger Klotz for example:

While it is common for bully characters to have that reddish hue for their hair, Roger is a little different. Here, it's to provide a color contrast to his already green skintone. Regardless of what era of DOUG you watch and see Roger's hair as, the orange/lime green combination just looks good on this character.

Personality wise, it's meant to show that despite Roger's poor finance upbringing, he's actually misunderstood and wants to have a better life which he did later on in 1996 and despite finally becoming rich, he kept his hair color to remind himself of what he used to be.

Roger isn't the only character with orange hair.

Below is a girl who happens to have the same hair color but for a different personality trait.

That girl above is Gwen Tennyson. She's a hothead who loves to tease her cousin Ben Tennyson and yet she has the most wonderful adventures to look forward to.

Unlike with Roger who is similarly hotheaded but his excuse is attention and financial struggles during the Nickelodeon era, Gwen has no excuse since being a hothead is naturally part of her personality..... from Pre-adolescence.

She toned down during her late-teen years but the snarkiness still remains in her blood.

Purple Hair anybody? Just ask Leela... or her voice actress Katey Segal about the hair color.

Unless your character is like Marge Simpson, you can give blue hair to your characters to identify them as unlucky or sullen.

Poor Milhouse, always getting disrespected since 1988 and he's getting rather sick of it.

Not all hair colors are an indication of personality or alien feel. The personalities of characters can differ regardless of hair color.

And this includes my own characters

Megumi is an example. She has purple hair but I her personality is that she's a Brainiac who favors two things: Adventure and her boyfriend Hayden.

Minerva Lysander, the character below with Blue Hair.

This character's personality is bitchy and entitled but she has an excuse for her attitude:

Just like Roger Klotz, she's from a family who struggles financial but unlike Roger, Minerva lost her parents and now has a guardian to live with, and a mysterious past which I will not dive into until I finish the Series Bible.

Shasta Jenner Burkeville

Like most African-American girls you see on TV, Movies, or Rap Music, she has sass but Shasta is pretty much one of the friendliest characters to run into. She's also one to feel the sorriest towards Minerva for her upbringing which makes sense since Shasta is from a rich family but would rather trade her riches for a moderately wealthy life instead of being molded into an entitled one.

And Finally we have Delia Inverness.

Like Megumi, Delia is a Brainiac but unlike Megumi, Delia has a lot of snark in her personality and can even be the master of Sarcasm just like Sheldon Cooper.

So you see, Even though I can see Hair color being used for describing a character's personality, it's not used all the time. MY OC girl characters above are an example of subverted hair personality where the hair color doesn't match the expected trait of a character.

Take Ryoko from TENCHI MUYO for example.

Her Hair is Turquoise but her personality is hotheaded so the hair color doesn't match the expected personality though her SONIC THE HEDGEHOG style spikes do fit her personality.

Now let's take Roger Klotz's dad from DOUG.

He's got Orange hair but unlike Roger who's hotheaded because of his Nickelodeon era financial upbringing, Roger's dad is a very condescending parent.

And no, His dad is not meant to be bumbling. If you've seen the episode where he finally shows up, he 
sheds the clown personality and prevents his son from seeing an ultra-violent movie.

Just don't introduce Roger Klotz's Dad to Trevor from GTA V.

Akane Tendo from RANMA 1/2 is a hothead but her excuse is sort of complicated if you read both the manga and watch the anime.

She's actually a pretty friendly character if you know how to push the right buttons but question her strength, beauty, hair, personality, etc, then watch out.

We all know Akane's personality so don't ask what's with the dark blue hair she dons.

What about characters who dye their hair color by choice?

Amity Blight is a good example of characters who has a set personality yet her hair color doesn't match the expected color coding for said personality.

For example, when OWL HOUSE first started, Amity started out like an entitled bitch but the more she hung out with Luz, the more Amity opens up to others which culminated into her admitting that she used the earlier bitchy attitude as an excuse for her struggle for her independence which also resulted in Amity dyeing her hair from Green to Violet as a symbol of her rising independence.


Ramona Flowers from Scott Pilgrim is another example of a character with a set personality but her hair color regardless whether she dyes it or not is indictive.

When I originally made this post, I had trouble finding this image of Ramona's different hair colors but luckily, I updated with this find.

This concept of Ramona changing her hair color isn't new. To those who've read the comics as well as watched the live-action movie, Ramona does change her hair color but I barely got photos of anything else Scott Pilgrim related so all I've got are these screenshots from the Netflix Anime.

Either way or another, Hair Colors and Personalities are a different thing so whether they corollate to a color code for personality is up for debate.

Oh and one last thing before I start the ending paragraphs,

Remember how I said Roger's orange hair was indictive of his hotheaded bully personality?

Well I think I know another reason why he has orange hair and it's not personality related.

I've seen several characters in DOUG both Nickelodeon and Disney where they not only have a Green Skin tone but also a darker shade of Green for their Hair.

Above are examples which include Loretta LaQuigley and Sally from said series.

My guess is Jim Jenkins didn't want a monochromatic approach for Roger's cel paints during the pre-planning stage of the show during 1989 when it was greenlit as a Nicktoon so the orange hair is a nice contrast to his skintone.

My animation hair series of posts is far from over but I don't want to dedicate too much time on this blog about hair. 

I think I'm going next post I'm going to switch gears and deal with another installment of animation paints. This time with personalities and more DOUG.

Good God am I obsessed with this show...

However, I'm mostly stuck with getting my DOUG images from my Nick series DVD as well as images pulled from the DOUG Wiki since Disney+ always disables screen captures due to copyright and I really don't want to resort to using my iPhone's camera or grabbing images that has that infernal Network bug that makes it obvious that someone taped or DVR recorded the episodes.

I prefer my screenshots to be clean without any network bugs, watermarks, artifacts, or faded colors.