I think it’s been long enough but if you find yourself getting ready to type up a comment related to Mass Effect: Andromeda’s animations please consider watching this educational video from Extra Credits and not commenting here instead. This post is going to be a clarification of what we mean when we say Creepy Marketing Guy, and since the first post on this topic featured Samara, it’s only fair that Cora be the star of the clarification.
First, let’s start with what we do not mean when we refer to Creepy Marketing Guy. It does not refer to:
Using distinctly porny ads to promote products (be they porn or not porn), particularly if they’re generic images from a clickbait ad company
What we instead refer to is a product where you can see the development team’s intentions are to create something where every element is involved in telling a specific story – and then someone (usually marketing) steps in and makes the change specific parts of them with the assumption that the cishet male demographic needs the sexual availability of at least one female character broadcast to them in order to be interested in the unrelated aspects.
In this case, they pick Cora Harper, who is an ultra-professional soldier (one of the most battle hardened in the team), introduced as being calm in a crisis, the second in command on the mission, and seems to use “male” set of animations for her running, etc (instead of the elbows-in butt wiggle run generally assigned to female characters, including fem!Ryder).
Then you see in the outfit in the top of the post before launching into the tutorial mission, during which she appears in cut scenes like this:
Pretty much every other female character in the establishing chapters of the game has pragmatic, non-gendered attire on and off the battlefield. But, since Cora is a romance option for bro!Ryder, she apparently needs to wear a fetish outfit sculpted around her boobs and butt, while on the battlefield. The other female member of the away team who is a romance option also similarly needs to broadcast she’s got a sexy side (she also only owns one set of clothes).
All other traits other than romance option to bro!Ryder are considered secondary – to the extent now Cora looks not just contradictory to her character but out of place in the game about exploring a new galaxy, finding wondrous alien technology and shaping humanity’s future.
(This does not seem to apply to the male romance options, examples 1 & 2)
Ironically this now means she is so out of place cannot be included in marketing material without making the game look a ridiculous parody of a dramatic adventure exploring alien worlds in a new galaxy. It’s almost like they should have just given her one of the dozens of pragmatic outfits I am sure the concept artists designed for Cora before being told to sex it up.
– wincenworks
What is it with the “above boobs and under boobs belts” design feature that’s become so popular lately? Also, I thought Ashley’s outfit in Mass Effect 3 was insulting; the new BioWare studio really took it up a notch, though. … Good job?
I’ve read none of the promotional material for ME:A before it came out, so when I watched part of a Let’s Play of it out of curiosity, I couldn’t believe that Cora was this battle-hardened badass soldier type; I thought she was just another human on the ship. Her design makes me think of EDI before anything else. Those really sad attempts at actual armor pieces (like the baby plates on her shoulders) somehow make it worse, like Creepy Marketing Guy begrudgingly allowed it.
Also, send help, that butt window is staring into my soul.
This throwback is as the reminder that the problem of ridiculous female armor design is a wide spread enough probably that even studios known for being progressive end up falling prey to it.
That and well I recently acquired the Mass Effect Adult Coloring Book, which features Cora in it, but she’s clearly more inspired by the costume design than the writing in the game…
So much good work can be lost by pandering to an unappreciative demographic.
– wincenworks
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Angela and the layered armor (+ a cozy cardigan)
Marvel’s Angela redesign is still one of the favorite ones I streamed.
Maybe one day we’ll get to stream fixing that winged monstrosity.
Back to the redesign, tho: My priority, given that now she’s an Asgaardian warrior, was giving Angela actual armor, with lots of layering. She got some undershirt and pants, gambeson and mail tunic (painted vaguely, so it can be either chainmail or scalemail), then on top of that a believable breastplate instead of two half-spheres that barely connect at her sternum.
I disliked her generic huge belt design, so looking for inspiration in costumes of her father, Odin, I found this custom figure with really cool belt (unfortunately, source ungooglable):
So I based Angela’s belt buckle on his, as well as on the pattern from her magical ribbon thingie. Now that I look at it, I might have also taken some shape and color cues for her breastplate and gambeson tassetts from Odin.
Other little details: got rid of the pointless butt cape, made shoes not go thigh-high (how is she supposed to bend knees in metal thigh-highs anyway?) and gave her stockier built.
I’m really satisfied with that color scheme. What’s funny is that it was already there. Each color I used was sampled from some minuscule part of her costume that was drowning in the sea of dominating gold and flesh tones.
Proper layer-by-layer female* armor designalways deserves more love and exposure. For many reasons, including non–boob-shaped breastplate and the inclusion of gambeson padding. Always ready to be looked up in our reference and resource tags!
I finally sat down and drew an armor for the girl! I had been wanting to for forever, but I knew I was in for a headache, and oh boy, was I right :’D
Initially I thought about going the DA way, but honestly the in-game chevalier armor I find severely lacking, and Nadette is one to wear more refined things, so I knew I wanted one of those very fancy engraved armors that make the wearer look knightly and rich.
