Her shoes looks stylish and comfy, I’ll give her that. Other parts not only serve zero protection against weather and battle damage, they also look like they’d slip off from her body within minutes of moving around.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m happy that the 2 ladies have some breast support now, but their breasts are still very clearly accented by their clothes for some reason. The designs are getting better, sure. It’s definitely an improvement from a Child’s-Small-size Halloween costume with shoestring (not even a better version than Ozzie’s Green Arrow), but we can do better.
I do hope that Brendan George continues to work hard with his team toward getting that “more mature and respectful” aesthetic that he wants. He’s not all the way there yet, I think.
-Icy
Definitely looking forward to more positive changes to Mortal Kombat character designs in the future, but so far it’s merely a step or two ahead of writing checks they cannot cash for “Doing women better”. Especially when the bar was set that low.
Because are we really supposed to celebrate an exchange of a giantboob window for a smaller boob window on Kitana?
Once again, I’d encourage our readers to not settle for the smallest, safest improvements in female (and/or otherwise marginalized) representation. I get it, we’re starved. But we have the right to ask for more.
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.
New rule for female armor: if you design female armor and you wouldnt be willing to cosplay it, you’re making a mistake.
I’d like to propose an expansion of rule:
If you’re a guy and you’d wear it because “it’d be funny” but you wouldn’t respect a female cosplayer who wore it: You are a mistake.
– wincenworks
Another caveat to the rule, inspired by an article we linked in the past: if a costume is (near*) impossible to replicate or too uncomfortable to wear for cosplayers – it fails as a costume.
~Ozzie
Honestly, if a cosplayer would need to use double-sided tape in order to maintain their decency while wearing your costume, maybe just… don’t.
-Icy
*”Near impossible” only because cosplayers are amazing and can somehow make even the most absurd shit work on human bodies somehow. But at what cost?
It hasn’t been a great few months for our weekly streams, as things keep getting in the way. We will try to continue our Hot Marvel Dudes redesigns next week.
Fantasy does NOT have to follow real world rules. Fantasy does NOT have to relate to some real world event, country, concept, law, or history. Fantasy does NOT have to mirror any particular time period or country, even if you’re basing your world on a real world one. There is NO SUCH THING as “historical accuracy” in fantasy as it relates to the real world.
THE ONLY THING Fantasy has to do to be believable is follow the established rules OF ITS OWN WORLD. Fantasy can literally be anything you imagine it to be.
If your fantasy world excludes people of color or those belonging to the LGBT+ community, if it’s grossly misogynistic and white cis-male centric, that’s because YOU made it that way. Stop blaming “historical accuracy” or “believability”. It’s not the genre; it’s YOU.
@bikiniarmorbattledamage I believe this is highly relevant to the rhetoric you guys often combat.
Indeed all of this relates to all the stuff we talk about on BABD.
Ultimately, no matter the justifying rhetoric, it’s the creative decisions that will be under scrutiny, not some superficially “objective” rules regarding a fictional setting.
~Ozzie
The cool thing (that people sometimes forget), is that a fantasy setting, rather than being historical fiction (somehow), instead illuminates the values of its creator. Sure, it feels bad to be called out, but it really does make you a better creator if you ask yourself: why are all my characters light skinned/skinny/cis/straight/male/etc?
Sometimes, there are good reasons, like if the story is about (to use a basic example) race-based oppression, and all the characters are on one side of that. But sometimes the reason is just “cause that’s what i like.” And honestly, besides being a bad reason, that’s just boring.
If I hadn’t gone through this process myself, I wouldn’t have my favorite Pathfinder OCs! Just sayin’.
-Icy
Posted on
SAO/GGO Figurine Redraws, Part 2: The Incest Fairy
Why do I call her The Incest Fairy? Well… people even remotely familiar with SAO’s lore are aware that this character’s sexualized design is only worse in the context of her story >_> The interesting twist is that this girl who joins the main character in the game turns out to be his adoptive sister/cousin, literally playing in the next room. The creepy twist is that she happens to have a massive crush on him.
So, there’s a lot of emphasis on Leafa’s ample cleavage here, with the creepy anime waifu hand gesture which I hate. I redrew her hand completely. Then I reworked her weird impractical cincher into something combined with a leather vest, to contain her breasts with something more than just the white top (which I made less boobsocky). Keep in mind her breasts aren’t smaller now, they’re just held together by actual clothes.
I also decided to give her a bit less generic anime facial features, with a more prominent nose, chin and eyebrows. Also subtly changed her eyes’ expression and added some detail to the shading on her face and hair, so that it’s all more interesting and not as weirdly 2-dimensional on a 3D figurine.
Or course, her waist was tiny and her limbs stick-like, so I gave them some heft. The most head-scratching part of her costume were the tights that somehow just… disconnect in the middle of the thigh, then continue below like nothing happened. I made them whole, then added thin green stripes, to match the one stripe on each of her arms. Also, since there was little to no contrast between where the tights end and the boot begins, I recolored the upper part of the boots into golden rings, matching ones on her wrist. Now her legs and arms don’t look like designed separately.
I also noticed what seems like a minor case of Imperial Walker Hip, or at the very least that her right leg is disjointed from her pelvis. Did the best I could to fix it with limited time and liquify tool at my disposal. It’s not ideal, but at least I also took that opportunity to not make her crotch visible from the cut in front of her skirt. I would probably repaint the whole pelvis section if I had to do it today, because even with some painting over the current results are kinda awkward.
I have no idea what those white… pillows she was standing on were, but they looked so weird and suspiciously boob-shaped (a thing really hard to not think about when looking at this figure), so I decided to erase them the best that I could with my Photoshop stamp tool skills.
Overall, not the most creative or technically proficient of my work, but hopefully she ended up as something with more balanced design than just “DID YOU NOTICE I HAVE A CHEST?”, which seemed to be the principle of the original.
