Tag: costume design

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Hel Hath No Fury

From one Hel to another, this week. This particular one is from SMITE, which is a game that lets you play as various deities from different pantheons. This was their interpretation of Hel, who they split into 2 forms instead of keeping to the original mythology, where she was a person who had 2 different-looking halves. Ok, fine. But could they not have made her just a generic white woman? Twice? 

So that was my main beef with the original, besides the nonsensical clothes: the lack of any connection to her Norse roots, and her original myth. To briefly describe her game mechanics, which I was also considering while redesigning her: White Bread is a healer/support, and the Jelly Sandwich is a debuffer and does some over-time damage. The player’s able to switch back and forth between them.

In that vein, I decided to make Vanilla Wafer and Blueberry Tart into Old Woman Healer and Undead Monstrosity, respectively.

[Warning: There’s a close-up of her corpse face below the Read More!]

I was sent some lovely reference pictures of traditional Norse clothing, which I used to build the warm, functional clothing for the Old Lady half. I went with a color scheme that would evoke the frosty conditions of Niflheim, the place where her domain was located.

She floats in the game, so I was able to get away with impractically-long skirts.

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I also made her a woman of color, because why not? Honestly, the sheer Whiteness of the original just had to change.

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The scarf is her dog, Garmr. Since this is her healing half, the dog is nonthreatening (even though I used a wolf scarf for reference, shh).

For her debuffing half, I just took the idea of the fact that in the original myth, half her body looked like a corpse, and went all out with it. And like a corpse, she’s got no tits, cause fatty tissue is the first to go in the decomposing process.

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Since she floats, she didn’t need the legs, and the dog becomes an angry knife inspired by traditional Norse knives. In-game, it would be mostly the animated knife that would attack. Over-time damage can be flavored as bleeding from a bite, stuff like that.

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So that’s my Hel. I had a lot of fun working on her, especially because we don’t get to work with older ladies a lot, and I got to use a lot of cool references.

Ozzie just gave me the idea of giving each version one eye, since the corpse has 2 and the old lady doesn’t, which would have been a cool idea.

Now if only SMITE would remove their depictions of Hindu dieties, but that’s a rant for another day.

-Icy

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otherwindow:

Hanzo | Magician

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Every year, Hanzo bypasses the bodyguards of Hanamura to visit Shimada Castle, employing all manner of tactics, combat, and costumes.

  • Storm Arrows take the shape of rabbits.
  • Dragonstrike is now Rabbitstrike.

There isn’t a single thing I don’t love about this concept: The quiver that’s too short because it’s ~magic~, the tattoo going up his entire leg, the raw magic bow, the little mask.

We all know that Hanzo is a ranged combatant, so he doesn’t need to wear actual protective clothing. Indeed, those shoes probably help him be stealthier! And if someone does find him and tries to initiate in melee, he’s got the distraction tactic all ready to go with those buns. It’s perfect.

Blizzard really missed a golden opportunity with the magician skin idea. I am conflicted about one thing though…. which skin of the bottom 3 is my favorite!! How am I supposed to choose?

-Icy

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Starfire and the Legend of Murky Colors

Injustice 2′s Starfire was a challenge with very little potential, so I mostly redid her from scratch, arriving at a mix of her 2000s cartoon outfit and 80s comics hair.

This was by far the hardest design to work with palette-wise, considering not only how desaturated colors in Injustice graphics are, but how outright low quality the official image is – it looks like something’s wrong with how they rendered the lightning!
Muted colors were a double insult, considering Starfire’s vibrant color scheme corresponds with her vibrant personality. Did my best to recreate it by cranking up saturation, salvaging the few colors it did bring out and painting over the badly-lit parts with them.

Changed her bodypaint-bikini into a crop top and shorts (with all do respect to Glen Murakami’s cartoon Starfire design, flying in a skirt is just the worst idea).  

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Only part of her Injustice design worth salvaging were decorative bits on her belt, which I recolored silver and recreated the pattern on her new collar and arm guards to match. Painted her limp, lifeless hair to actually look fiery without even being made of flame – by simply basing them on her original New Teen Titans hairstyle. 

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Got rid of those weird bellbottom things on her ankles, which served no purpose and seemed like a throwback to her ugly New 52 footwear. Also, as usual, made her less skinny.

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All in all not necessarily my best or most original redesign, but it’s best I could do with limited time, constant computer crashes and very hard material to work off of.

~Ozzie

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the-midnight-doe submitted (and Ozzie bingo’d):

And on today’s episode of Doing Women Better™, Blizzard finally granted us the much requested Magician Symmetra. Only instead of going for something super classy like the many fan interpretations out there or even just ladies in suits from real life, they went with…this.

Lack of pants and framing her bust (what is even with those metal plates) aside, the fact that this is a legendary skin and costs 3000 credits when it’s so close to her default skin makes this whole thing very disappointing. 

Thanks for submitting this highly requested post, including some quality scathing commentary! The Saga of Pantless Symmetra continues. 

This would be insulting enough just by the virtue of being a fetishy leotard instead of a suit, but what the hell are those boob-holder bars?! 
They’re some sort of garbage afterthought slapped on to make this look more “sci-fi”, I guess? Why would a costume need that? Because you can’t be science fiction without framing the tits with random pieces of metal? 

