Shouldn't Kawa be dark skinned?

[J-Bone]

After all he in a member of the Ekujae wild elves of the Mawangi expanse. The pictures of him are really white, like near albino white.

[James Jacobs]

J-Bone wrote:

After all he in a member of the Ekujae wild elves of the Mawangi expanse. The pictures of him are really white, like near albino white.

He absolutely should be dark-skinned.

[Joana]

The name is Kwava, and considering that this guy was the official picture of an Ekujae elf in Elves of Golarion, at this point in their history, Paizo either a) hadn't decided that wild elves were dark-skinned elves; or b) hadn't yet managed to convey to freelance artists that elves could be dark-skinned.

I think I recall some in-house angst over the way the art for Kwava came back at the time, but it was a lot more common in the early days of Pathfinder for artists not to 'get' the art order and, usually, by the time it came in wrong, Paizo wouldn't have time to solicit a new one.

[J-Bone]

That picture is a lot better.

BTW I hope we get more art along those lines, maybe for some of the other huminoid races as well.

Cheers

[James Jacobs]

What you're seeing with the Ekujae in those early illustrations is, frankly, us getting it wrong in the diversity arena. Ekujae SHOULD have dark skin, and that was always kind of the intent, but in those early days of Pathfinder we had so much going on that sometimes things slipped through the cracks. It was also 10 years ago or so, and the world's changed a lot (for the better) in that time, with diversity being much more of a "top tier" concern for us than it was in those early days when it SHOULD have been top tier but perhaps wasn't.

[J-Bone]

Thanks for the clarification James. Happily I run my group online and managed to find some great pictures of dark skinned elves. That helped create a more complete representation of Kwava who is turning out to be a rather popular NPC in my group.