Since I began reading fanfiction here (which has consisted almost entirely of Equestria Girls material, heh), I've noticed a recurring curiosity in stories involving Sunset Shimmer.

So many authors (so many) describe her as having blue eyes.

It had gotten to the point where I began to wonder if perhaps I was some sort of colorblind, as they've always appeared green to me. And as a vector artist, it's something that I've paid fairly close attention to. I'll save the analysis details for the bottom of the post, but they are actually green.

I thought it'd be an interesting discussion to see where the "blue" idea sprang from. Or perhaps whether it's something that simply goes rather unnoticed by most, and only struck me because of how closely I deal with the specific colors via artwork.

Anyway - thoughts?

*Reference/Analysis Stuffs:

So I had a closer look at the color reference from the MLP-VectorClub over at dA, which I've been using for quite some time in my work. The colors in this guide were compiled from the Rainbow Rocks blu-ray, using averages of the RGB values across multiple screenshots for each color. This is due to scene lighting having an effect on most of characters' colors.

And it turns out that, yeah, they are actually green. Snapped a couple of screenshots from my Inkscape to illustrate. And in both of these shots, the "green" element is the highest of the three color proportions.

Lighter end of the eye color: http://i.gyazo.com/9dd8a98f387cef06b50642dcb6848b34.png
Darker end of the eye color: http://i.gyazo.com/b19f836a2e999ee221a052770a47ec87.png

Her eyes (and magic) are light opal, which is, in essence, green.

I always thought they were teal...
4227379

4227379
Always thought of them as a turquoise or sea-green/blue. Looking at banner you can see the greenish shade to them.

4227379 I think what most have in mind is that her eyes are Teal or Aquamarine both are colors that can double as blue and also maybe they make them blue because no one else has blue eyes and green eyes are mostly associated with Applejack so maybe it's a balance thing.

4227391

I think teal is the best way to describe them, yeah. But leaning closer to the green end. But I like the "opal" too. =)

4227379
Isn't there a wiki already for this sort of thing?

4227402
4227379
Checked the MLP wiki, her eyes are a Moderate Cyan, which pretty damn close to my suggestion of turquoise. Her magic on the other hand is called a Light Brilliant Opal

4227402
4227424
Gotta love, wiki, yeah.
I actually hadn't considered checking there, so thanks for the tip.

The thing that mostly prompted me to start this discussion was a curiosity of where the "blue" idea came from. Though it perhaps just stems from cyan/turquoise/teal being in that middle ground between the blue/green extremes.

I sometimes refer to them as blue. The reason I had was because most people all the way from my childhood have always had this odd binary between thinking a colour green or blue, and there's always been a certain level of disagreement in regards to it.
It's quite possibly something genetic e have where we're predisposed to one colour over another, like the blue and black/white and gold dress phenomena.

All speculation of course. Looking closely at pictures of her, her eyes are indeed a shade of green, though leaning towards blue.

4227379 I've always been calling them teal, myself...

4227428
I don't know (Apple)jack about color palettes or art stuff so I'm just gonna roll with whatever you think,

4227379 I was right all along! They ARE green! And so many people have told me they were blue. Hah! In their faces!

4227428
That's basically it, cyan is an in-between shade.

I say teal.

I've called them cyan based on the wiki, but yes, they tend towards green more than blue.

They are ARYAN! FAIL SHITLER!

4227433

See, this is really interesting, and the sort of stuff I was curious to hear.

That's not to diminish the rest of the discussion on finding good words to describe the color. But it's the thought processes and motivations for choosing those words that gave rise to said curiosity. =)

Her eyes are cyan.
Cyan is a color exactly mid-way between blue and green on the color wheel. Hence the disagreement. Light is a spectrum, fillies.
Cyan was chosen by Studio DHX likely because it is the exact complementary color to red on the color wheel of visible light. Helps her eyes pop out under all that attention-grabbing hair.

4227608 Well I am a pretentious ass hole, so of course I have to go straight to the scientific jingle-jargon

4227379 Yeah, I've never understood why people say Sunny's eyes are blue. They are slightly green-shifted from cyan (a colour in between green and blue on the RGB scale). In other words, kinda light teal. As others mentioned above me, this is an exact complement to her coat colour.

For what it's worth, I'm looking at my Sunset "Luchador" figure right now under a bright neutral light – those eyes are, without a doubt, greenish. Taking out the recent S5-line Big Sunset (pony) I bought a few weeks ago… although her body colour is disturbingly like Fluttershy's (more yellow, less orange), her eyes are the exact same shade as before: again, light green. Yeah, yeah, I know this fandom looks down on the toys, but it's the best I have at the moment for comparison.

Sunset's eyes are not blue. They have never been blue.

Personally they appear somewhertween an emerald and aquamarine but leaning towards emerald.

4227379
Yeah, her eyes have always looked green, to me. Like the green Flash at Sunset. Coincidence?

Yeah, probably.

Basically this is her eyecolor if IRL:

It's called "blue green eyes" on Google. Because "cyan" is apparently too nerdy a word; look up "cyan eyes" and all you'll see are pictures with really bad Photoshop skills.