Started a second playthrough of Inquisition. Pretty early on I realize I have “special shipments” from the DLCs, and I figure hey, those are better than the armor I’ve got, I’ll wear them for a bit. Only…
SOLAS. WHAT ARE YOU WEARING?
… first of all, damn. Who knew he was that attractive under his apostate hobo garb?
Started a second playthrough of Inquisition. Pretty early on I realize I have “special shipments” from the DLCs, and I figure hey, those are better than the armor I’ve got, I’ll wear them for a bit. Only…
SOLAS. WHAT ARE YOU WEARING?
… first of all, damn. Who knew he was that attractive under his apostate hobo garb?
Just look at the attention to details! He wears garters on his thigh-high high heel boots, his arms AND his star-shaped shield… which also has garter handles.
Whoever that character is, he’s gonna be glorious.
Sergeant Delphine Angua Von Überwald from the Discworld adaption, Going Postal. She’s wearing the exact same armour as her Watchmen counterparts, with the exception of her badge being on a collar around her neck, because she’s a werewolf and it pays to advertise you’re still a Watchbeing when you’re about to rip a miscreants arm off.
In the books, it is mentioned she had her breastplate reworked, to “suggest there was something other than muscle under there”, which implies Watchwomen get given the exact same armour as everyone except the trolls.
I’m pretty sure the breastplate line was always intended to be a boobplate joke, as in Angua is so busty she needs one fitted. Especially since in the earlier books the Watch was issued with relatively random and ill-suiting uniforms (hence fat sergeant Colon is noted to wear a muscle cuirass).
It was a relief to see the mini series give her a regular breastplate.
That said, the character in the books in general is a stone-cold badass and the start of Ankh-Morpork’s City Watch becoming Discworld’s most diverse organization, both gender- and race-wise. Angua and her fellow watchwomen (especially Cheery Cheri Littlebottom, the breaker of dwarf gender taboo) deserve all the love from BABD.
So i’ve come across this blog of yours, and i can’t help but notice you seem to hold this ideal that showing skin is bad. I’m not saying there’s not a time and a place for everything, and i’d be quite warm to a game where someone in skimpy or silly armor got their just desserts. But i don’t see why you think these designs inherently wrong on such a level. Designers designed them for a reason. They had a vision of the character and made them a certain way. No “change” needs to be made.
You’re right, designers did design them that way for a reason: to be sexy. And that’s where a change needs to be made. When everyone is “sexy”, no one is. There needs to be more variety in female character designs.
You see, women are like onions. But not because they turn brown and start sprouting little white hairs if you leave them out in the sun too long: because they have layers (didn’t you see Shrek, geez). They’re also all different, though you wouldn’t guess so based on media representations of them. I’ll start accepting a designer’s vision for a sexy lady, the minute that stops being the only vision they ever have.*
*Also what we get isn’t always the original design as there’s sometimes pressure from editors or other outside influences to make the character “sexier”.
As a designer myself I’m REALLY tired of this argument. Art and design does not exist in the vacuum. An idea being the artist’s “vision” does not make it inherently good or creative, in fact the first ideas that come to a designers mind tend to be the most derivative and uninteresting.
On the other hand, as Staci notes, lots of designs RHA, BABD and related sites comment on aren’t actually a result of concept artist’s original idea, but a product of many revisions from the executives. And executives (unlike artists they hire) are the people whose “vision” is usually the farthest from creative.
No matter how you look at the “artist’s sacred vision” logic, it’s flawed and in no way justifies a cliched, unresearched, insonsistent design.
~Ozzie
Bringing this back as a reminder that “an artist created it, therefore it’s creative” is NOT a valid rhetoric to justify bikini armors… or anything, for that matter.
So i’ve come across this blog of yours, and i can’t help but notice you seem to hold this ideal that showing skin is bad. I’m not saying there’s not a time and a place for everything, and i’d be quite warm to a game where someone in skimpy or silly armor got their just desserts. But i don’t see why you think these designs inherently wrong on such a level. Designers designed them for a reason. They had a vision of the character and made them a certain way. No “change” needs to be made.
You’re right, designers did design them that way for a reason: to be sexy. And that’s where a change needs to be made. When everyone is “sexy”, no one is. There needs to be more variety in female character designs.
You see, women are like onions. But not because they turn brown and start sprouting little white hairs if you leave them out in the sun too long: because they have layers (didn’t you see Shrek, geez). They’re also all different, though you wouldn’t guess so based on media representations of them. I’ll start accepting a designer’s vision for a sexy lady, the minute that stops being the only vision they ever have.*
*Also what we get isn’t always the original design as there’s sometimes pressure from editors or other outside influences to make the character “sexier”.
As a designer myself I’m REALLY tired of this argument. Art and design does not exist in the vacuum. An idea being the artist’s “vision” does not make it inherently good or creative, in fact the first ideas that come to a designers mind tend to be the most derivative and uninteresting.
On the other hand, as Staci notes, lots of designs RHA, BABD and related sites comment on aren’t actually a result of concept artist’s original idea, but a product of many revisions from the executives. And executives (unlike artists they hire) are the people whose “vision” is usually the farthest from creative.
No matter how you look at the “artist’s sacred vision” logic, it’s flawed and in no way justifies a cliched, unresearched, insonsistent design.
~Ozzie
Bringing this back as a reminder that “an artist created it, therefore it’s creative” is NOT a valid rhetoric to justify bikini armors… or anything, for that matter.
