Date: 2022-03-07

# How to contribute?

#### 2022-03-07

fishualize is a project that will be updated regularly. There are plenty more fish in the sea (and freshwater too, I guess), which are all waiting to be fishualized! Your favorite fish is currently not included in the fishualize palettes or shapes, you say? Do not despair! You can make it happen and contribute to the wonderful community of nerds on #TeamFish! It’s a piece of cake and here’s how to do it:

# Color palettes

### 1) Browse the internet or your personal folders until you find a pretty picture of your favorite fish

### 2) Go to https://coolors.co/app or use your illustration software of choice (Adobe Illustrato, Inkscape, etc).

### 3) Press the camera symbol and either paste the link of a picture from the internet or upload one from your computer.

### 4) Let the fun begin! Carefully pick 5 colors that represent the full beauty of your fish. Make sure to follow an appropriate color order according to color spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet (or vice versa).

### 5) Copy the hex color codes.

### 6) Go to https://github.com/nschiett/fishualize/issues, start a new issue with the label “enhancement” and paste the 5 colors and the species name (only scientific names please, i.e. genus and species separated by an underscore: “Zebrasoma_velifer”).

### 7) Awesome. Your work is done! We will add your fish color palette as soon as we can.

# Silhouettes

Got silhouettes you want to contribute? Looking for a silhouette of your study species but can’t find it? Feel free to add to our collection of shapes, but be sure to follow these guidenlines:

### 1) The shape MUST be a .png file with clear background.

### 2) Only contribute silhouettes you have drawn yourself and for which you hold copyright.

### 3) Ensure that the silhouette is black and 9cm in width for consistency.

### 4) Check that your file is smaller than 50 kb.

### 5) Fish only! No mammals, birds, insects, or other products of your taxonomic imagination.

### 6) Name the file as “Family_Genus.species.png”. No common names, no abbreviations, no Genus.spp, no spelling mistakes.

### 7) Send your silhouette to simonjbrandl@gmail.com or directly clone and pull the “fishape” repo on GitHub (https://github.com/simonjbrandl/fishape), add your silhouettes to the folder “shapes,” and push everything back on GitHub.

Thanks for your contribution! By adding your silhouette, you agree to other fish-nerds using and reproducing your work freely.

# Frequently asked questions

### I am having SO.MUCH.FUN making fish color palettes and want to help more. How do I do this?

For those feeling motivated, feel free to start an excel file with two columns (species and hex codes) like this:

species | hex
--- | ---
Zebrasoma_scopas | #12345
Zebrasoma_scopas | #1234a
Zebrasoma_scopas | #1234b
Zebrasoma_scopas | #1234c
Zebrasoma_scopas | #1234d
… | …

Once you are satisfied with the color palettes you created, you can send your excel file to nina.schiettekatte@gmail.com.

### I want to use the color palette of my study species, but I am not happy with the palette as it is currently provided. What can I do?

We are happy with any reasonable suggestions and improvements on existing palettes. Go to https://github.com/nschiett/fishualize/issues, start a new issue with the label “enhancement” and suggest an alternative color palette.

### I love fishualize. Can I put the fishualize hexagon sticker on my laptop?

Yes, by all means! Go for it! Not nerdy at all.