So I was looking for some silly RPGs to play to pass the time and I found Valiant Force, which is where this lovely piece of work comes from.
And a piece of work it is. It’s always a trip to see generic bikini armor that is at the same time exceptionally overdesigned. (Also I just want to note that her back leg is fully on the ground, heel and all, which means her legs are different lengths.)
So Valiant Force is another mobile action MMO where you collect the greatest “Heroes (capitalized) to have ever existed.” And just like all the other similar games we’ve featured here, the sexy girl aspect of it is completely irrelevant to gameplay. Or anything.
But that doesn’t stop the game’s website to feature this in its promotional art:
that I picked to redesign for the same week: Velvet! I started out by giving her actual pants. Then I moved the leg armor she has from her right leg to the left, in order to balance out the armor on her right arm, to which I added more parts. I decided to keep the leg belts because she seemed like an edgy character from the backstory I read up on the game wiki.
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to do about her red shirt. There were probably like 6 different iterations, and I didn’t really like any of them. The final design before this final one was actually:
Because despite the awful execution, I could see what the artist was trying to do: frame her body with large shapes (the coat, the monster arm, and the hair), and fill the inner body with small shapes. I did like the torn edges to her shirt, but didn’t know what to do with the collar.
Then after the last stream I spent working on her, we got an ask from @solaela explaining that her outfit was put together from prisoner belongings when she escapes from jail early in the game. That gave me the idea that, what if she found an old breastplate that was confiscated, or on a guard that had to be knocked out, or whatever? It wouldn’t fit her perfectly, and it might be old and dirty, but even if Velvet doesn’t care about modesty, she should probably care about staying alive. So I gave her a breastplate and broke it up into smaller shapes.
While the Thermian Argument is a poor excuse for bad design, I do think knowing about the character helps to makes for better designs.
Besides fixing the boobplate, look at all those added details that greatly improve this design; the added armor to the legs, the shape changes to the pauldrons and couters, the tabard, it all looks so much better. Now this is a skin I would love to have, if I played as Brigitte.
Okay, I just have to include this blurb about her from the wiki because it made me laugh:
“The leader of the Westron Labrys band of lady bandits in the western part of the peninsula. She loves to fight, and hates men.”
Is that why she doesn’t wear a normal breastplate, cause it’s too man-like? Seeing the designs of other lady NPCs in the game, this looks like just another generic bad armor design rather than any attempt at characterization. It’s disappointing that they decided that she needed sleeves, but not the rest of the undershirt, which would have prevented the chafing that’s probably the reason she’s so grumpy.
My headcanon is that she’s killing men because they’re the ones wearing comfortable armor, and she just hasn’t looted a breastplate that fits her well enough yet.
-Icy
“I hate men, therefore I dress in a way that panders to them!” reminds me of Oglaf’s Glamazon Way strip.
Except Oglaf is a self-aware parody and makes a point about gendered double standards instead of playing them straight with no subversion.
~Ozzie
Posted on
Posted on
Ah, this not-so-old design, as I actually finalized it a few days ago, even though I started it back when we just started doing this whole livestreaming thing. So this is Shielder from Fate/Grand Order, whom we featured on the blog before. I took her “stage 2″ armor and tried to actually make it look more like armor and less like… whatever the heck that is in the original. I decided not to give her full plate because she does have that huge shield (now with wheels!).
One weird notable detail is that she seems to have these purple “racing stripes” on her arms and legs; what’s that about? I got rid of all that stuff and instead incorporated the purple as cloth detail. The poofy pants make a comeback, this time with a poofy-sleeved shirt to match! I decided to add some white to her color scheme, because just grey and purple was very boring once the bare skin stops being a color. Finally, I cut her bangs, just because her hair was annoying me. It also didn’t go with the rest of her design at all.
Overall, it’s probably not my best work, and I put in a lot more effort than I should have just redesigning various elements, but it’s definitely more believable as an armor than the original. Seriously, that crotch window… jeez.
-Icy
Posted on
Posted on
One of the complete redesigns I did when we first started streaming: Morgana from League of Legends. I read her background blurb and got angry cause she has a lot of potential with a backstory involving familial strife, law vs. chaos as ideology, and resorting to dark powers to fight for what you believe in. But her design was…. just generic bra and skirt, and some evil makeup, I guess?? Ugh. So I basically started from scratch, which means this write-ups is gonna be just a little longer than the first.
More under the cut.
What Stayed In:
I kept the color scheme, for the most part, the belt part of her skirt, and her posture. Or rather… what I think her posture was supposed to be, cause she sure doesn’t look hunched over in the original, more like she’s got a sore shoulder.
So not much.
Initial Redesign Ideas:
I decided that Morgana should be more monstrous because of the dark magic she was using. I wanted to give her more colors than just purple and gold (LoL has a problem with 2-color costumes), so I went for a sickly green that would add to the “wrongness” of her design, as well as hint at multiple sources of corruption. They tried to make her look malnourished, I guess?? –
[Not even the splash artist was sure what was going on with her torso.]
–so I pushed it to the extreme in the redraw. I was also trying to maintain triangles as the main shape in the design.
Storytelling Elements and Later Additions:
So, Morgana has a sister in the game who fights against her, named Kayle.
I wanted to add elements of that old life to her appearance, so I changed her hair to blonde, like her sister’s. I also gave Morgana a tabbard similar to Kayle’s, with the same symbol on it, albeit old and worn-out. Forgotten, almost. The final change I did was adding the corrupted halo. The blurb on Morgana’s life sounds very obviously disapproving of her life choices, but I was more interested in making the sisters not so cut-and-dry good or evil. Kayle is very lawful, so she has to eliminate evil, at any cost. Morgana disagrees with that kind of ideology, and ends up resorting to making some bad deals in order to face her sister. Is either of them right? They both sound like they’re suffering in their respective positions. So I wanted Morgana to be a bit more sympathetic and interesting.
Final Thoughts:
You could call me out for giving her even less clothes than she had before, but I would argue that it makes sense in this context. Morgana’as power comes from dark, unnatural magic, unlike her sister’s armor and sword (Kayle’s equipment has a backstory of its own). I feel like she would have continued to give more and more of herself to gain more power, possibly even to the point where she can’t wear armor anymore.
But I didn’t give her a silly bikini and buttcrack-showing skirt and call it a day. The developers couldn’t even be bothered to give her any indications of her backstory. If they had at least given her some deformities or something, I probably wouldn’t have been so angry. At least something fun came out of it.
