Am I the only one who’s getting sick of the excuse of “That’s how the artists want to draw, so stop telling them what to do!” excuse when it comes to terrible bikini battle armour? It’s like these people expect all designs to be nothing down to personal preference, and yet never think about the bigger picture of just how many male artists are part of our culture that influence these decisions? Seriously, it’s a poor execuse and I’m sick of hearing ut.

We’re definitely with you there, friend! That’s why there’s the “art shouldn’t be censored!” rhetoric bingo square: cause “creative freedom” should not be a Get Out of Jail Free card of character design.
As femfreq puts it:

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Yup, it’s all about the big picture of our media, not individual examples. Crying “artistic freedom” (or “stylization”, for that matter) to justify questionable design ignores seeking for the reason artist decided to make such choices.

Publishing this ask cause those points need to be iterated more.

~Ozzie

The other important thing that people should remember is that commercial art (such as covers, character designs, 3d models in games, etc) is not intended to be a purely artistic experience – it’s a product for consumption.

Artists will have to follow briefs that tell them kind of mood to give the work, what characters to put in it, what themes to put in – unlikely that an art director adding “Don’t put the female characters in ridiculous and hyper-sexualized costumes” would somehow break a professional artist’s will to create.

– wincenworks

Fetishizing ‘power’ in women characters – having them kicking ass and always being ready with a putdown – isn’t the same as writing them as human beings.

Jack Graham, in Stephen Moffat – A Case For The Prosecution, a guest post on Philip Sandifer’s blog (via linnealurks)

Not exactly BABD’s subject matter (costume design), but very much related. You can’t cry “But this character’s personality makes her WANT to be sexy and badass at the same time!” when being sexy and kicking ass are literally the only two things she’s designed around.

~Ozzie

Why I was never really sold on Bayonetta.

– wincenworks

Funcom’s “Mankini-Gate” double standard

pkudude99 submitted:

An interesting article over at Massively about the recent “Mankini” April Fool’s joke that Funcom put in, but then their upper management pulled:  http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/04/10/chaos-theory-funcom-flubbed-it-with-the-secret-worlds-mankinig/

I think it was stupid of their management to do it, as does the article author.  Why is this allowed for a woman:

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But not this for a man:

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There actually is a male version of that Egyptian outfit that shows quite a bit of skin too, but nothing like it does for the female version,but there are plenty of female-only outfits that are very scanty too.  The worst of the lot is this one:

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That’s why the April Fool’s joke worked so well — Funcom was poking fun at their own propensity for the double-standard.  And that’s why I’m so upset with their management’s decision to pull the mankini outfit.

For grins, here’s a shot a blogger friend of mine took before they got yanked: 

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You’ll note the 3rd male in the shot is wearing a traditional speedo, and that’s been left in the game.  I don’t see that it exposes any less skin than the mankini.  I just don’t get it.

Well I suppose it was too much to hope that every executive in gaming would be as cool as Mark Long.

But really, after people have laughed and supported the joke is not the time to shut it down and try to pretend that it never happened.

Especially since the whole point of a mankini is that you can never unsee it.

– wincenworks

Apparently fans speculated it to be a copyright issue (but it’s highly unlikely)… Maybe Funcom wanted to be safe than sorry for not asking 20th Century Fox about official Borat licensing or something? ;P

~Ozzie