So, incredibly, Blizzard has managed to come up for yet another outfit for Widowmaker that makes less sense than her original outfit – and it works as a pretty iconic example of a costume as the sort of complete nonsense when you get cis men trying to design sexy lady fashion without taking the time to study actual fashion and clothing design.

Bayonetta is beloved by many women, because while her outfits are ridiculous they also scream “fashion” and thus convey a sort of narrative that she looks like that because she wants to has the power to. It’s not unlike how Duke Nukem runs around in an ultra manly sleeveless top… except that well, it only got signed off on because it appealed to horny cishet men.

This outfit conveys that the artist likes naked (skinny, conventionally attractive) women and has tried to obfuscate it by adding random accessories and design quirks until it looks “unique” (in the same way a randomly generated hash code is unique).  How it fits into fashion or even just clothing is secondary to how many extra polygons it has.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “Kim, you just want her to wear a suit.” and that is not incorrect, but more importantly I want Blizzard to look at how real fashion designers make real woman look powerful.  More like, say, how Giorgio Armani dressed Gia Carangi:

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Or Gina Torres was dressed in suits:

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And how Gina Torres was dressed in Firefly:

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And learn how to mix it up into functional, aesthetically pleasing designs that convey power and story and character.

And we could avoid… so many problems

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(tweet here)

– wincenworks

maispace:

Inspired by going on one of my classic Overwatch character design rants the other day and binging @bikiniarmorbattledamage yesterday, I took it upon myself to try to make Widowmaker’s design… less worse. Here’s what I changed:

  • I gave her pants. Widowmaker is a victim of the weirdly common Overwatch character design trope of “armor from the knees down, skin-tight from the knees up”. (Well, the armor is also somehow skin-tight, but.) Since Widowmaker is a sniper and Talon is supposed to be paramilitary, I decided to put her in some actual tactical pants. …Of course, I still forgot to draw pockets. Pretend they’re there.
  • I decided not to shorten her legs or widen her waist, despite how ridiculous both of those features are, because Widowmaker actually has a reason to look like that – her spider motif. On any other character, I wouldn’t stand for it.
  • I closed up her ridiculous cleavage window. Again, she’s a sniper. Lay down on a roof in that and you’ll get your chest absolutely cut up. While I was in the area, I gave her bodysuit some subtle segmentation for a “carapace” look.
  • I think the way I changed her shoes she’d still have her feet in the high-heel position, but I at least wanted to made them flat on the bottom so Widow doesn’t catch her foot on a gutter and faceplant into an alley while doing her whole parkour thing.
  • Purple isn’t a very “spidery” color, so I changed her to a dull greenish-brown with yellow accents to evoke an orb weaver’s color scheme.
  • I shortened her hair so it doesn’t get in the way while she’s fighting, and so it’s the almost exact shape of a spider abdomen, thus making her whole head a big spider design.
  • I made her skin a normal human color, with some subtle purplish tones on her nose, lips, ears, and cheeks. I also removed her earring.
  • I made her visor boxier both to look like a jumping spider and for a more realistic “tactical” look, which also gave me room to pop some more eyes on there. Plus I think it just looks better; the original looks like they were going for Giger and gave up.
  • Black widows are overplayed. I changed the hourglass light on her gun to the Talon logo, so she’s actually representing her organization somewhere on her design.

Thank you for @-ing us, @maispace​! 

It’s a second fan redesign of Widowmaker we share that adds roomy pants to her costume, so it probably tell us something about what’s the next most glaringly inadequate part of her design, right after the navel-deep cleavage. 

Not sure if I’m personally into the proposed color scheme, at least without invoking orb weaver’s interesting patterns in some ways. That would also add some much needed segmentation and contrast in her outfit. 
I agree, though, that the original colors were completely out of nowhere and should be revised. 

The ponytail combined with helmet creating a spider-like shape is definitely much better evoked than in Blizzard’s design and shoes being somewhat wearable are appreciated. 

All in all, good reminder that Overwatch, while it comes with many interesting ideas and motifs for character designs, seems to abandon committing to them halfway through, to sell something more generic and palatable to their presumed audience, as per Creepy Marketing Guy’s request. Same reason it often fits the “concept art POC turns into a pale white Barbie in the final product” problem that @otherwindow noted.

~Ozzie 

Cool for the Summer Skins (NSFW)

Our first (and definitely not last) foray into redrawing Overwatch. Their summer 2017 skins were a strange mix of bland and safe, cosplay, and a single actually good idea (grill dad 76). We decided that wouldn’t do, and so picked two of the more unsatisfactory skins in the collection to redesign and actually have some fun with!

