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Ah, Gloria… What in the Nine Hells is even going on.

Gloria here is from Devil May Cry 4, where she is a high-ranking soldier. Yes, you read that right. She even demonstrates her “acrobatic and combat skills” in the game, to even the horror of VergilNero*, the main character. Watch the video at your own risk, not in public if possible.

For those who don’t want to scar their eyes and brains, here’s instead a picture of what the back of her “outfit” looks like:

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In case you thought that the front of her could not be outdone.

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-Icy

* The series really needs to consider in giving male leads distinct appearances or unique personalities… or maybe just personalities at all.

Break the Bingo contest WINNERS!

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

After much deliberation (and coming to a conclusion that a 5-day judging deadline that intersects with our holiday season wasn’t a wise idea), BABD is proud to present winners of the Break the Bingo design contest!.

But first, let’s give  shout-out to those of fans who started working on their designs, but didn’t end up officially submitting them, particularly the artists who tagged us in their WIP posts. Those drawings, even when unfinished, were pretty great!

We’re amazed by the ultimate turn-out. A lot of contestants put extra effort into their entries, by doing things things like:

  • putting them into a form of a comic/concept art pitch/fake advertisement
  • using eschergirls poses
  • referencing the rhetoric bingo 
  • kicking up the art quality a notch

It’s a bit scary just how close to the industry standards lots of you guys came! Some of the designs look like lifted straight-up from a video game or comic book studio!

Each and every submission is appreciated and we’re sorry we could reward only a select few of them, ones that we found to be the most creative in their use of the Female Armor Bingo tropes. And those are…

First prize:

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by loloraturasopranerd

The plexi-boobplate is very clever! Nice way to score “Covers only nipples and genitals” while technically giving her a chest piece 😀
Also best luck to Tom in his never-ending quest of finding the sexy male armor suitable for his empowered body. ~Ozzie

Legitimate depiction of how heavy armor works in video games. – wincenworks

Second prize:

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Armor Bingo by noelle-chan / noelle-chan [x]

Her main “covering” is mostly mesh/chain mail thing. It’s sorta lingerie stocking AND boob sock armor. What I think is most innovative about this design is the boob holes in her boobplate. The girls can swing free and unencumbered while in action. Great for badass empowered female warriors.

Accurate representation of shoulder plates and fantasy high heels! – wincenworks 

Chainmail boobsocks encased in what seems like a boobplate frame… possibly the most painful-looking chest piece in the contest. That + super impossible heels + pointy bits that will stab her whenever she moves = another winner! ~Ozzie

Third prize:

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Break the Bingo – Contest Entry by zokwani / naindzardin [x]

Extra points for showing accurate understanding of how bikini armor artists think how physics work. – wincenworks

Personally I think the original version of this chest piece fitted the definition of “boobplate” a bit better, but both versions are very well designed and look as uncomfortable as expected from a bingo winner! ~Ozzie

Bonus prize:

Thanks to lokificent’s generous prize donation, we were able to choose the fourth winner! And that artist is…

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Break the Bingo Contest – Foxtrot by Edasypogon edasypogon

Designing ‘armour’ that would score all 25 squares and the bonus points was equal parts interesting challenge and vicarious thrill. I had to constantly resist the urge to make things less ridiculous. The pinnacle (or nadir, depending on how you look at it) of this exercise was the Echo variant ‘breastplate’; it’s practically a bingo in its own right

Particularly accurate with sci-fi’s tendency to put bits of metal and lights in random places. – wincenworks

I’m getting an impression that more thought was put in designing those modular nipple pieces alone than in many complete outfits we bingo’d before. ~Ozzie

The prizes:

As established above, there are four rewards to choose from:

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To collect their prizes, the winners should contact us at bikiniarmorbattledamage via askbox/fanmail or at BikiniArmorBeDamned via private message and the first three of them should specify what is their preferred reward.
First prize winner gets whatever they choose, then the second and then the third one pick from the remaining poll. Bonus winner gets whatever is left for them.

All the other contest entries + further commentary under the cut:

Keep reading

Bonus throwback this week in reference to a question we get periodically regarding the Female Armor Bingo. Credit to the latest asker of it, @deeppurpleskeleton

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The answer, in short, is: We have, to date, not come across any example that fills all squares of the Female Armor Bingo in the wild. We did, however, run a contest to break the bingo card and were very impressed with the creativity of the entrants. 

Please do click on the Keep reading link and view all the entries. We’re very proud that our blog inspired artists of many skill levels to come up with so many distinct, yet equally absurd costume designs. All of them deserve recognition.

~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

khfanforall:

enecola:

@fingersareoptional replied to your post“I’ll be done with my damn term paper later today. So… What armor needs…”

Athena from Smite! All she’s wearing is some kind of dress thing with boob plates stuck to it somehow? Anyways, a goddess of war deserves more.

I don’t know what that tiddy armor is even supposed to protect. I was tempted to fix the amazon armor but honestly that would work better with Artemis than Athena.

I never played Smite so I hope I got it right!

@bikiniarmorbattledamage

We had some technical difficulties with our stream this weekend, fret not! We got a great SMITE goddess redesign right now.

This really is a lovely armor fix that actually uses the original’s shapes and motifs effectively! I like the breastplate and collar in particular. The headgear looks better as well, and I’m so glad her WoW-esque pauldron got shrunk to a reasonable size.

The only change I would make is to either give her a white tabbard or something else under the belt, just to break up the 2 different browns. 

Even though we’ve featured @enecola on the blog before, I will continue to recommend that you check out their blog for more cool redesigns and original character designs~

-Icy

Savage Worlds is the core ruleset for all of Pinnacle’s current roleplaying games, including Deadlands, 50 Fathoms, Weird Wars: Rome, and more. It has everything you need to play narrative or miniature-based games, with quick, simple, yet comprehensive rules for everything from combat to Dramatic Tasks, Chases, and Interludes. The emphasis is on less bookeeping for the Game Master so he can quickly and easily create worlds and adventures for any setting, and focus on the players and their actions during frenetic combat.

Frenetic… no wait, I checked, frenetic does not mean combat that involves lots of awkward nip slips and pauses to untangle gear – it’ supposed to mean the opposite of that.

It boggles the mind that studios still think stuff like this somehow signals “for all kinds of players” and “totally legit about the game experience”.

And yet, this particularly example is still better than cover of the the Horror Companion

– wincenworks

Y’know, even if there wasn’t a single woman in all of history who had fought in war or a single example of real, historical female armor, there would be no problem in pointing out fantasy armor is unrealistic because the complaint is not based on what women DID wear but what women WOULD wear.

A. Noyd 

Came across this amazing comment while archive binging our positive examples tag

I think it perfectly sums up the basic flaw in the “women warriors aren’t historically accurate, so realism doesn’t matter when portraying them in media” kind of rhetoric.

~Ozzie

(via bikiniarmorbattledamage)

Much like… most of the angry ranting we receive, the plea “not proven historically accurate” tends to ignore the key reason why “sex sells” doesn’t work.

In fiction, armor is a costume, and a costume is a statement about the wearer.  It is the creator’s opportunity to tell the audience about the world, the society the wearer is from and the wearer of themselves.

If a creator’s most compelling message they can think of is “she’s got sexy bits” then not only is every female character going to be yet another addition to an already over saturated nonsensical trope.

However, if you decide to actually communicate some things like… what the armor is made from, what it’s supposed to protect against, what’s happened to it since it was made, or how the wearer would decorate it: you open up the doors to infinite possibilities.

Some of which may be heavily influenced and inspired by history.

– wincenworks