Short Livestream Hiatus

We’re not going to be able to stream for a few more weeks, unfortunately, but we should be back before the end of October.

We’ll keep posting our redraws in the meantime, though! (∩ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)⊃━☆゚. * ・ 。゚,

~Ozzie and Icy

It’s funny how when you have a female character who has magical or supernatural protection, and thus can “wear whatever she wants”, that “whatever” always turns out to be lingerie.

Glock H. Palin, Esq.

Yeah, funny that… It’s almost as if Thermian Argument and false assessment of agency had an ugly baby. And that baby kept turning up everywhere.

~Ozzie

(via bikiniarmorbattledamage)

Personally I am still waiting for the invincible badass woman who battles evil in her sweatpants, t-shirt and a bath robe… fuzzy slippers optional.

Because if the Saints Row games have taught us anything, it’s that true heroism is engaging in spectacular acts of destruction while wearing whatever the fuck you want, no matter how ridiculous.

– wincenworks

If You Hate It, Then You Should Have Put a Sweater on It (and we did)

We wanted to do a silly stream where we put sweaters on a few poor ladies drawn for Applibot’s ridiculous requests. We apologize in advance for any discomfort caused by looking at the originals.


Hoo boy. The Rain Goddess, as she is called, from the Totally-Not-Collectible-Cheesecake-Game Legend of the Cryptids. (Although I couldn’t find her page on their wiki, maybe she was removed.) I have mixed feelings about this one, because on the one hand, I’m glad I could give her a sweater, but on the other, I end up scrolling past her original picture every time I look through my BABD image folder. It’s like looking into the Void. Or as the young’ins are calling it, a Cursed Image.

Since she’s a rain goddess (I guess? that’s what the artist called her), I googled “rain sweater” for inspiration, and found this lovely children’s sweater design.

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It was perfect, really. Most of the stream time was spent rendering this out so that it would somewhat match the original style. If nothing else, the artist had a great technique. It’s a shame about the subject matter, is all.

The final touches were on her face, where I gave her more of a smirk instead of a pout, and made her mascara/eyeliner run a little. 

May the Rain Goddess be comfy and warm in her bright rain sweater. While kneeling in the ocean. I couldn’t fix that part. Or her evolved form.

-Icy


There’s no-one who needs a cozy sweater more than Arctic Permafrost Empress (also from Legend of the Cryptids), both due to her icy domain and one of the most eyes-melting (:P) costumes. 

I referenced some batwing sweaters for this, and since one-color garment looked a tiny bit bare, I decided to paint great tits similar to the ones from the Sadira redo post and made them into a fun puntastic print on the sweater. (Edit on the left)

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I also changed her facial features to be more distinct and replaced her boring makeup with some blue face paint (which I only hope doesn’t appropriate any culture), just to make her tad more interesting than Random Supermodel #05867 

Here’s the original artist’s blog post, with some references he used for the Empress’ design. Amazingly,  seems like he came up with the weird lingerie shapes almost entirely on his own (or at Applibot’s request?). 

~Ozzie 

We often see the rhetoric “she’s a magic-user, she can’t/doesn’t have to wear armor” as defense for bikini armor, so this week we have some mage ladies who are dressed for action. They’re not wearing full plate or anything, but they have very practical outfits, each in their own distinct style.

This is Carabel (top) and Gislan (bottom) from the game Nine Parchments, a co-op game about magic students going on an adventure together. The character roster also includes a cat and a robot owl, of course.

Carabel specializes in ice magic, and I think that everything about her design really illustrates that. Gislan, meanwhile, likes nature magic, and her design similarly informs that. Neither lady is put in a bikini to showcase their magic roots, because there’s simply no need.

I recommend you guys check out the art of Nine Parchment’s art director, Charlotta Tiuri, who designed these lovely ladies, for character sheets and other cool projects.

-Icy

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Not surprisingly, Reika from Gantz was featured a couple of times on @eschergirls, there was even a post about a version of this figure that wears black bodypaint skin-tight catsuit under her impossi-kini and holds a gun badly instead of a sword. 

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I’m surprised that neither version wears 5-inch heels, but I’d assume that is because with such botched anatomy and pose, balancing her on ridiculous stilettos would just make the figure physically impossible to make. 

