having now been vaguely involved in star wars fandom for the last few months it has become increasingly obvious that many people don’t know how to draw clones (or any Māori characters for that matter) without wildly whitewashing them. I don’t want to assume that everyone is aware that a lot of the things they’re drawing are racist, many artists just seem to be uneducated and change how they draw the characters when kindly called out on it, so I figure the best way to address the problem is to make a masterpost of things artists should be avoiding, or adding in when making art of these characters (made with loads of help from Lucky @transfetts, who did all of the art for this post!
Should go without saying that this all applies to the Bad Batch, since the show isn’t too far away. Just because canon has come up with excuses for whitewashing the characters, that doesn’t make it fine for you to whitewash them too. Please actively try to make them look more accurate to how Temuera Morrison looks when you draw them.
1. Hair
One of the key issues is the way that people often draw the hair for the clones. remember, they are all Māori! this means their hair is not going to be naturally straight! in some instances, straight hair can be okay but only if there is a specific reason for it, eg. it was straightened artificially for a purpose like a costume or disguise. one of the two worst offenders for the hair being the wrong texture is the classic flat top and when the hair is tied up in a manbun style. the clone wars might have their hair sticking straight up but that doesn’t make it okay for you to draw it that way. Temuera Morrison has curly hair, when his hair is short there should be clear lumps showing it is curly. The drawing just below has some examples from Lucky, first of the mistake most people make is having the hair sticking straight up, and a couple of examples of better methods of drawing that style and the tied up style! the key to accuracy is just making the hair lumpy, and ideally adding a few little curls sticking out for longer styles
Long hair should also not be straight, rather it should be relatively curly. Curly does not just mean giving it a few waves! There’s a huge difference between making the hair vaguely wavy and making it truly curly
2. General Face Shape
The Clone Wars biggest crime is the way they fucked up the clones face shape. if you look at the gif linked below, you can see just how much they thinned out the clones faces and lengthened their chins. the best advice if you’re struggling with the face shape is start off tracing Temuera Morrison! when in doubt, go straight to the source.
I know everyone has talked about this but it always needs reminding that the clones are not white. stop lightening their skin. again, just copy Temuera Morrison! same goes for the eyes, the clone wars drastically lightened their eyes, the eyes should generally be a much darker brown. There is nothing inherently wrong with giving a clone blue eyes for plot reasons, but it is something that seems to happen far too much. Generally, stop looking for excuses to lighten their eyes. There’s already too many clones with light eyes.
4. Nose Shapes
Please look at the examples from Lucky below, Morrison has a much wider nose than the clones do in the animated shows. When drawing them both face on and side on, it needs to be clear that the nose hasn’t been thinned and lengthened like in the shows. This goes along with the face shape, Māori features are typically wide rather than long and thin, please stop white washing these features.
5. Moko
It has been super awesome seeing people incorporating the practice of inking the skin into clone and Mandalorian culture in their art! This is something I 100% support, but there a few things that should be noted in doing this. The most important is to never copy someone else’s moko directly. moko is a sacred practice of carving our ancestors into our skin, each is individual and should never be directly copied. absolutely take inspiration from other people’s moko! but please never come up with it directly. I would urge you to spend some time researching different designs, and spend the time designing something that is individual to the clone or Mando you are drawing. Even better would be to have an explanation of the meanings of the designs you have come up with along with the art! If this sounds too difficult I would recommend sticking with using mando'a for moko instead of traditional designs, although I personally think mando'a is the best thing to incorporate anyway.
The other important thing is not to refer to moko as tattoos, they are very much not the same thing. I would recommend doing a bit of googling to see the methods traditionally used for moko to help understand this.
TLDR: when in doubt, just use Temuera Morrison (or one of the actors of the younger clones) as a reference, rather than the Clone Wars models. just because the animated shows whitewashed the characters, that doesn’t make it okay for you to do it.
In an ideal world, if we as fans can reject the whitewashing done by Disney, the people designing the characters would follow suit and start representing Māori more accurately. At the very least, actively portraying clones without whitewashing them will make people of colour feel far more welcome and comfortable interacting with clone artists.
