This is a fun story.
This was my very first commission and the client asked me to design an owl that changed colours depending on the time of the day, being red during the day and purple at night. To show this change of colours, I did the background and the colour shift on the feathers, but every single person that painted this character just went with the gradient anyway. Before the client changed their fursona to another animal - after seeing another, older design that looked a lot like this one and didn't want the artist to feel "ripped off" - they just accepted the fate that their fursona would never be painted correctly and went with the colour gradient as the official thing.

I don't know if I'm to blame for that, but if it is, I'm not even sorry. I really like the gradient colours, it looks really appealing to my eyes.