Month: January 2018

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bikiniarmorbattledamage:

Remember when I said earlier that Kojima reference never gets old? Wish I meant it only as “mocking that tweet about Quiet is always funny”.

NOPE. Media creators actually keep using some variation of “Once you learn why her being half naked has convenient in-story reasons, you will feel ashamed about your comments” to preemptively shut down criticism they know they gonna get for creepy double standards in costume/character design. 

So, again, let’s make it clear: designing fictional explanations for gratuitously creepy ideas in fiction does not mean they’re impervious from real-world critique.

~Ozzie

Even before Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle movie came out this winter, its Thermian argument for the “jungle wardrobe” was more or less known: those are video game avatars of the teenage characters sucked into virtual incarnation of Jumanji. Also, Jack Black’s character’s a girl.

Does that explain Karen Gillan’s stereotypical “sexy action girl” look? Yeah, sure. 

Does that justify it? Is recreating the problems of the video game industry in a comedy that takes place inside of a magical video game a good commentary on those problems? Not necessarily. Doing satire is very hard.

Did that explanation really warrant a Kojima-style “Wait till you know the plot before criticizing” social media post?

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nope.gif

~Ozzie

So naturally when we first posted this a bunch of people rushed to tell us this was a reference to Lara Croft (as though we’d never heard of her).  Now, Lara has had many looks in her long career… but literally none of them have included a faux holster that is made exclusively to function as a “lifts and separates” cupless cincher.

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So right there, that kind of subverts any claim of “it’s the point we’re making” that was pushed as the explanation for this:

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And to be honest, reality already did peak highlighting of the absurdity of the short shorts back in 2008. When, then official face of Lara Croft, Alison Carrol, did a photoshoot demonstrating her gymnastic ability and the shorts’ inability to completely cover her labia majora.

– wincenworks

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Tidy Up Tuesday #72

Been a while since we’ve done one of these, so a few things to catch up on as we start our new year.

If you’re wanting feedback on individual designs of your own please submit them to @how-do-i-armour-and-stuff with some information.

When it comes to creative liberties and stylizing designs, our core concern is always “to what end?”.  

Things we have previously covered:

~Ozzie, – wincenworks & Icy

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Tidy Up Tuesday #72

Been a while since we’ve done one of these, so a few things to catch up on as we start our new year.

If you’re wanting feedback on individual designs of your own please submit them to @how-do-i-armour-and-stuff with some information.

When it comes to creative liberties and stylizing designs, our core concern is always “to what end?”.  

Things we have previously covered:

~Ozzie, – wincenworks & Icy

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iiphides submitted:

Found in a pop up while I was trying to watch something. 

Plus bingo cards! The gal on the left is the green board, while the right is purple.

Wow are those extremely awful (with @eschergirls​ anatomy on the left one, to boot!), I’d say your scores are very lenient.
Sorry to do a rare bingo correction, but those two are SO over the top physically impossible and ultrasexualized I think they deserve cards as fully crossed out as possible: 

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(Also, I’m using the most recent bingo card design (1.2), we grew quite tired of the “No underwear” square and discussions on what it means). 

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Okay, so the left one, with her “Hot Chick With a Sword” aesthetic has a pretense of being a warrior. What the other one’s supposed to be, aside from, well… 

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…a sorceress? …a cleric? …a double sided tape commercial cleverly disguised as a burlesque strip tease?

~Ozzie 

This game’s apparently supposed to be a “Greek Mythology Browser Game.” I don’t think it’s physically possible to squint hard enough to make that come across in any way.

Also, is it just me, or do those 2 ladies look like they were made for 2 different art styles? Not to mention, this “promotional material” is orders of magnitude more shameless about the sexy girls than any other art on their website.

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Although the “clothes” are still as confusing, so… at least that’s consistent?? 

-Icy

edit: Readers informed us that art in that web art is stolen. Surprising no-one, game with porny marketing is an asset stealer.

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@the-midnight-doe submitted:

Here we go again… Kojima posted a new concept art on his Twitter (left), which is apparently a female version of Ludens, the character featured in the Kojima Productions logo (right.) Can’t wait to hear about her tragic skin condition that requires her to wear literally half the armor of her male counterpart

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Point and Clickbait totally called it two years ago, and none of us are surprised.

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Given that he’s already over-used (which is to say, he used) the “she breathes through her skin” excuse, and, well, how most of Death Stranding’s promotion has gone thusfar: I’m pretty confident the explanation will 1. make no sense and 2. ensure we receive contradictory responses from his fans trying to defend it.

Of course, the first thing they always tell me is I don’t know enough about Kojima’s work so let’s look at some some of his fans are saying about the deep textual values of this complex piece:

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– wincenworks 

And let’s not forget that the experience of starting to understand Kojima’s genius ideas, including gratuitous definitely justified and not contrived female sexualization, takes only playing the whole game at least two times, preferably with complete familiarity of all his other work. 

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Two years later, @pointandclickbait​ still on point.

~Ozzie 

edit: Since it caused some confusion: we don’t know for sure whether female Ludens is just a “fun” variation on Kojima Productions mascot or a future character concept for Death Standing.
It’s alleged she might be the latter, but either way both her design and the commentary about Kojima belong among topics we discuss on the blog.