This thing was so bad to begin with that it should have been remade from scratch, not by modifying the unsalvagable original. I did my best, though.
Before doing anything to the costume, though, I had to take care of the ABSOLUTE GARBAGE color composition on this whole splash page. What genius thought that orange background was optimal way to present a character with big orange hair and even bigger orange wings? Fixing it required all the sophistication of the easiest color theory trick in the book – I recolored the background. Wow, amazing! What do you mean orange pops out from blue better than from more orange? What even is complimentary colors?
?
Only then I could start working on the armor itself. Boobplate proved to be much less inspiring than Angela’s normal golden bikini top, as the shape language and colors in the original gave me much more to work of off. This I could only change into actual, rather boring, breastplate.
I had no idea what was happening to the leg region, so to cover the nonsensical crotch area and to give the design some consistency with my previous one, I recreated the mail tabard (just in gold this time) and gave her an updated version of the belt I was so proud of the last time. This time not only I let her keep the butt cape, I made it bigger and recolored it to light red, for another splash of color. and also to recreate the look her gambeson tassets.
The lesser changes include: fixing the giraffe neck, getting rid of the 90s comic hair (which also seemed to be clipping into her wings?), making her headpiece bigger and connected in the middle, giving her a bit smaller wedge heels and stockier built.
I’m afraid this really isn’t half as good as my previous Angela redo, but I hope you guys like it anyway!
Idea for artists designing female superhero costumes.
Start with a sports bra. Any sports bra.
If your design cannot incorporate that underneath or including it, you’re probably fucking it up.
@bikiniarmorbattledamage I’m sure someone else probably tagged you in this already but hey. This sounds like a really good piece of advice !
Amazingly, no-one before sent this our way. Thank you for doing this, because this is an AMAZING rule of thumb!
Love how simple and on-point it is! PREACH
~Ozzie
Bringing this back as a reminder that if more women were to design superhero costumes, we’d definitely get to see things actually referenced from athletic wear, including, but not limited to, sports bras.
For starters, he was already striking a vogue pose. And just look how easy it was to expose his male-presenting nipple with that giant armpit cutout!
I also widened that lacing in the middle of his chest… my regret is not replacing the yellow undershirt (?) with his skintone 🙁
Since this was concept piece, not a final render for the game, the artist went wild with Ollie’s thicc thighs compared to tiny knees, so I also run with it!
I shortened his tunic flaps, exposed the thigh skin entirely and used some particularly beefy reference for the musculature. Also, of course, made his codpiece much obviously bulge-shaped (while rather restrained compared to how big and detailed we usually make them). Also changed his shoes into high heels, as per usual 😉
Hope you guys like it. I’m quite satisfied with the edits here, especially how they blend into the original’s painting style.
unpopular opinion: harley quinn is better with clothes
made w @chokit-pyrus on paintshop pro 9 and paintshop pro X8
Also unpopular opinion: she looks more badass that way.
Further unpopular opinion: it just makes sense for her to wear more than a bikini. Gotham is fucking cold and she’s a graduated psychiatrist and psychologist, not someone immune to cold. Plus, body armor and potential for concealable weapons.
I especially appreciate the reinforcement of the diamond motif and red/black color scheme that got changed to red (sometimes pink?!)/blue for no reason over the years.
We touched upon this before, but the big problem with most contemporary depictions of Harley Quinn is that her designs convey anything but her Harlequin/jester theme.
Who is that? Some randomly underdressed biker chick? Why is she wearing a cropped leather jacket directly over drafty lingerie? Where are her pants? Is there a reason for her girlish pigtails? Hell if I know! ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Good character design, including costume and make-up, should work context-free. The only thing thing we’re told by this sort of Harley design is “she sexy”.
Speaking of My Hero Academia, the official stage play costume designers also agree that Momo would not dress like that if she was a real person.
