SMITE-ing Masculine Beauty! 

After League of Legends, where we fixed Jarvan and Azir, our next dude-sexyfying endeavor layed in the land of gods, double standards and shameless racism that is SMITE


Poseidon 

Not gonna lie, after all the effort I put into Arhian, I picked an easy male material to work of. I used this official Poseidon design found on Hi-Rez’s artist’s ArtStation as a base. His left pec, abs and obliques were lovingly rendered already, so I made it my task to show off more of his muscular godly body. No big changes about his physique were needed, the costume and Poseidon’s attitude is what called for some modification. 

What I landed on outfit-wise was, appropriately enough for the lord of the oceans, a mankini. Made out of metal and gemstones.
The idea (which, I believe, Icy or some stream watcher might have suggested) was pretty brilliant solution to showcase more bare flesh while keeping the water theme. 

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His weirdly low-hanging belt buckle became a decorative codpiece. Gemstones and decorative spikes accentuate the nipples.
Also I replaced strategic butt covering in his cape into a strategic butt display. Obviously, god of the sea has perfectly shaped and shiny bubble buttocks. 

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Last, small but crucial change was his expression. From an angry god who will kill you for looking at him wrong into a loving, kissable daddy.

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Soft Poseidon cares about you.

~Ozzie


Vulcan

I wasn’t lucky enough to find a high-rez picture of Vulcan, but I decided to do the hot volcano-dwelling smithing god anyway. I removed most of his clothes, leaving only hotpants (for the hot god ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)) and a little bit of apron. It’s not like he needs protection from the furnace, he’s a god, after all. I gave him more of a wrestler body, since he’s a smith, as well as a nipple-framing suspender. But just the one.

I also made his prosthetic rounder, to match his soft, round body.

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As for his face, I gave him a big, soft beard, a shy pout, and a long, smooth undercut suggested by someone during the stream (sorry I can’t remember who!). And the final touch was, of course, the curly hair on his chest and leg.

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Now Vulcan is truly warm and welcoming. 

-Icy

Actual Barbarian Women (NSFW)

Seeing as how many “barbarian” ladies grace our blog, we thought we had a great opportunity to see the kinds of barbarian women we actually wanted to see; by drawing them ourselves! Here are our takes on 2 barbarian characters that appeared on BABD before: Belladonna and Arhian. It’s a shame we couldn’t redesign their names, honestly.


Belladonna

So the first thing that had to change was Bella’s boring, impassive face. I wanted her to be formidable, and I decided to play up the dramatic lighting that the cover artist tried to do, in a half-assed way. I removed her makeup and tried to make her look intimidating and experienced, overall, with the obligatory battle scars. I decided to play with the scars a bit, and so ended up giving her a slightly-disfiguring lip scar. Also, messy hair!

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As for the rest of her, first thing was to get rid of her awful top. Her clothes in general seemed too manufactured-looking, so I ended up making her kilt into a more ripped and imperfect-looking garment.

I then gave her more muscle and an overall larger frame, and changed the way she was holding the axe, because her original hold on it looks like a nail polish ad pose. The thing doesn’t even look like it’s heavy in the original! Now it has blood on it, too, which was to add to the intimidation factor.

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Her face in the background was like a 2-min afterthought I did at the very end cause it looked so goddamn boring. Overall, I’m very happy with the changes I did to her face and attire, though my rendering wasn’t as good as I wish it were now. I should have given her some body scars, too, but at least she has more stage presence on her own cover than none at all.

-Icy


Arhian

I decided to leave most of her skimpy costume as is, just getting rid of the physically impossible bra – Barbarians either go topless or wear something comfortable, not… this thing!

Her platinum, almost white hair inspired me to turn Arhian into a significantly older character. And in the Barbarian warrior’s life, with age come scars. Lots and lots of scars. Most prominent one is the big burn scar tissue on her left breast, which I referenced from real life. Perhaps a “gift” from a dragon?

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Then there’s the giant stitch scar above her breasts and some cuts here and there, especially her face. Speaking of which, I made it my priority to give her unique facial features instead of the generic conventionally beautiful supermodel mug. 

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It’s by far my most satisfying face redo. I drastically changed the shape to be more squat and angular, with strong jawline. He original nose was a disproportionately small vestigial organ, so I have her a schnooze she can breathe through, and also made it broken, to match the scarred aesthetic. Then completed the look by getting rid of her makeup, undoing the obviously tweezed eyebrows, adding wrinkles and scars. I also changed her expression from vacant, vaguely “sultry” stare into a scowl of a veteran warrior. 

