Tag: Character Design

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Gotta Fix Everyone’s Weird Boob “Armor”

I was frustrated with how Marvel’s Valkyrie was just a sequence of weird design decisions. This particular version ticked me off because they had the cool cuirass with the abs, but then the chafing and the metal boob cones…. ugh.

I started with fixing that chest armor: getting rid of the weird metal bra and adding cool (to me, anyway) shoulder guards. I wanted to give her a more powerful look. I added some small dangling leather straps to mirror those on her belt.

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When it was time to fix her…. boots? I took the liberty of, at the same time, painting over poor Hel’s painful-looking <biggest air-quotes ever> “armor.” I actually started giving her a more reasonable breastplate but gave up. That would be a project all on its own.

Those leg ropes seemed very stupid to me, and they didn’t go with the rest of the design, so I gave her plate armor that kept the small shapes. I then gave her simple pants to be the large shape in the design. In hindsight, I feel like I should have gone through with the metal gauntlets I wanted to give her but bailed on.

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Finally, I replaced her Generic Pout™ with a more determined expression. Now both ladies can go forth and fight whoever it is they’re fighting. 

-Icy

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bikiniarmorbattledamage:

The tragic evolution of Sophitia’s costume (source unknown). Fortunately Sophitia was spared the indignity of whatever Soul Calibur V would have inflicted upon her.

Hard to believe that Soul Calibur IV was also the game that introduced us to Hilde Von Krone, badass beyond compare. (image from IGN’s Positive Women in Fighting):

(More images here)

I don’t understand… is there like an in house limit of how many female characters can be taken seriously per game?  Or is the prophecy real?

– wincenworks

This week’s throwback, as the followup to Tira bingo, is the gradual downfall of Sophitia’s character design in Soul Calibur. 

Saddest part (beside Hilde being an easy proof that SC can do female warriors well if they want to) is that this is by far probably least absurd and demeaning female costume change out of many in the franchise. 

Remember when Taki exchanged her titninja full body condom for this… thing by Mari “Bayonetta isn’t sexist because a woman designed her” Shimazaki? Or almost anything Ivy wore after this? Yeah, they can and do get worse.

~Ozzie 

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Boring LoL ladies redesign, Part 1

League of Legends, despite having maybe two highlights and occasionally attempting to improve, generally SUCKS at female character design. For more details as to why, consult our related blog, @leagueofsexism

Ashe

LoL heroines were among the first stream redesigns by Icy, but this was my first attempt at redoing a lady champion. I chose Ashe, the archer.
While she has completely serviceable color scheme and some nice looking shapes in cape, hood and limb departments, her core costume is just a short dress with deep cleavage and fabric belt. Also nipple adornments ¯_( ͠° ͟ʖ ͠° )_/¯ 

Since LoL fails at giving most female characters distinct facial features, I felt obliged to change this generic oval face with tiny nose and pouty lips into something more interesting. Now her face and nose are longer, with sharper jawline and cheekbones.

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I decided that instead of her ghastly pale skin, the design should be broken up white elements that will compliment her hair and belt.
You can never go wrong with Elizabethan pants. I’m especially proud of the matching poofy sleeves broken up by golden arm braceletes that were already there.
Obviously, I wouldn’t leave ornaments on each of her boobs, so I reduced it to a single one at the center of her chest. And her pauldrons no longer just hover on her shoulders, they (and presumably, the cape) are connected now at the sternum.

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Last change, suggested by Icy, was a codpiece, matching the period fashion of her pants. Yes, my redo of Ashe is an openly trans lady, because why not? 

All in all, I’m quite satisfied with how I managed to keep the silhouette and shape language relatively unchanged, while adding some more interesting stuff where gratuitous skin displays were before. 

~Ozzie 

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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 

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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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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