Since the bingo lacks a “What the fuck am I looking at?!” square, I marked “Boobplate” instead.

Here’s some closeup, to see their full absurdity, provided by @red-queen-on-the-heathen-throne:

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Fun fact: a convention I attended last week had an Overwatch: Character design done right! talk that I just couldn’t subject myself to come to, both out of the fear of my brain melting on sight and because I didn’t want to rain on some enthusiastic fan’s parade when the time for Q&A comes. 

I’m still amused that at the same time Blizzard made THIS, easily disproving the “character design done right” claim. 

But sure, Overwatch is totally ready to do women better. Anytime now.

~Ozzie 

#GiveSymmetraPants2k18

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Seris, the Oracle of Nothing

I decided to do a redesign of the oracle Seris from Paladins basically 5 minutes after I first saw her design. It was just so… disjointed. The leather top, the pointless belts, the tassel on her magical orb… Ugh. It told me absolutely nothing about her. That purple orb was the only indicator of her oracle-ness.

The only things I liked were: the hood (for the most part), the shawl, and the geometric designs on her skirt. I kept those, and decided to go with a moth-y motif overall, making the shawl longer and adding the top with wing-like tips. I really did not like the color scheme, so I added more light grey and some black, getting rid of all the we-need-another-color-but-got-no-ideas brown.

I made her float (though it’s a bit hard to tell), as it seemed fitting to me since she has an in-game ability of becoming invisible by stepping into a parallel dimension. It’s a symbolic detachment from the material dimension, as well as making her feel a bit more alien. She is supposed to be an oracle, after all. It also fixes her proportions a bit.

I took a few sessions to get to an idea I liked, and then a few hours to execute it. I probably would have added more details to her top, if I had the time. This redesign is back from the days when I was trying to redesign basically everything, which we’ve moved away from since then.

-Icy

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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.

Thoughts on the original: The only real merit of this golden bikini armor is that it’s not the ‘92 Todd McFarlane design. Though amazingly, she manages to encapsulate the 90s superheroine look even more during the run of her new comic, when she gets a power upgrade! 

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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. 

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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): 

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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. 

BONUS IMAGE: a tribute to @neil-gaiman‘s post he made when the Marvel redesign got introduced, in which he hopes Angela owns a warm cardigan. 

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~Ozzie 

See also: those other cool redesigns @eschergirls readers did and I was unaware of while doing mine.

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Rainbow Mika and the draftiest of wrestler outfits!

Another redesign I did solo was Street Fighter’s Rainbow Mika, a “wrestling” costume made approximately 80% out of holes. 

Biggest challenge was figuring out how the hell those breasts are supposed to look when actually contained by fabric – nothing about how they interacted with it in the original made any sort of sense, so the chest area got basically repainted from scratch, with an attempt to recreate white pattern concealed under the balloon boobs as a sort of chest emblem shape. 

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While there’s nothing wrong with the costume having some tasteful cutouts, the original’s were so awkwardly placed, massive and physics-defying that I decided it was easier to change them to white fabric, while leaving in some smaller holes oh her shoulders and elbows. I’d probably leave something on her legs, if the image shown Mika from another angle. 

A small, but significant touch was making the shapes on her sides rounder, so they’re not pointing at her crotch anymore. Also got rid of the pantyline frills, which made her look as if fancy lingerie was peaking from beneath her leotard. Left the frills on her collar and wrists be. Also didn’t do anything to the boots, as they’re perfectly nice and likely the only legitimate wrestling element in her original attire. 

Final touches was giving Rainbow more secure hairstyle for a fighter (while stylized Sailor Moon-like hair isn’t much of an issue to me, it just didn’t match the more practical costume anymore) and a knocked-out tooth, to communicate the inherent danger of being a wrestler/fighting game heroine. Also, sometime after finishing the stream, I made her facial features slightly bit less generically pretty, following many watchers’ advice.

Surprisingly enough, criticizing R. Mika is one of the most “controversial” things we ever did on this blog. 
To this day, our bingo of her outfit from Street Fighter V tends to periodically resurface among the Status Quo Warriors enraged at us for talking smack about that costume. Their “arguments”? 

1. This is totally very legitimate female professional wrestler outfit! OF COURSE that’s exactly how women in that field of sport and entertainment dress, just look: 

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True, those wrestlers, due to double standards imposed by the industry, tend to show off their cleavages and bellies… which sooo definitely is the same as a video game character’s suit denying all laws of physics and geometry for the sake of showing maximum flesh surface! </sarcasm>

According to them, occasional low-cut v-neck or belly window = giant hole where the back, each breast, thigh and buttcheek is. 

2. This is not an armor! That outfit this fighting game character wears to beat the shit out of other fighting game characters shouldn’t be criticized as a fighting outfit, because it’s not a literal suit of armor. 

3. Male Street Fighter characters are treated in exactly the same way! Just look at Zangief’s hairy chest and minuscule speedo! After all, big muscles and no shirt = male sexualization, right? 

Needless to say, exactly the sort of easily debunkable “logic” we’d expect from the people who outcried “censorship!” when this character’s butt slap animation was removed by the developer. 

~Ozzie