Ahsoka Tano (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
resnipstance) wrote2016-02-27 06:50 pm
resnipstance) wrote2016-02-27 06:50 pm
ahsoka's daily appearance, clone wars edition
HELLO. I can only presume you have clicked on this page because you are curious as to what the hell is going on with Ahsoka's visual appearance. Is she wearing a hat? What's up with those triangles? NEVER FEAR. I am here to answer all. With pictures!
1. Ahsoka's general appearance.
Ahsoka generally appears to be anywhere from dark-tan-orange, to bright-orange, to bright-orange-yellow depending on the light she's standing in. Whatever colour you decide it is: it's a few shades too bright to have come out of a fake tan bottle. It's CLOSE-ISH to human shades but not close enough to not be visibly weird and alien.
In daily life, she usually wears the clothes pictured above! If she's not, I'll note it in-thread. She doesn't seem to ever get cold in it either unless she's in the snow, so I can only assume that her species run warm. (Though that's pure speculation and not canon.) If she's mentioned in-thread as wearing anything hooded, it will usually look something like this, with holes cut out in the top to accommodate her horns. Otherwise, if not, it starts to look pretty silly.
Her official height has her listed as 5'7". HOWEVER! That includes her horns, which are around three inches high. Meaning, her actual face sits around the same level as that of a 5'4" person. As for build, it should be apparent at a glance that although she is slim, she's not waifish. Ahsoka is athletic, lean and wiry!
2. The white markings
So, the white markings on her face are just that: markings! They are not tattoos or paint. Every member of her species seems to have individual, unique white markings on their face that they are born with.
Please note: SHE DOES NOT HAVE EYEBROWS. Her markings are pretty conveniently placed to look like eyebrows, but they are distinctly hairless. A handy visual guide: none of her species have any eyebrows to speak of.
This becomes way more obvious whenever she furrows her eyebrows like in the picture above! You can see that her markings actually extend beyond the natural line of her brow.
3. WHAT THE HECK IS UP WITH THOSE HORNS?
So, adult members of Ahsoka's species make the horn-break down much more obvious. For comparison, here's another shot of Shaak Ti again, this time from the side:
Basically, the top part (the section that starts at eye level and upwards) is presumably hard, would probably feel quite solid to the touch-- think bovine horns perhaps?? While the bottom part (starting at the eye level downwards) is presumably soft and fleshy. It's flexible! Capable of moving around. On Shaak Ti's movie costume you can also see the difference in texture between her horns and her tails. The horns are noticeably hard and rough, while the tails look quite rubbery. It's probably fair to assume that the Clone Wars 3D animation team purposefully chose NOT to have two different textures for the horns and the head-tails-- either to save on the animation budget or to streamline the design. (Or both.) What looks good and/or realistic in real life doesn't always look as good on a stylized cartoon show.
However, TCW's aged-up version of Ahsoka clearly has the ridges separating the top section from the bottom that her younger version was lacking. So the logical in-world assumption is that the ridges grow in more prominently over time as the tails get longer. Ahsoka's unused season 7 design also supports this theory, as you can see the ridges starting to become prominent as she grows older!
HOWEVER, even without those ridges there clearly visible, if you were to touch her horns and head-tails even as they are now, you would probably still notice the texture difference where the two meet! You could probably see it if you were close up, too. They are still separate body parts, after all, even if you can't see it in her icons.
(Side note: montrals are the canon term for those horns, and lekku for the headtails. I tend to stick to horns/headtails in smalltext for ease of understanding-- Star Wars has enough jargon as it is. But in IC speech Ahsoka will refer to them by their proper name, so if you see those terms in-thread, that's what they mean!)
4. Are the gold triangle things part of her head too?
THANKFULLY, NO. They're part of a headdress!
It's not so easy to spot on her icons, but the headdress is in fact raised slightly from her forehead. It's not a part of her. LORD ONLY KNOWS HOW IT STAYS ON, canon has never provided an answer for that. We never see her take it off. Heck, she seems to sleep with it on, so I can only assume it's been super-glued there.
(More realistic, most likely answer? Since Ahsoka has also been seen wearing goggles with the strap going underneath her head-tails rather than over the top of them, it's fair to assume that her head-tails separate from her skull in roughly the same place as where her headdress ends. Ergo, there's likely a piece of chain/string/elastic/whatever on either side, tied underneath the two front tails and going around the back of her head to hold the whole thing in place. We just aren't able to see it. It most likely joins up with the back chain.)
Speaking of the back! This is what her head looks like from behind:
AND THERE YOU HAVE IT. All the possible minutia and visual aides to Ahsoka's weird head anatomy that you could possibly want. I hope that was helpful to someone other than me. I know I sure spent the first few episodes of TCW frantically googling "what the fuck is on Ahsoka's head???" So. The more you know!
