I’m a lady-type person with a large rack (Around european cup size 75j-80j). At this size binding doesn’t really work (at least for me – sports bras don’t really do enough either) What kind of armor you reckon would work best for a large bust?
I don’t have a lot of experience in building armor myself, but I reached out to a friend who’s been into extremely enthusiastic for several decades and happens to be a woman. Her recommendation is a globose breastplate with padding for additional support. Something like these:
(Joan of Arc by Albert Lynch (x) and Knightess by TypeSprite (x))
It is possible that one made off a peg suit you, but more likely that you would need one custom made. Regardless you’d be going to a smooth deflective curve such as in the illustrations above. Plate armor like this is actually quite roomy in order to allow movement, so there’ll be plenty of room to add supportive padding.
Globose breastplates are held on with a harness, so with firm padding should be able to restrain even the mightiest bosom. Similar armoring techniques were often used when making custom suits for rotund nobles, Henry VIII of England armors show a gradually increasing girth throughout his life.
(Photo by Chuck, King Henry VIII’s armor in the Tower of London’s Royal Armouries.)
– wincenworks
Today’s throwback: a question that comes up in our inbox and notes sometimes: whether large-breasted people need special adjustments in armor.
And a quick reminder that since all armor requires padding underneath, resulting in a
pretty uniform
silhouette across the genders, people with masculine and feminine figures can’t be easily told apart when in full armor. Height and weight of a person are much bigger factor in armor customization than secondary sex characteristics are.
Powdered ShitBrown Dust Brave Nine, Part 2: Granhildr
This is the official illustration of Granhildr (whom we bingo’d in her “awakened” appearance), and she’s a one-winged valkyrie. Apparently she’s as good at making tea as she is at fighting, in a lazy attempt at fleshing out a personality, and I use the term “fleshing out” loosely.
This is definitely not my best work, but there was so little I could work with from the original, save from the shape motifs and colors of the arm armor. I wanted to keep the scale mail aspect of the original, and since I always do a plate armor breastplate, I decided to try something else. Clearly I need more practice at this kind of design.
I was taking so long trying to come up with any ideas that my rendering didn’t come close to the original, but at least she’s no longer suffering from a chafing nightmare.
I’d be interested in redoing this some time in the future. I think I’d want to turn that fur… whatever it is… into a cloak, or big fluffy collar or something, maybe to offset the single wing.
We’re so close to the big 100, and we decided to tackle one of the worst collection of designs we’ve talked about on this blog. This will probably be a multi-week project.
We’re so close to the big 100, and we decided to tackle one of the worst collection of designs we’ve talked about on this blog. This will probably be a multi-week project.
Hi LG. So on the female power fantasy thing: I agree that the sexy warrior babe thing is overused, and women should have WAY more options. But, in interractive media-video games & rpgs, shouldn’t women have the OPTION of playing that, as well as not?
Please remember that I’m a dude, and my opinion on what media “should” or “shoudl not” look like in regards to a) how women are portrayed and b) what women should enjoy is pretty close to irrelevant. I try to throw in a cheap joke here or there, or offer some practical application for what women (or any other group regularly discrimnated against) have said about it. I’m not about to start criticizing women for liking what they like or how they interact with video games.
I will say that any game that markets itself on it’s ability to appeal to the male gaze (especially through super-sexy / absurdly revealing clothing on its female characters) isn’t doing it for their female audience. I’m all for fully-featured, rich, comprehensive character customization, both in physical traits and clothing. Let folks do what they want with their character (including skin tone, muscle & fat composition, size, height, weight, etc). I’m more suspicious of a game in which it is incredibly difficult to find female clothing that is both functional and non-revealing.
I’m guessing @bikiniarmorbattledamage can offer better insight into this, but for me, I’m casting a side-eye to any video game that markets itself using half-clad women as marketing gimmicks.
This is a nice summary of the quoted post and of what our response to things like “do you want to ban all sexyness in media?” is.
In a perfect world, all RPGs will give the player the ability to play as any gender, and wear armor in all levels of protection/nudity. But that’s not the world we live in.
We don’t want to remove all sexiness from all mediums in past, present and future. What we want is for the media’s default representationof women toNOT just be “hot chicks” for the presumed cis het male audience to consume as objects. We just want women in media to be treated with as much respect, complexity and care as the men. And maybe then we can also explore more male power fantasies besides just “big muscle.”
-Icy
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Powdered ShitBrown Dust Brave Nine, Part 1: Frellea
Speaking ofBrown D… I mean Brave Nine, whatever the changes to the game’s name, story and character roster, it still remains a confusing mess, seemingly made only for the sake of its exploitative waifu art. So of course I proposed to Icy that we stream redesigns from it! We’re definitely alright after staring at them for hours ?
This character is Frellea, older sister to the backstory comic’s protagonist demigoddess Eda and, I guess, from how well-endowed she is, a very powerful deity. I think, judging by character names (is Frellea a corrupted take on Freya?), they’re Norse mythology-inspired, like Odin’s Sphere’s butt-wing Valkyrie. And of course, literally nothing else about the designs communicates that.
It was SO HARD to decide what should take priority in fixing this mess, but the mix of boobplate and scalemailboobsocks went first. I reshaped her breastplate into something plausible and decided to extend the scalemail into a long-sleeved tunic (though that one’s tight fit is mostly my artistic license).
Next step was to tidy up the messy design composition, including the color scheme. Both me and Icy concluded those huge feathery… trains? tails? were purely decorative, so we got rid of them. I decided to balance out the contrast by making that ribbon white (instead of the shade shade of grey as her hair), reusing redness of the other ribbon (and the feathers) on new pants and, most of all, recoloring her non-mail armor to brass color of her bracers.*
Easily one of my favorite redesigns, but also one of the most work-intensive ones, too. Hope you enjoy it!
~Ozzie
PS: *In the comic the helmet and greaves are slightly different metal shade from the rest of armor, so it seems like different artists couldn’t agree on the color. Pic below, for the interested.