It’s almost as if suspiciously many of female comic/cartoon character outfits were not designed to be worn by actual humans…
And for those already furiously replying how her power set requires exposed skin, note the life-action version’s most crucial improvement: a zipper. Wow, now she can just unzip to do the freaky shit with her chest and belly skin and just zip back after she’s done? Who would have thought? ╮(╯ل͜╰)╭
PS: We didn’t bring attention to that in our last MHA post, because the OP, @bumbleshark, already said in in their part – but most of those characters are middle-school aged. Let that sink in.
i wanted to fix some things that made me uncomfortable…also it was fun kinda redesigning these ladies from bnha cuz god damn their original suits are shit and dont make sense according to their quirks….
first off: shutup omg. yall forgetting these are fictional women written by a man. “they design their own outfits” is a dumb argument. these women dont exist and didnt decide anything. the artist/writer did. get smart.
second. the only thing different with momo is i took away the tittyshow of a 15 yr old. she still has a window on her chest and tummy but a lot of the shit she forms from her body comes from her back and limbs. there’s an inch long difference between her weird ass skirt and the shorts i gave her– i think she’ll make do.
ashido is a disaster. her quirk is secreting acids so why are the parts of her body that show as much skin covered? legs take up a lot of the body. the only other difference in her uniform is–once again— i took away the tittyshow of a 15 yr old. i literally gave her MORE skin to show.
let me wrap it up with nemuri since yer argument to this was by far the dumbest. nemuri can still rip off her clothes. she is STILL showing the same amount of skin as the original. I just changed the color and design so it looked like this bitch didnt just roll outta bed and throw over a hot topic lingerie set over a white lace onesie.
Those are very awesome redesigns of some of the worst female costumes in current mainstream anime. Thank you, @bumbleshark, for saving those poor heroines.
And it’s not like My Hero Academia can’t do female costumes well. It just seems to mysteriously give up when a certain threshold of boob size is crossed ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)
~Ozzie
Well yeah, Ozzie; at a certain boob size, you gotta give them a window to breathe through. Thenyou strap them in with your boob sealbelt. And MHA’s got both!
Not long after our last take on DC evil sexy ladies, we decided to balance things out with some Marvel characters as well. And by complete coincidence, we both chose artwork in which they stomp on Amadeus Cho! Clearly, that means they’re dating.
While Frank Choisa human dildo, I will admit that unlike most other whiny dudebro artists he has actual skill and grasp of human anatomy (when he wants to, at least). This is a technically good drawing, with Hellbender’s bizarrely sexualized costume as the only real flaw
Obviously I started the fix by getting rid of the cleavage, boob cups and pinched waist from her metal leotard. It no longer looks skin-tight, especially since I’ve added some padding in the form of the same black fabric she wears under her boots and gauntlets. I liked that material enough to extend it into faux-pantlegs that cover what her new shorts (replacing what seemed like a thong) don’t reach. Along with her armor, I reshaped her upper body. The suggestion of muscular arms was nice, so now they’re bigger, with solid thick torso to match. And a brand new arm scar, fitting the facial one.
One last thing about her costume that needed fixing was her left foot, which inexplicably is drawn as if the boot was a wedge heel, asymmetrical to right foot’s flat sole.
After I was done with the outfit, her face called for some un-genericking. There is a promise of unique features in there (mainly the visible scar), but it falls short, quite obviously due to Cho’s cowardice at making her *too* far from conventionally attractive. As we mentioned before, the color scheme makes her look quite close to Harley Quinn (and arguably also Poison Ivy), which is just bad character design.
I started by changing the hairstyle into more practical one – the braid was already there, so why not make all the hair be part of it instead of flying loosely? It’s also not visible at this angle, but I decided that her right temple has some undercut action going.
Next I made her scar more prominent with color change. Then very subtly turned her features a little more square, gave her a bigger nose, thick natural eyebrows and a tiny bit of facial hair that so much mainstream media denies to depict on women. Also extended the dark lower eyeshadow.
Final touch was, of course, the expression – no more vacant supermodel stare. Someone stomping the Hulk to the ground deserves to make an intimidating face at the camera.