ETA: HELLO AGAIN. Since November of 2016, Ahsoka has gotten new canon in the form of her own novel! I play from this canon point as often as not now, but since it has no iconable material, I wrote up a separate post you can read here on the visual differences between her 16 y/o icons and her 18 y/o novel incarnation in case anyone is curious. PROBABLY NO ONE IS, BUT JUST IN CASE, THERE U GO.
1. Ahsoka's general appearance.
Ahsoka generally appears to be anywhere from dark-tan-orange, to bright-orange, to bright-orange-yellow depending on the light she's standing in. Whatever colour you decide it is: it's a few shades too bright to have come out of a fake tan bottle. It's CLOSE-ISH to human shades but not close enough to not be visibly weird and alien.
In daily life, she usually wears the clothes pictured above! If she's not, I'll note it in-thread. She doesn't seem to ever get cold in it either unless she's in the snow, so I can only assume that her species run warm. (Though that's pure speculation and not canon.) If she's mentioned in-thread as wearing anything hooded, it will usually look something like this, with holes cut out in the top to accommodate her horns. Otherwise, if not, it starts to look pretty silly.
Her official height has her listed as 5'7". HOWEVER! That includes her horns, which are around three inches high. Meaning, her actual face sits around the same level as that of a 5'4" person. As for build, it should be apparent at a glance that although she is slim, she's not waifish. Ahsoka is athletic, lean and wiry!
2. The white markings
So, the white markings on her face are just that: markings! They are not tattoos or paint. Every member of her species seems to have individual, unique white markings on their face that they are born with.
Please note: SHE DOES NOT HAVE EYEBROWS. Her markings are pretty conveniently placed to look like eyebrows, but they are distinctly hairless. A handy visual guide: none of her species have any eyebrows to speak of.
This becomes way more obvious whenever she furrows her eyebrows like in the picture above! You can see that her markings actually extend beyond the natural line of her brow.
3. WHAT THE HECK IS UP WITH THOSE HORNS?
So, adult members of Ahsoka's species make the horn-break down much more obvious. For comparison, here's another shot of Shaak Ti again, this time from the side:
Basically, the top part (the section that starts at eye level and upwards) is presumably hard, would probably feel quite solid to the touch-- think bovine horns perhaps?? While the bottom part (starting at the eye level downwards) is presumably soft and fleshy. It's flexible! Capable of moving around. On Shaak Ti's movie costume you can also see the difference in texture between her horns and her tails. The horns are noticeably hard and rough, while the tails look quite rubbery. It's probably fair to assume that the Clone Wars 3D animation team purposefully chose NOT to have two different textures for the horns and the head-tails-- either to save on the animation budget or to streamline the design. (Or both.) What looks good and/or realistic in real life doesn't always look as good on a stylized cartoon show.
However, TCW's aged-up version of Ahsoka clearly has the ridges separating the top section from the bottom that her younger version was lacking. So the logical in-world assumption is that the ridges grow in more prominently over time as the tails get longer. Ahsoka's unused season 7 design also supports this theory, as you can see the ridges starting to become prominent as she grows older!
HOWEVER, even without those ridges there clearly visible, if you were to touch her horns and head-tails even as they are now, you would probably still notice the texture difference where the two meet! You could probably see it if you were close up, too. They are still separate body parts, after all, even if you can't see it in her icons.
(Side note: montrals are the canon term for those horns, and lekku for the headtails. I tend to stick to horns/headtails in smalltext for ease of understanding-- Star Wars has enough jargon as it is. But in IC speech Ahsoka will refer to them by their proper name, so if you see those terms in-thread, that's what they mean!)
4. Are the gold triangle things part of her head too?
THANKFULLY, NO. They're part of a headdress!
It's not so easy to spot on her icons, but the headdress is in fact raised slightly from her forehead. It's not a part of her. LORD ONLY KNOWS HOW IT STAYS ON, canon has never provided an answer for that. We never see her take it off. Heck, she seems to sleep with it on, so I can only assume it's been super-glued there.
(More realistic, most likely answer? Since Ahsoka has also been seen wearing goggles with the strap going underneath her head-tails rather than over the top of them, it's fair to assume that her head-tails separate from her skull in roughly the same place as where her headdress ends. Ergo, there's likely a piece of chain/string/elastic/whatever on either side, tied underneath the two front tails and going around the back of her head to hold the whole thing in place. We just aren't able to see it. It most likely joins up with the back chain.)
Speaking of the back! This is what her head looks like from behind:
AND THERE YOU HAVE IT. All the possible minutia and visual aides to Ahsoka's weird head anatomy that you could possibly want. I hope that was helpful to someone other than me. I know I sure spent the first few episodes of TCW frantically googling "what the fuck is on Ahsoka's head???" So. The more you know!
ETA: HELLO AGAIN. Since November of 2016, Ahsoka has gotten new canon in the form of her own novel! I play from this canon point as often as not now, but since it has no iconable material, I wrote up a separate post you can read here on the visual differences between her 16 y/o icons and her 18 y/o novel incarnation in case anyone is curious. PROBABLY NO ONE IS, BUT JUST IN CASE, THERE U GO.