#fallowfern

oh i absolutely HATE when the kits look nothing like their parents! (i'm still mad at whatever is up with thunder's genetics aksjfdl. how in the world did he come out orange with two gray parents???)

at the very least though, it forces me to get more creative and look elsewhere for the colors haha

in crookedstar and oakheart’s case, they don’t get their fur colors from either of their parents, they get their brown coloring from great-grandpa appledusk! i drew out this crookedstar family tree a while ago that i never got around to posting that i think should display what i mean better. 

in cases where there isn’t enough family i can pull from, i’ll usually slightly alter character designs to fit better for their future kids/grandkids, especially if they're background characters/less important. in the crookedstar family tree, i made reedshine, fallowfern, and echomist torties to help make their descendant's genetics make more sense (reedshine's darker spots are the same color as shellheart's, willowbreeze and graypool's gray coloring now comes from their mom, and petaldust gets her tortie ginger patches from her mom!)

worst case scenario, if there is literally nothing i feel that i can do, i’ll just suck it up and say to myself “they probably have some distant unnamed great uncle who looks like them” and draw them as is haha