It’s one of the most satisfying redesigns for me. Hope you guys enjoy it too!
~Ozzie
Enchantress
Another Hot Chick who was supposed to look intimidating but does not at all; is this a redesign type I have? All of my design choices centered on this one around making Enchantress into someone to take seriously. Most of the changes were small, outside of her tiddy situation.
I gave her a leotard-type of thing with some nice lines to break up the big shape, and some small details in strategic places. I also made her weird side embroidery into a larger part of the color scheme. I gave her some sick abs under that costume, as well as bigger shoulder and arm muscles. To finish off the upper body, I gave her spots of black to tie her color scheme together. It’s honestly kind of jarring how only her legs have the black in the original.
Next, the leggies! I got rid of the big circles that were Bad, and gave her some stitching down the side of the leggings instead. And I gave her platform shoes to really stomp on that Hulk, rather than… daintily breaking perspective with how the Hulk’s got no shadows on him, but the chain and foot are in front of him….?
Finally, I changed her face and headpiece. I wanted her to actually look menacing, rather than like a beauty queen wearing a tacky green crown.
And yeah, I guess I got a thing for one-sided smirks, but she’s still hot. She’s just got more attitude and control and a more interesting face than… nothing. Y’all really have no idea how I hate the White Girl Nose so many lady characters get in comics.
This was definitely a fun one and I like what I ended up with. I personally think Ozzie and I did super well with faces this time around. Give us more Intimidating Looking Ladies!
-Icy
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DC Supervillain Girls
This stream session was devoted to antagonistic women of DC universe. They might be fiends to superheroes, but mostly to wearable fashion.
Star Sapphire
I knew that at some point we’ll discuss the amazingly awful modern costume of Star Sapphire (not to be confused with Starfire, also a DC property), so around the same time we redesigned and bingo’d two equally skimpy takes on the same character.
Managed to find this official concept art for Infinite Crisis game on the artist’s dA account (please do not bully them for doing a commission of a character who already looked sexualized) that looked like a good material to work of off – digital painting that represents quite fairly how she tends to look in the comics.
There were so very little things worth preserving in the original, so I ended up redoing it almost from scratch. First I readjusted her cartoonishly thin figure, made her olive skin a little less ambiguously brown and gave her a bigger nose – she’s more often an antihero than a villain since Star Sapphires got retconned into a Lantern corp, so I don’t think she needs to be white-passing. Also changed her haircut to a less bothersome bob.
Leaving in her white popped collar, I decided to use white detailing to break up purple shapes on her. Little cape with big white trim and lining is probably my favorite original part. When I was done, we concluded that it’s probably still a bit too purple, so I ended up making an alternate version, with dark violet for sleeves and pants, to have the color scheme contrast better.
Completely coincidentally we’re posting this redesign, which turned out a lot like a Ms. Claus outfit, around the Winter Holiday season. But I’ll take Santa Sapphire over Skin Sapphire any day of any season.
~Ozzie
Blackfire
This was another one of those images where everything in it was just Bad. (See Valkyrie redesign for the first of these that I worked on.) So, I ended up fixing Starfire’s body too. That’s actually what I started with, because it kept distracting me how she’s doing a T&A pose while being choked. Not sure what the thought behind that was….
After that, I had to redline Blackfire to fix her back and legs, and I got to fixing her… “clothes.” I decided to go with the spikes motif and extend it into a vest. I left some of her abs showing because she’s kind of a cocky lady, and I feel like she’d want to show off a bit. I just think that she’d show off while wearing reasonable clothes.
Her face is one of my all-time favorite edits of mine. I also gave her hair red roots because I think that siblings should share at least a small piece of a design element, like I did with Morgana.
This was definitely a fun redesign. People who were there for the streams may remember that I wanted to make Blackfire trans, but I decided to back down on that, since she is a villain, and I didn’t want that association. We don’t have enough of a track record of non-evil trans ladies here, but there will definitely be more of an effort to change that.
