Tag: Character Design

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Glass cannon definition taken from here.

Writing, preliminaries and backgrounds by @wincenworks 
Linework and foreground colours by @icykitty, who is currently accepting commissions.

Following on from our discussion of visual design – it’s important to remember that there’s always a lot of options and usually you’ll want to explore what options work best for you initial concept and experiment from there.

If you can’t remember seeing any designs that translate well, look for new interpretations that emphasize the priorities you want to focus on.

Glass cannons, as an example, are really defined by how they compare to the “standard” units around them.  

From there, it’s up to you to decide how you showcase their relative power and vulnerability.  Generally speaking it’s pretty easy to tell when designers went with… other priorities.

image

And, of course, there’s always the option for non-sexual nudity that conveys savagery instead of availability.

– wincenworks

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(As well as engineering the video does touch on medical procedures, psychological experiments performed on animals and themes like kidnapping, murder and execution. Also some Nazi imagery and a very brief appearance of a homophobic slur.)

Round 4 sumitted:

Have you seen this? It’s an interesting lecture by Mike Hill about using functional, industrial principles and meaning in your designs to make a world more rich and believable. In the first part of the lecture, he talks about the difference between deeper satisfaction and pleasure buttons, with “The Last of Us” being an example of deeper layered design and “Candy Crush” being an example of instant pleasure button pushing. It’s funny how he stresses the importance to think about how things work and make them believable, since it also perfectly applies to bikini armor.

Bikini armor designs are nothing more than simple, instant pleasure designs. It’s a very simple, lazy form of gratification.To use his words, it’s short term, forgettable and contextless.

In contrast to that: believable, functional, deeper designs of female characters (and their armor) would bring much more depth to games and film and long term happiness and meaning.

I wonder how many bro-ncept artists are watching this lecture and think “yeah yeah I need to make that robot more believable” and then draw a girl in a bikini next to it though…

The video is quite long  but definitely worth sitting through if you’re aspiring towards doing design of any sort.

A key point covered is that if you want people to get immersed and invested in your work then it needs to be internally consistent. You don’t need to be 100% realistic, but you need to consider the message behind design decisions and their relationship with your overall production.

For those who find the encoding section and talking about the chair, there’s further discussion of the same topic at Every Frame A Painting.  But essentially the core message the same is: Everything that appears in a production can either re-enforce the message or detract from it at conscious and subconscious levels.

So, unless your story is primarily about sexy people doing sexy things, odds are good that design decisions to advertise sexual availability shouldn’t be a standard – particularly only for one gender while others are issued with practical attire.

Whether you consciously remember it or not doesn’t really effect the impact, it’s just really more about whether you were looking for it.  You might not notice it, but your brain will.

– wincenworks

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
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How the leading women of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate and Halo 5 are changing games

How the leading women of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate and Halo 5 are changing games

While unfortunately the article does take a focus on events over details of the characters, it’s important to note that all the games listed as positive changes are ones that avoid (at least mostly) the bikini armor trope.  This isn’t coincidental.

The vast majority of the time the visual representation of your character is the first impression on the audience, and hence essentially their introduction.  Characters hamstrung with an generic introduction of “well she’s sexy like a lingerie model and dresses like one too” are, at best, going to have fight an uphill battle to be taken seriously or seen as interesting in a long over-saturated marketplace.

If, however, you start with trying to make them interesting and let the visual grow as a reflection of the character – then you open yourself up to all kinds of possibilities.

– wincenworks

Posted on

How the leading women of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate and Halo 5 are changing games

How the leading women of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate and Halo 5 are changing games

While unfortunately the article does take a focus on events over details of the characters, it’s important to note that all the games listed as positive changes are ones that avoid (at least mostly) the bikini armor trope.  This isn’t coincidental.

The vast majority of the time the visual representation of your character is the first impression on the audience, and hence essentially their introduction.  Characters hamstrung with an generic introduction of “well she’s sexy like a lingerie model and dresses like one too” are, at best, going to have fight an uphill battle to be taken seriously or seen as interesting in a long over-saturated marketplace.

If, however, you start with trying to make them interesting and let the visual grow as a reflection of the character – then you open yourself up to all kinds of possibilities.

– wincenworks

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bikiniarmorbattledamage:

ria-rha:

fandomfumblr asked:

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”.
-Staci

Bolded for emphasis.

Funny how no-one who says “Designers had a vision of the character and made them a certain way.” ever notice that said vision is pretty much always the same.

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.

~Ozzie

more about bikini armor rhetoric on BABD

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bikiniarmorbattledamage:

ria-rha:

fandomfumblr asked:

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”.
-Staci

Bolded for emphasis.

Funny how no-one who says “Designers had a vision of the character and made them a certain way.” ever notice that said vision is pretty much always the same.

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.

~Ozzie

more about bikini armor rhetoric on BABD

Posted on

flowersoficetor:

@bikiniarmorbattledamage​

So a friend recently asked me what I thought about this outfit:

I said that I dont understand the panties or the thigh-highs, or why she has random skin windows, or why she seems to have better protection on her forearms than her vitals, but aesthetically it’s nice.

What do you think?

When it comes to “reasoning” behind the costume’s skimpyness and random holes, I suppose the trite “Tamaraneans are solar powered” excuse is still canon. And still bullshit, as long as Star’s fellow solar-powered alien Superman doesn’t dress like this. Or that. Or THAT.

As far as official Starfire outfits go, this is maybe the second (non-cartoon) one I recall that actually looks wearable, which is a big plus, considering the alternatives:

image

Guess my standards for this character’s look are just ridiculously lowered at this point, but I really do think that new outfit is an improvement and hope Starfire doesn’t revert to some sort of impossi-bikini anytime soon.

~Ozzie

more Starfire on BABD | more superheroes on BABD

Posted on

flowersoficetor:

@bikiniarmorbattledamage​

So a friend recently asked me what I thought about this outfit:

I said that I dont understand the panties or the thigh-highs, or why she has random skin windows, or why she seems to have better protection on her forearms than her vitals, but aesthetically it’s nice.

What do you think?

When it comes to “reasoning” behind the costume’s skimpyness and random holes, I suppose the trite “Tamaraneans are solar powered” excuse is still canon. And still bullshit, as long as Star’s fellow solar-powered alien Superman doesn’t dress like this. Or that. Or THAT.

As far as official Starfire outfits go, this is maybe the second (non-cartoon) one I recall that actually looks wearable, which is a big plus, considering the alternatives:

image

Guess my standards for this character’s look are just ridiculously lowered at this point, but I really do think that new outfit is an improvement and hope Starfire doesn’t revert to some sort of impossi-bikini anytime soon.

~Ozzie

more Starfire on BABD | more superheroes on BABD