Month: July 2019

Posted on

enecola:

Another game I’ve never played but felt that it would be fun to do an armor fix for!

BlackRose from .hack

I remember back in the day I thought she looked really cool, and that hasn’t really changed but I wanted to just give her some protection.Also what kinda sword is that I am so confused.

Man, this brings back memories. Mostly of a very depressed and quiet protagonist either sitting around or looking confused/concerned at various set-pieces. (Can you tell that I found the series boring?) Oh, there was also a cat lady. In the games, at least.

I really like the redesign! There are so many small but great changes, like the pattern on her stomach that breaks up the large overall shapes much better than in the original (what large shapes). I especially like the knee guards; they make it really obvious how the original’s inclusion of teal/grey is not enough to tie the design together, but it looks great in the redesign.

I’m also not mad about the sword being changed; I always wondered how it attached to her, even when I used to watch the show.

-Icy

Posted on

So Wolfenstein: Youngblood has been out for a few days, and the fact that it exists has been driving alt-right, capital G “Gamers” nuts.

It’s a fun action game where a pair of fictional women, who are not designed as Sexbot 3000s, kill a whole bunch of Nazis. As well as that, they work with a primarily female main cast, including a young black woman (voiced by a black woman – yes this is rare in games!) as their super genius handler. It’s great, and that Nazis hate it makes it even greater.

How batshit are they going? Well on top of trying to bomb the Steam reviews and turn the Discussion boards into a cesspit – they’re trying desperately to bomb the Metacritc as well… like no one will be suspicious.

image

Of course, in the reviews they’re claiming a variety of contradictory issues which I’m not going to go into here since experience tells me they’re going to spam them regardless of how often they’re countered.  It’s a thing.

Now, while I’m not a fan of the outfits having plating to essentially showcase where the boobs are – otherwise this is basically how to do any sort of form fitting “soft” armor (chainmail, kevlar, etc).  It sits on the body without pushing boobs and butts into display, and the natural light means it’s rarely titillating and definitely not designed for suspicious camera angles (pay attention Mass Effect)

On top of that, the other costumes for the twins and many other female characters are great and the twins are some of the best characters introduced into the FPS genre in a long, long time.  So of course bro-dudes hate it with the fury of a thousand suns.

So if you’re looking for a game you can play with a buddy, or just one you play with a female AI companion who isn’t also a Sexbot 3000, and you’re as against Nazis as we are – consider: Youngblood.

– wincenworks

Posted on

thatsr0ughbuddy:

boogabukowski:

boogabukowski:

can people stop drawing ladies that look like they were vacuum sealed inside their dresses

if their boobs look like this in their clothes

you’ve already failed

I wish this wasn’t so disturbingly accurate… 

And I mean it’s been public knowledge for years that Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns was literally vacuum-sealed into her Catwoman suit and it still didn’t look even close to the ridiculous boobsock bodypaint technique that comic book and video game artists render superheroine costumes in. 

And this shit gets a thousand times worse whenever the costume is not even supposed to made of latex, but regular-ass fabric… or metal ¯_( ͠° ͟ʖ ͠° )_/¯ 

~Ozzie 

PS: Not saying that male characters don’t get suspiciously tight supersuits or… T-shirts sometimes. But, we all know who’s mostly on the butt end of the problem and how feminine bodies tend to be framed compared to masculine bodies, even in comparably tight costumes. 

Posted on

So, new Overwatch hero Sigma – aside from looking like he wandered in from a Capcom game has had a problematic issue in that he’s been bare foot due to some very negative and misleading stereotypes about mental illness (articles here, here and here).  Also he has a worrying but probably not legally actionable resemblence to a fanmade female character from two years ago…

image

Given all of this, the least that Blizzard could do is cover his feet – and if there isn’t enough fabric to go around, well Loudwindow has found the perfect solution.  Perfect.

image

In summary: Give. Sigma. Socks. You. Cowards.

Also stop being shitty to people living with mental illness and stop supporting harmful stereotypes in general (especially after claiming you were challenging them at the 2017 DICE Summit).  Classic Blizzard.

– wincenworks

(Original tweet here)

Posted on

Old Redesign Switcheroo Part 2

Why did I pick this concept art with this pose…….

