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bikiniarmorbattledamage:

nitoriaiichirou:

yeah but, cartoon women, any drawn women, aren’t wearing those skimpy and sexual clothes out of choice, they’re wearing it because someone drew them that way, normally for a reason. so so don’t go “oh maybe she chooses to fight crime in a bikini and high heels” bc a man sat at a desk and decided she was gunna wear those clothes, for a reason, for the audience or his gaze. so no, its not slut shaming, its creepy man shaming

*applause* A point that sadly needs to be constantly reiterated.
I’ve been saying exactly this for a long time now!

Bolded by yours truly.

Six years of doing this blog and I still can’t stress enough that literally no argument about a fictional woman “choosing” to dress skimpily for combat is valid in any way. 

We’d appreciate never again having this nonsense rhetoric thrown at us. 

~Ozzie 

As a well-known cartoon woman once said:

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I get it; people get attached to fictional characters. I do it a lot, too. But that doesn’t mean that they’re real and sentient. All I think of when I hear a creator justify a character design with “she chose to dress that way,” is that they probably only sees the character as an object with no actual motivations.

-Icy

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SAO/GGO Figurine Redraws, Part 1: “Bulletproof Armor”

This one was Ozzie’s idea, as she’s heard a lot about Sword Art Online and then got me in on those videos. I decided to stay in the franchise but go to a different fictional MMO. This is Sinon from the in-anime game Gun Gale Online, which is about characters with guns running around doing… stuff. 

I was doing some Googling trying to find the online store where I first found this thing and am now regretting I didn’t go for this picture instead:

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Just kidding, I don’t regret it at all. This is a totally Serious Action Anime, not about girl butts at all.

Anyway, I’m stalling because my redesign is pretty boring, I think. Most of my time was spent trying to fix her posture. Is this another casual, confident pose? Oh sorry, the description says she “marches along the battlefield.”

Apparently she is supposed to be wearing “bulletproof armor” in the original?????????? Where is it??????? So I gave her actual coverage that would allow her to lay on the ground and snipe without getting dirt and sand inside her clothes (also known as a Yikes). Honestly, I was so distracted by her pose that I couldn’t really think of any cool design elements to give her. I even kept the stupid boob-supporting buttons on her shirt.

Maybe one day I’ll go back to this and do it some justice. At least now I can believe she’s actually a sniper wearing bulletproof armor.

-Icy

PS – God, I forgot what the back of her looked like…. enjoy!

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Tidy Up Tuesday #93

Re: Demon Hunter redesign 

Some readers notified us that redraws which include crotch bulges for characters I reimagined as trans women are fetishistic and transphobic. I should have known better than to depict trans bodies in that way and I apologize sincerely. It goes directly against BABD’s philosophy of not reducing people, especially members of vulnerable groups, to body parts. I promise to do better in the future. 

~Ozzie 

Re: Harley Quinn design deterioration 

We have to disagree strongly with the idea that she (or any other fictional woman) needs to show a lot of skin while in combat to express that she’s a sexually liberated character.

As a commenter on one of the old posts on that said, great thing about the original Harley in Batman: TAS was that instead of being a 24/7 femme fatale (like most other villainesses), she dressed and acted sexy specifically for the occasion of having actual sex. 

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Compare also to our critique of Starfire, another superhero comic woman known for being openly sexual in her private life whose “sexy” costumes make zero sense in context of fighting. 

PS: If you can’t find Harley’s original bodypaint skin tight catsuit sexy enough without removing 80% of its coverage, we’re really worried for you. 

~Ozzie, – wincenworks & -Icy 

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armoredwomen:

Photography: @manufakturwest

Model: @stjarna_silfur

Make Up: @trixibeck

Armor: mytholon

A battle-hardened woman in dark-colored armor and messy hair? Yes, please.

-Icy

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Things Keep Getting in the way of our Livestream

Stuff just keep happening, and right when we were about to do a sexy man stream. This time it’s a mysterious injury! Perhaps Icy’s been cursed.

We’ll hopefully be back next weekend. Sorry for all the cancellations lately.

~Ozzie and Icy

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bikiniarmorbattledamage:

I remember when Fortnite first came out I had a look and felt that while it was kind of nice they were doing a little body diversity, they had a pretty clear agenda when it came to the Female Constructor design:

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Apparently there are still those out there for whom this is not sufficient conformity to traditional pandering, even if this character is also an option in the original game (no PhotoShop required)

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Have to say though, I feel pretty proud that “tumblrization” is credited for any sort of deviation from these designs. Another bright side is this has pretty great meme potential (with a few great ones in the Twitter thread already).

– wincenworks 

It’s quite telling about attitudes towards beauty standards when a slightly cartoony female character of average human built, with tan skin tone and clad in regular street clothes (and not the “unfeminine” full battle gear) is such an unbearable level of SJW pandering which the status quo warriors find necessary to “fix” with whitewashing, bikini tops and photoshop-based plastic surgery. 