As for her body, I just made it visibly more muscular, with prominent abs and thigh muscles. Her breasts are bigger in my version, as I wanted to present what time and gravity (and some scorching burns) actually do to the breast tissue. Nipples not only do exist, but they tend to point downwards the bigger the breast is! Also, boob stretch marks are a thing! Who knew? 

All in all, I’m quite proud of that redesign. Hope you guys like it too!

-Ozzie

Flavie - originalFlavie - Icy's redesignMarica - originalMarica - Ozzie's redesign

Kanpani Girlfriends

When we discovered that Kanpani Girls is a perfect candidate for our Wall of Shame, we dug through their massive library of really badly designed waifus and picked some relatively easy fixes. Reading up their bios, our choice were two Holy Knight friends, Flavie and Marica, whose defining characteristic is being self conscious about being too short and too tall, respectively. 

Liking the cute dynamic of them both helping overcome one another’s complexes, we decided our versions should be girlfriends. 


Flavie 

Well, the obvious first thing to go was that single-breasted boob plate, which was a…. unique design, I guess? I instead changed it to a design I saw when looking up armor references for my OCs.

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I gave her Elizabethan poofy pants because everyone should wear them, honestly. I decided to go for an overall brown and cream color scheme, but left in the red and added some blue to tie the colors in with Marica’s red and blue details, since they are girlfriends. The flame on her tabbard comes from her element in the game, which is fire. Her design is basically all large and medium-sized shapes, so I wanted to add something small. It’s hard to see, but I also gave her a cream-colored sleeve on her left arm. Finally, I adjusted the scarf shapes to look better, both around her neck and as it blows in the wind.

Even though the final redraw is fairly simple, it was definitely fun to work on. I ended up trying like 3 different pants shapes for her before I settled on these. Cell shading is definitely not my thing, though.

-Icy


Marica 

It was one of those designs that’s very close to working as a stylized girly armor, but doesn’t, because someone HAD to give her big ol’ cleavage and exposed thighs. So, my aim was to bring back its potential. 

I’m quite happy with how the breastplate shape came out, with its high curve and slightly bigger tassets. First I intended to incorporate that leather cincher into it, but it just didn’t work. I also gave her semi-poofy pants with diagonal pattern similar the absurd shape of her original  thigh-baring stockings. 

Another thing was to make her shoes at least a tiny bit flatter and more planted on ground, considering the original artist drew her as if she was floating in air rather than supporting her own weight on her feet. High heels not only are universally stupid footwear for a knight, but Marica is supposed to dislike being tall! Why would she wear shoes that add to her height? 

Finishing touches were to establish her better as the girlish one of the couple (big part of her and Flavie’s actual bios) by making her red ribbon/bow motif more significant, especially with hair bow that nicely contrasts with her blue locks (inspired largely by the ending of one of my favorite anime). Also last minute change: decorative piece on her halberd is now red too, to tie everything together.

Bonus point that red accents connect her to Flavie 🙂

If I were to do it today, I’d also turn her skirt and collar into the same graphite color as her armor joints and dark part of her pants, so that they wouldn’t blend into her blue hair.
All in all, not my best or most complex rework (I also had big trouble with cel shading style, obviously), but I think it goes to show how small changes can make a difference between gratuitous sexualization and cute girlishness. 

~Ozzie

Poison Ivy’s Design Team has Clearly Never Touched a Plant

We’re going back in time a little with this one, as I was working on this at the same time that Ozzie was doing her Starfire redraw. With this one, I was mainly focusing on giving her an actually plausible costume for the Gritty and Realistic “aesthetic” (insert a few more quotes around that word) of Injustice 2. Wearing plants against bare skin sounds like a bad idea to me, so I instead decided to give her a sports bra and shorts, and a leaf dress on top. After all, Black Canary and Harley Quinn (and Catwoman, sorta) get to wear Real People clothes. Why does Ivy have to (ironically) get the rash?

I also wasn’t really a fan of the almost militaristic “plants should rule the world” motivation she has the game, so I decided to just make her into an overenthusiastic plant lover. Although her vine…. things, have bigger teeth, she’s got a bracelet and flowers on her sensible non-high-heel shoes, as well as moss on her legs so that the green is not restricted to only the top half of the design.

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Her makeup was predictably hideous, so I reduced it and gave her a more defined face shape, though I should have given her deeper eye sockets. I decided to give her lip gloss instead of the cliche red lipstick, because I was thinking that if I was going to a fight, what kind of don’t-have-to-worry-about makeup would I put on in 5 minutes? Mascara and gloss were the ones.

