Specialty Genetics Directory
Please use links below to find the section you’re looking for!
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
Somatic Note
Though somatic is technically a ‘natural’ marking, it’s important to make note that it has a much heavier hand in sveldalas that it does in real life. Somatic can be seen doing incredibly weird things to our specialty genes with very few limitations. The main four effects are ‘Inverse’, ‘Erase’, ‘Discolor’, and ‘Delete’.
Inverse somatic may cause a marking to flip from white to black or black to white.
Erase may remove either parts of the marking, or it might remove dilutions under or around a marking (for example, a finch marking on a palomino with an erase effect may ‘erase’ the cream gene under the finch spots, making the spots appear either outlined in chestnut or chestnut colored themself if somatic also removes the white from the finch spots).
Discolor may change the coloration of a marking slightly from what it’s meant to be, such as bali stripes showing up grey instead of black or Nerite appearing lighter than the base coat rather than darker. Unnatural colors may also appear with this, though very very rarely.
Deleted somatic, the variation known in real life genetics, will completely remove parts or the entirety of markings/dilutions. This could mean a grullo with somatic shows splotches of the black base coat unaffected by dun, or that part of a dom white’s coat is removed showing the patterns underneath, or making Wobbe only show on half the body instead of the full marked area.
If you can imagine a specialty marking a certain way that varies slightly from the usual, just utilize somatic to make it happen! There are very few instances where I will say no to using somatic to grant extra creative liberties to our artist team ♡
Layering Note
As a part of making our specialty genes more open to artistic freedom, we do not use specific categories for them to note where they need to sit when stacked with other markings. Some genes do have placements, such as white markings needing to overlap most other markings, or dilutions needing to be underneath other markings, but otherwise most genes can be stacked however you/the artist wishes to. For natural markings, layering needs to stay somewhat the same as in real life for most (sooty should not overlap white, dun stripes should stay below with the other modifiers, etc). This does not however apply to grey genes, which can be placed wherever you’d like rather than overlapping everything like white does, or roan, which is considered a dilution in this species and must be shown below everything else.
Art Theft Note
I do not feel the need to lay claim to any of these markings for Sveldalas only. If you would like to include these marking ideas in your own species, please feel free to do so! I don’t mind at all as long as credit is given when credit is due. This should look like, at minimum, linking back to sveldalas on your marking guide sheets (or where you are showcasing your markings) and/or linking back to the CS profile of the user that originally created whichever marking you’re hoping to use. If credit is not given, and the marking you make too closely resembles the unique ideas our community has worked so hard on (this includes changing just ‘one small thing’ to try and make it ‘different’), moderators may be involved to discuss an issue of art theft. If you are a part of our community as well, this may end in a ban from sveldalas. So please, be smart - just credit the artists!