The gambeson had to be pink because that is her color, and of course she wears fancy frilly underthings (that are not period appropriate, but honestly. honestly. she deserves them). As for the armor, it is made of silverite, and there is a twin of it that belonged to her husband. The armor is engraved with floral motives and roses and (in the one I envisioned) also thorny branches, alluding to the family name, Desrosiers. The helm is decorated with the yellow feather that distinguishes chevaliers.
I’m super satisfied with how this turned out, I think I did her justice and she makes a pretty and very protected knight :3
Disclaimer: I did not draw the engravings, I just slapped some engraving drawings on top of it and added some highlights because this is for personal use and I did not have the patience nor the mastery to do it justice :’D
Full, functional plate armor with feminine touches that are NOT boob-shaped?
This is simply lovely. The attention to detail in the design decisions really shows what a person can do when they’re not just making a design for the tiddy. I’d love to see her with her weapon. The engravings are a bit too much for me, but honestly, I can totally see a noble family overdoing the fanciness on their armor to one-up the other nobles.
-Icy
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Tharja – Medieval Fantasy Body Stocking Technology
Jumping forward a few streams for this post, since this was back when I went way over our allotted time, and those old designs aren’t done yet… They’ll be done one day. ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ
So this was more of a fashion redesign exercise. Tharja, from Fire Emblem Awakening, is a sorceress. In terms of game mechanics, they tend to stay in the back and be pretty squishy, so I don’t expect her to wear full plate. I just wanted her to not wear… that thing. The body stocking, that somehow exists in this universe. Oh, and she comes from a hot desert region, so….
Since this is a fantasy universe that borrows very little from actual desert-dwelling peoples, I took inspiration from her counterpart, who’s from the same country. He looks like this:
So I took the skirt-like thing and the shirt he wears and adjusted it for Tharja. I liked her belt, so I kept it, and instead changed the waistline of the skirt to try and form some nice shapes.
Because of the skirt, however, the cape became redundant. I tried 2 different versions of it before scrapping it. Looking at it now, I should have just made it connect to her sleeves at the wrist. Without the cape, the little dangly things on it looked weird, and I hated her hair from the start, so I basically just moved the shapes around. Got rid of the ponytail thing, while adding a similar shape to her circlet, though I probably should have made it smaller. As for her tights, I was too lazy to paint over them, but in theory, they’d be like Henry’s (the boy above) legging-type things.
The last thing I did was adjust the color balance. Her colors were so muted in the original, especially her golden accents, so I upped the saturation on that to complement the purple.
Overall, I was trying to go for a more professional, distancing look. Tharja is antisocial and strange, after all. I do like the redesign, though there’s always things you see after you “finish” a work that could be improved upon. Honestly, I kind of want to redo Henry’s design, cause it’s kinda bad… Purple on purple; genus.
Apparently, according to all the people who were upset that we dared to call out Hideo Kojima and implied that his use of Quietin promotional materials was objectification and pandering, you can also act like it’s totally subversive by writing a long back story for the character.
It doesn’t have to be, or really their own back story, or one that the majority of players will even experience – just so long as there’s something there to claim that you “totally humanized and made worthwhile” the character who’s boobs appear in every promo post.
Then it becomes a deep commentary of the “reality of women in these situations”… there being so many women who run around in bikinis on battlefields in reality.
– wincenworks
Since “weaponized femininity” got namedropped in that post we reblogged this weekend, let’s maybe bring it back today. And wonder once again how exactly does displaying a conventionally attractive heroine’s
tits and supermodel strut equally as much as her
weapons and battle prowess count automatically as female empowerment and not thinly-veiled pandering to cishet men.
And also let’s remember another, more evocative name which Miss Represenation documentary gave to this Totally Subversive™
Apparently, according to all the people who were upset that we dared to call out Hideo Kojima and implied that his use of Quietin promotional materials was objectification and pandering, you can also act like it’s totally subversive by writing a long back story for the character.
It doesn’t have to be, or really their own back story, or one that the majority of players will even experience – just so long as there’s something there to claim that you “totally humanized and made worthwhile” the character who’s boobs appear in every promo post.
Then it becomes a deep commentary of the “reality of women in these situations”… there being so many women who run around in bikinis on battlefields in reality.
– wincenworks
Since “weaponized femininity” got namedropped in that post we reblogged this weekend, let’s maybe bring it back today. And wonder once again how exactly does displaying a conventionally attractive heroine’s
tits and supermodel strut equally as much as her
weapons and battle prowess count automatically as female empowerment and not thinly-veiled pandering to cishet men.
And also let’s remember another, more evocative name which Miss Represenation documentary gave to this Totally Subversive™