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I think with more time, I probably could have worked the design to be more interesting, with vines and flowers everywhere. As it is now, it’s a pretty simple design overall. I rendered the crap out of those frigging dress leaves though!

-Icy

Ivy & Starfire: Fan Feedback edition!

Jumping ahead for this post to past weekend’s 50th Stream Extravaganza Finale so we can showcase two pieces that would not exist without our Fans


The first was a response to our Soul Calibur 6 Ivy reveal Bingo, telling us to just “let them be hot.” 

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I decided to take them up on their advice, and made Ivy into a hot, firey, Machiavellian goddess. She’s so hot, she’s even sweating a little! 

And in case you’re wondering, everything below the waist there is Fire–as it should be.

-Icy 

The second is an attempt to meet the very vague expectations that some random new commenter left under the old Injustice Starfire redesign. They implied that compared to the super-skinny original, my stouter version actually wasn’t muscular… and at the same time implied that this alien humanoid might be too heavy to use her power of flight

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Following this very helpful comment, I used two newer, better quality images from the game, redid Star’s bodytype and gave her a costume redesign I was working on in my free time. 

NOW princess Koriand’r is of perfectly muscular and aerodynamic shape, not to mention the adequate weight to get off the ground and get decent momentum! 

~Ozzie

Spider ladies, tits and boobies, oh my!

The spider-themed Sadira from Killer Instinct proved to be a much easier fix than first expected. Just giving her poofy pants and limiting the excessive spikes made her look so much less generic! Her silhouette also became significantly more distinct, if I say so myself. 

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Another tiny fix was making the muted brown accessories, especially the spider belt, a little bit more vivid. I probably should have given that treatment to her whole color scheme. Oh well. 

Since I was basically done with all three angles of her model sheet, I’ve spent the rest of the stream adorning it with sketches of boobies and tits… THE BIRDS (every innuendo intended, though).

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Now they are the splash of color Sadira really needed.

~Ozzie

Azir Arises

[The title is a double entendre based on one of Azir’s moves in LoL]

For my first Sexy Male Armor redesign, I decided to do a male version of the trend we see with boobs being put on things that really shouldn’t have them. You know, like reptilian humanoids, bug creatures…. this….. so I went with Azir from League of Legends, to turn him into the sexy bird man we all knew he could be (while making many Hatoful Boyfriend references).

I tried to go for realistic-ish anatomy, working all I could from that sensual twist he does in this picture. I also took off all of his unnecessary chest armor. He’s a mage anyway, and we all know mages don’t wear armor. I only kept his arm and head pieces to tie into his belt and legs, and, of course, to frame his pecs, which is the purpose of armor.

Finally, taking inspiration from one of my favorite Sexy Male Armors on this blog (NSFW link), I gave him semi-transparent nipple coverings, and (what has become a trend in my sexy male redesigns, for better or worse) a matching semi-transparent loincloth.

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Now Azir can go forth and restore his empire with confidence and empowerment!

-Icy

Jarvan of the Thousand Abs

My first sexy man redesign (and, as far as we can tell, first stream done along with Icy), was Jarvan from League of Legends

The initial thought was very basic: leave those enormous pauldrons while exposing most of his torso and also thighs. Then the idea to give him infinite abs was brought up and here we are. 

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While for thunder thighs I used some photo reference, with abzilla I was deliberately ignoring any anatomical knowledge. This was my homage to all the “creative” ways in which female bodies, especially boobs, tend to be drawn. 

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While some would claim that Tarik fills LoL’s sexy men quota, he definitely won’t balance out all the sexualized female characters in that game. Not to mention that “irony” of his presentation is pretty damn problematic, as @leagueofsexism summarized it in this post.

~Ozzie 

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

nisat:

i got tired of waiting for a legendary skin so i kinda…did it myself. sorry blizzard
(the outfit isn’t 100% accurate but i tried…..)

“rangapravesam” is the term for a classical dancer’s debut performance!

? symmetra fanbook preorders open! ?

This is truly fantastic not only for the authentic touch of the culture, but also for the excellent choice of a dancer outfit for a character who has elegant dancing sequences as her emotes.  This is really the sort of thing I’d hope to see in a game as touted for diversity as Overwatch is.

I really do wish that Jeff Kaplan would look to these kinds of designs and priorities for his goal of “trying to do women characters better” rather than looking for ways to make their previous design standards seem more acceptable under casual examination.

– wincenworks