Widowmaker 

When I first saw Widow’s boring, predictable summer skin, I was mildly annoyed. But after giving it some thought, I became hugely disappointed that they didn’t make her into a fisherman! The fishing rod that looks like a sniper rifle? She even has a grappling hook that could be made to look like she’s throwing a fishing line. What a missed opportunity.

So I made try-explaining-those-tanlines Widow into fishing-day Widow, complete with plaid shirt and huge rubber boots. Because her legs are so fricking long, I should probably have given her hip waders, which are rubber boots that go up to your thighs or higher. They’re actually appropriate thigh-high boots, for once! Given more time, I could have also given her more accessories on her belt, like a bunch of lures and containers with bait.

This is one of those ideas that I may come back to and actually design properly

in the future.

-Icy

Mercy

I found the “Nike” Mercy skin utterly uninteresting and kinda overdesigned. to fight that, I changed her tunic to have a shorter “tabbard”, expose one breast (because why not?) and cover up more of her butt. 

Got rid of those sandals with weird, borderline impossible to wear straps, and replaced them with winged Nike sneakers. 

And to make more serious attempt at portraying her as Nike, the goddess of victory, I put the laurel in her hand, instead of head, which is this mythical figure’s most basic attribute, right after the wings. And one more in her mouth, to make her more cheeky.

~Ozzie

artbytesslyn:

“We thought she was dead.”


The full Talon Widowmaker painting from last month’s Patreon. Ya know, from the Legacy comic that gave her prototype armor that -made sense-.

Join Patreon for OW comics | Commission Info

If only she looked like that in the game!

I re-read the comic in question and beside the helmet, back armor and part of arm guards, there’s very little detail of how Widomaker’s then-costume actually looked like. So, most of the awesome stuff in this design, like the reasonable breastplate, seems to be @artbytesslyn‘s invention, not Blizzard’s. 

In the official comic we can see an outline of her boob from the profile (first panel here) and what seems to be her blue cleavage (second panel), so it definitely lacks chest protection:

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Ironicaly, in the story Widow is almost killed by Ana, whose bullet shatters part of this helmet… 

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Presumably next time Amelie shows up in the OW timeline, she changes to the cleavage-tastic clothes we love to hate

Why after nearly dying she gets a costume that’s

objectively

worse and less protective in every way? Maybe in Blizzard’s logic, just like a cocktail dress makes an espionage outfit, a deeper cleavage and new, cooler helmet makes a sniper costume?

~Ozzie

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

privatesuintor:

banshees:

ana amari’s tea time emote

Ohmygoshohmigoshohmigosh!!!!!

A female character well over 50 that is NOT SEXUALISED AND STILL BEATS ASS!

I’m excited ^^

Oye, @bikiniarmorbattledamage, a positive example among the widowmakers and tracers in that game ^^

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It’s very exciting to see Blizzard has started work on making the game that they said they wanted to make shortly after announcing Overwatch!

Ana Amari certainly looks amazing and greatly boosts representation for badass mothers and older women of color though I notice something.

Of her eleven skins: Five show Ana as her glorious mature-aged self, four show her with her face completely covered and two show her as young.  In fact there are zero Legendary skins where you can see Ana’s beautiful older face.

And the skins with her as a young woman don’t really do anything surprising with her, it’s not like Genji’s showing him as pre-cybernetic, it’s just… well:

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So while it’s fantastic that Blizzard has started to realize that women in their sixties are dramatically under represented in action games – it’s kind of a shame that they couldn’t commit to it the whole way.

– wincenworks

Ana is a very welcome addition to Overwatch’s cast (heavens know we’re in a desperate need for older women in media, especially games), though I can’t help but notice how, not unlike Zayra, she’s a very safe approach to diversity. While being 60, she’s at the “conventionally attractive lady with grey hair and a couple facial lines” side of old person design.

Also, the fact that Ana’s clothes look very realistic for a sniper make Widowmaker’s hypersexualization stand out even more. With changes Blizzard made so far, they’ve proven a couple of times how they can edit and add things to the game as they please, but are afraid to change all that much

~Ozzie

So, just over a year ago we reached perhaps peak hopefulness with Blizzard and their “doing women characters better” game: Overwatch

Now the Summer Games special has come around again and let’s see what they’ve learned about their audience and what they want to see, and there’s a lot of potential, I mean in the new skins along, three empowered men (1, 2, 3):

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Or is it with the new skin for the brown woman who got a new skin, Sombra (x):

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Of course not, their promo strategy’s opening * is peak predictability:

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Yes, apparently Widowmaker needed a shirt with no chest so she could show off her combat bikini and had to also have a garter:

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It makes me suspicious that I know who may have overseen the design

Meanwhile Ana has two novelty skins at this point… exactly zero of them make it clear that she is an older woman.

– wincenworks

* Yes I am aware they followed with promoting Junkrat’s skin, in the most boring and unempowering way humanly possible.