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Just imagine how they would “un-tumblrize” Constructor if her original design wore a bulletproof vest, had darker skin and hair, zero makeup, fatter body and more detailed, less smooth facial features.

~Ozzie 

Credit to icantatricks and mitotic for the discovering of the photoshopped image, 

Vitaliy Naymushin for the original concept/promo art.
Artist for the photoshopped image unknown and probably not someone we want to promote.

So, as well as just to remind the world in general what the kind of people who complain that their female characters in battle royale games are “not sexy enough” are like… before Tumblr turns to ash and we all forget it existed except as a cautionary tale: I thought it’d be nice to bring this one back.

Not just because of its content, but because well when @gailsimone (who would never troll ANYONE) made a similar series of posts about the Punisher… well certain demographics did not show it the kind of support you’d expect.  At all.

So much for equality.  Oh well, at least there’s always one tag you can rely on.

– wincenworks

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Simplifying the Diablo Ladies, Part 2 

Demon Hunter from Diablo 3 was… a challenge, to say the least. Mainly because I couldn’t decide where to even start with that ridiculousness!
Not only is she super sexualized via the enforced “feminine” silhouette of skin-tight armor, boobplate and giant thigh gap, including a cameltoe… she’s also the most overdesigned thing I ever tried my Photoshop skill on. 

Apparently to work as an artist at Blizzard, you have to willfully forget the most basic rule any design school worth its salt teaches: Less is more. 
For concept art of what would ultimately be a small character model in-game, all those pieces have SO. MUCH. NEEDLESS. DETAIL! Teeny tiny little shapes of distracting ornamentation, basically nothing to rest your eye upon. 

I feel really sorry for anyone who ever attempted cosplaying this shitshow – so much work added into recreating all those arbitrary seams, textures and spikes, sheesh. 

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I was so busy simplifying the shape language that I overlooked some stuff I do pretty routinely, like getting rid of the cleavage in the first and second levels, and modifying the hourglass silhouette (I did add some bulk in higher levels, just not much). 

Preparation for posting this redesign is why I threw back this post lately (also, you know, it’s just a good post to resurface) – because those level ups convey neither a better set of armor, nor more protective layers, except for pauldrons. The shape of her boobs and thin waist remain a constant, no matter how much more “armored up” she’s supposed to be.

Like with Ashe before, I decided that my version is a trans lady, with a noticeable crotch bulge

in the place of the creepy thigh gap. Though I discarded my initial gag related to its size, as it was just in poor taste and not my joke to make. 

Overall, this thing took two or three weeks to finish (last level seemed unsalvagable at first), but hopefully I managed to put some actual design thought into this hot mess.

~Ozzie

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mistfather:

anna-nicholl:

vagabond-art:

unpopular opinion: harley quinn is better with clothes

made w @chokit-pyrus on paintshop pro 9 and paintshop pro X8

Also unpopular opinion: she looks more badass that way.

Further unpopular opinion: it just makes sense for her to wear more than a bikini. Gotham is fucking cold and she’s a graduated psychiatrist and psychologist, not someone immune to cold. Plus, body armor and potential for concealable weapons.

I especially appreciate the reinforcement of the diamond motif and red/black color scheme that got changed to red (sometimes pink?!)/blue for no reason over the years.

We touched upon this before, but the big problem with most contemporary depictions of Harley Quinn is that her designs convey anything but her Harlequin/jester theme. 

It’s not just that she dresses skimpy for no other reason than very transparent “fanservice” (as we established, she was plenty sexy and sexual even while fully dressed in her original costume), but that when it’s stripped of colors and prior knowledge of the character, no-one seeing this design for the first time would know what her deal is. 

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Who is that? Some randomly underdressed biker chick? Why is she wearing a cropped leather jacket directly over drafty lingerie? Where are her pants? Is there a reason for her girlish pigtails? Hell if I know! ¯_(ツ)_/¯ 

Good character design, including costume and make-up, should work context-free. The only thing thing we’re told by this sort of Harley design is “she sexy”. 

~Ozzie 

See also: This article summarizing Harley’s design changes since Arkham games introduced the non-jester look. Just remember that every time the word “unique” comes up, it should be read as “awful”.

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Tidy Up Tuesday #92

Time to answer some more recent and returning inquiries! 

Just heads up: we’re less likely to make a post based on a “Can you talk about XYZ?” question in our inbox than on a submission that includes image(s) and even most laconic description on what the design/character is. 

Speaking of which, any sort of submission, positive or negative, is welcome, as long as it’s sourced and if the negative ones come from commercial projects. 

Casual reminder that if you think that criticizing how fictional characters are designed is the same as slut shaming, you either a) didn’t read enough of this blog or b) you made up your mind before coming here and this site is not for you. 

Other things we addressed before: 

~Ozzie, – wincenworks & -Icy