Tips For Writing And Drawing Amputee Characters: Stump Scarring

Tips for writing and drawing amputee characters: Stump Scarring

This was something I had originally intended to mention in this post but felt it deserved its own separate post.

A lot of people, when drawing and designing amputee characters, draw their characters with these big, gnarly looking scars all over the stump. I get why people do this, but in reality, most amputees have stumps that look more like this:

The only scarring that is inherent to amputation (meaning most amputees have) is a very thin line right at the tip of the stump that comes from where the stump was sewn shut. After 5-10 years though, these thin incision scars will fade to be nearly invisible in most folks other than the indent it usually leaves in the skin.

Of course, there are exceptions! My own legs are covered in heavy scarring like the pictures below.

but typically, you only see this in amputees who lost their limb in ways that required them to also need skin grafts, such as from a burn (fire or acid), gangrene, some types of rapid-onset sepsis, or particularly brutal animal attacks.

For context, I used scars from meningococcal as reference here.

I think this is another reason a lot of people, particularly in 2D comics and animation, cover their amputee character's stumps, because they think all amputees have scars like the ones in the second image and I'll be honest, that's a lot to draw when you're drawing it over and over again, but unless your amputee also needed skin grafts bcuase of their injury/illness, their stumps will look more like the first images.

Fun fact: on particularly pale skin, scars can change colour depending on temperature. scars have less circulation and the blood vessels are closer to the skin, which means if you don't have a lot of melanin, your scars can turn a grey-ish purple colour like so:

This information is brought to you by an especially pasty white person in the southern hemisphere (where it's winter atm) who's scars haven't seen the sun since june lmao.

A quick final note: If you look up "burn scars" or any other similar type of large scarring on google a lot of what you get are fresh scars, so they're going to look different than the ones here. On pale skin, large scars like the ones above start out very dark red and will fade to look more like the images here. The same is true for dark skin, typically fresh scars will be much darker in colouration and will fade to be closer to the natural skin tone with time, though on both, they will always be very visible. Some types of scarring on darker skin tones can cause the skin to become lighter, but they don't usually turn entirely light pink like I've seen some folks draw. This is why it's so important to look up references of the type of scar your character has AND how that looks on their skin tone.

And as always, listen to POC and seek out the recourses specifically made by them, especially if you're drawing characters with darker skin tones. Their lived experience will always beat my "what I found through internet research and from talking to friends"

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but no its my fault for making a big deal of it!

[the misspelled part says "grocery store"]

hey man youve been taking a while putting your change back in your wallet and i just wanted to let you know we are kicking you out of the grocwery sytore forever. goodbye

Today's crab is: patiently waiting and polite

website

Hi! I’m learning software development and as a sighted person, I was wondering what features make websites/apps most accessible to you as a blind person

Well, the most important thing you can do is make sure your site is screen reader accessible!, That means someone could navigate the entirety of your site while getting the same information as sighted users without having to look at the screen once. If you don't have anyone to test it out for you, you can check your device's accessibility settings for a built in screen reader (VoiceOver for iOS, TalkBack for Android, Windows Narrator on some PCs) or download the free desktop screen reader NVDA. Aside from that, here are some other helpful visual accessibility features:

A light theme, dark theme, and high contrast dark theme all available (think Discord's light mode vs dark mode vs amoled mode)

Adjustable text size/Text zoom up to 300%

A simple, easy to navigate user interface

Alt text for visual site elements

Option to turn off all moving elements

Option to simplify site colour palette/toggle off special font colours if any

If you REALLY want to go the extra mile - multiple font choices including a hyperlegible/learning disability friendly font (such as the free to use OpenDyslexic)

Feel free to add on!