As a person who used to actually play Soul Calibur once upon a time, I wanted to try my hand at redesigning Tira. As Ozzie pointed out in her own redesign, she is definitely the poor woman’s Harley Quinn, so I went on the fan wiki to scour for any material I can use to make her unique. I discovered that she has a connection with crows, apparently, which is presumably why there’s one in this concept art. So I ran with that as far as I could!

I started by changing her hair and face, as usual. I smeared her lipstick also, cause I feel like she’d the type to put on makeup and then forget she has it on. Basically, mood.

image

I then incorporated an actual crow motif by giving her a feathered collar and feathered tights, sort of. And yeah, she’s now wearing tights with the legs from some poofy pants and feathers. It’s a definitely a Look. She’s supposed to be very eccentric, is my excuse.

image

As for her shirt, I honestly had 0 ideas, so I did a simple white sleeveless shirt with a vest, to at least add some good lines that would lead toward the poofy and feathered legs.

My rendering for this ended up being sooo basic. I blame the pose. Painting is my passion.

Ozzie and I agree that the original design is pretty much unsalvageable, unless we’re given like 2 weeks to do research and thumbnails to redo her from scratch. I did end up going way over the time limit for this, cause I kept redrawing various elements, but at least I put some thought into it. 

-Icy

Posted on

antivertigo:

twomillionbees:

twomillionbees:

petition to call “fanservice” something else bc i am in fact a fan and that type of thing does me a DISservice

proposed alternate term: “perv pandering”

pros:

  • makes clear who it is for
  • frames it in a negative light
  • gross dudebro fans like to accuse any attempt at diversity or representation as being “pandering” so it’s fun to point out how they’re being pandered to
  • alliteration

@bikiniarmorbattledamage

Agreed 100% I was always hesitant to use the term “fanservice” for what is clearly just perv pandering. Because as I learned it first, it meant exactly what the name implies – rewarding fans with a creator’s nod; pleasing the audience.  

References to continuity, cameos of beloved characters, canonizing popular ships – those are examples of fan service.
Gratuitous sexualization of female characters isn’t really that. That’s just erotica, plain and simple. Let’s not imply that wanking to a skimpily-clad fictional heroine requires being her fan first. 

~Ozzie 

Posted on

So it seems Remedy (creators of Max Payne, Alan Wake and Quantum Break) have decided to branch out, rather than making a game about a man who can’t stop narrating about his surreal life they’re going to make Control, a game about a woman who can’t stop narrating about her surreal life…

What’s really ground breaking about this though is that it shows exactly how easy it is for developers to make a female character who can run and gun without sexifying up her design.  They’ve even refrained from using her pants to produce gratuitous butt shots in the promos!

image

And it’s a definite improvement on the last role the voice actress played in a Remedy game… because tactical clothes do not fit like that:

image

It turns out this stuff was easy all along, all you have to do is think of your female character as a person… who knew…!?

– wincenworks

(Yes her hair is sub optimal but in a game where you have surreal telekinetic powers, I will take annoying but expressive hairstyle over “if no boob, how woman” tops any day – at least the former is expressive of character and can make for dramatic framing/composition)

Posted on

No Livestream This Weekend

Icy messed her back up again, so we won’t be streaming this week. We should be back next week!

~Ozzie and Icy

Posted on

An excerpt from the Dudebro Dictionary

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

Creative Freedom – reason gratuitous female boobs and butts must be preserved at all costs in That Thing That I Like

Censorship – reason gratuitous female boobs and butts are not featured in That Thing That I Like 

~Ozzie

Dudebro Dictionary now supplemented by @yanavaseva [x] and @hardboiled-w [x]!

Self–Censorship – entertaining the idea of adding gratuitous female boobs and butts but ultimately deciding not to because you just got a better idea. 

Submitting to Harassment – Starting to add gratuitous female boobs and butts but, upon reading arguments against it in discussion topics on forums and message boards, deciding that you see where they’re coming from and you hadn’t thought of that before, so you decide to tone the boobs down a notch with a minor edit that in some cases is only noticeable in side by side comparisons. 

Artist’s Wishes – This tiddy must be preserved in all its glory despite the fact that the artist wished to remove the tiddy. 

~Ozzie