~Ozzie 

Post marked as sensitive, because there’s no way this figure is safe for work.

lifionda:

runegod:

skimpy soldier

@bikiniarmorbattledamage finally the armor men deserve

So sassy and empowered! Loving that belt jockstrap on the left, we really need more of those, what with crotch belts apparently being in-season right now. I really like seeing these two side-by-side, the simpler armor on the right, and the more elaborate, detailed one on the left. It’s kind of like seeing the high-ranking knight next to the common city guard.

You can check out the artist’s tumblr for more cute characters of all kinds!

-Icy

Maybe it’s because you’re taking the same strategy you would in designing characters for comics or video games and applying it to real people, except fictional characters are a representation of how you choose to see people or wish them to be portrayed, whereas real people get to do their own choosing, because nothing is more sexist than denying someone the right to choose, regardless of what that choice may be.

5 Responses to Sexism That Just Make Everything Worse

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Great article, go read it whole

(via bikiniarmorbattledamage)

Worth bringing back – this quote from a pretty great analysis of complex problems with perpetuating sexism. The quoted part and image are the ones most relevant to BABD’s subject matter, but the article is still worth reading whole. 

As we said again and again, in our agency and cosplay tags, real people possess the free will to dress however they like, while fictional characters look a certain way because someone decided so
Judging real women harshly for making a choice of dressing skimpy, especially paired with celebration gratuitously half-nude nonexistent women is the sort of cognitive dissonance we refuse to stand behind.

~Ozzie 

Fire Emblem Gals Part 1

We are assured that Fire Emblem is great game franchise with engaging characters. We have to take the readers’ word for that, because we always find a distinct dissonance between how FE female characters look and what their bios tell us about their stories and personalities. This week, my take on Nowi, the loli dragon.


Nowi 

Nowi of Fire Emblem Awakening embodies the “beloved” trope of a centuries-old being taking on the appearance of an underage girl… Who is open as a romance option to the player character. Never forget that Awkward Zombie comic which makes fun of it

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She chose to wear that!” is a bullshit excuse for a grown woman character running around a battlefield in a bikini, let alone for a thousand year old magical creature who also chooses to have the body and face of a child.

Since she’s really a dragon and probably needs no armor, the goal of redesign was to give her clothes that would look appropriate (rather than protective) for someone who takes form of roughly a 12-year old. 

I actually found the color scheme and many shapes in Nowi’s costume very good, just wasted because the focus was on showing skin and adding too many decorations. 

I decided that her teeny tiny scaly bra would make a good vest, if put on top of a crop t-shirt with the same lace finish as those white gloves… which she wears under the black gloves?
Then, since I liked the scale pattern a lot, I recreated it also on her belly. Is that a matching undershirt or her real dragon skin? Who knows! It looks cool. 

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The area between her belly and knees was made of pure visual noise. It was sexualized and overdesigned at the same time.
The only ridiculous thing I decided to leave in were the crossing belts, because they look cool enough and aren’t implausible… Provided that I added belt loops to her pants. Speaking of which, fetishy short shorts connected to stockings with garter belts had to go, for obvious reasons. 
Since her shoes had such a strange shape, I decided to turn them from thigh-highs with inexplicable ankle boots bottom into tights and ankle boots. All it took was to reverse and change the hem of the boots into that of short pants. 

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Ribbons weren’t a bad idea on their own, but they just completely didn’t belong as decoration on her sides, so I got rid of them and just transplanted the long tails onto her chest ribbon, making it both cuter and a more prominent splash of pink on her upper half.

All in all, it’s one of my favorite, while most subtle, redesigns. Probably also my best simulation of the original’s coloring style. I really hope it managed to turn creepyness of a sexualized childlike character into cuteness.

~Ozzie 

I think I’m one of the few people to whom sex does not sell. It perplexes.

Paula Poundstone 


While Paula makes this assessment in regards to her asexuality, I’d say it rings true to more than a few people, not necessarily only aces.

As we said before, unless it’s sex that’s being sold, marketing that hinges on sexyfying everything is more bizarre and confusing than effective. 

“Sex sells” is a questionable advertising strategy at best and an insult to all parties involved at worst.

~Ozzie 


edit: We’ve been informed that Poundstone was at one point charged with (but not convicted of) child abuse. I’m sorry I failed to do research on her felony. 

~Ozzie