Tag: bikini armor battle damage

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bikiniarmorbattledamage:

itsbirds:

It really says something about fantasy art that the thing people seem to remark most on in my work is the fact the female armor I draw is ‘functional’  with out and sexy bits out there showing.  Something I just think of as “well you wouldn’t want to get stabbed in the navel… so lets put some studs and leather there” is so foreign to some that it sticks out. But, it really shouldn’t stick out. People shouldn’t even notice that. And that kind of pisses me off about the other artists out there. Look I am not saying every character has to be all covered up and armored, if it is a female/male rogue who uses her god given talents to subvert, distract, and get what s/he wants by all means  show some skin.. .but if it is a paladin, warrior, anything that needs to be heavily armored then put some damn good armor on them! And despite what some art directors think, a girl can look pretty damn hot in some nice, functional, armor with out her tits flopping about. And if you are an artist and the only way you can make a female attractive is by showing her ass or cleavage, you are a BAD ARTIST, go practice.

Bolded for emphasis.

It’s really a painful realization that bikini armors are so ingrained in the collective consciousness that actually protective female armor stands out as novelty.

Which also proves just how bullshitty the “skimpy costume design is creative” excuse is. If it was so, people would be more surprised by it than by costumes that do provide cover.
Yet here we are and no-one’s shocked by the sight of bikini armor anymore.

~Ozzie

Four years later this post remains topical. 

For some inexplicable reason, skimpy armor on women is still perceived as standard in pop media, while practical female costumes (especially gender-neutral ones) at best meet with bafflement, at worst are quickly labeled as “SJW pandering” by dudebro fanboys. 

Not to mention

(again)

that male skimpy armor, aside from LGBTQA+ pinup art, tends to be framed as ironic parody and never really treated as default or normal, like its female equivalent is.

~Ozzie

This kind of double standard really points out our culture’s idea that (White) Man is the norm, and is thus allowed to be other things than just Man. Meanwhile, Woman is like its own all-encompassing descriptor. Once you’re a Woman, you can’t be anything else, so everything about the Woman has to point out how Womanly she is. 

And we can’t give her armor that doesn’t accentuate the fact that she’s a Woman, because then she’ll be like the Man! We can’t have that! And then we end up with Bingo material.

-Icy

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Jarvan of the Thousand Abs

My first sexy man redesign (and, as far as we can tell, first stream done along with Icy), was Jarvan from League of Legends. 

The initial thought was very basic: leave those enormous pauldrons while exposing most of his torso and also thighs. Then the idea to give him infinite abs was brought up and here we are. 

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While for thunder thighs I used some photo reference, with abzilla I was deliberately ignoring any anatomical knowledge. This was my homage to all the “creative” ways in which female bodies, especially boobs, tend to be drawn. 

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While some would claim that Tarik fills LoL’s sexy men quota, he definitely won’t balance out all the sexualized female characters in that game. Not to mention that “irony” of his presentation is pretty damn problematic, as @leagueofsexism summarized it in this post.

~Ozzie 

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caitlynkurilich:

A collection of Ladyknights, for anyone feeling particularly chivalrous.

Now this is an awesome range of designs and concepts to showcase all kinds of approaches and personalities.

I also particularly like how every one of them has a weapon that matches to the kinds of armor they’re wearing.

– wincenworks

More Positive Examples on BABD

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Every year when E3 comes out, I know that there’ll be at least one title that chooses the event to highlight to the world just how ridiculous their design decisions are: This year, so far, the number one contender is: Strange Brigade

The best that can be said for it is that in terms of impracticality they were at least different in their terrible design decisions – sadly they more than made up for it with the baffling racism.

The premise is in the 1930’s a forgotten ancient Egyptian witch queen has awakened from the dead and only a group of four intrepid adventurers can stop her – specifically by slaughtering wave after wave of zombies and monsters.  The three white adventurer’s (two boys, one woman) dress in pragmatic adventuring outfits with pants and boots; and the black woman gets this hideous faux romper (this link nsfw), body paint, scarification and sandals.

Not only is this costume impractical for adventuring, completely at odds with 1930s sensibilities and general design – but this is a classic example of exotification.  Her body paint and stretched ears seem to be inspired by the Mun people (adjusted to look more appealing to western audiences) and the red mud in her hair inspired by the Himba people (again changed for western audiences). These two groups lived 2,500 kilometers from each other (about the same distance as Switzerland to Turkey) and it seems more than likely the designers didn’t do that much research to learn the names or locations. Mostly she seems inspired by some of Grace Jones (who was born in 1948) movie personas.

This seems a particularly baffling bad decision to be proud of given that a huge factor cited in the the massive success of the Black Panther movie was the incorporation of actual African designers in making fantastic visions of Africa.

While looking into this, I was unable to find a name for this character, or any explanation for her design (such as naming inspirations) but I did find they have exactly one closed/locked thread in their Steam Discussions:

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Yeah.

– wincenworks

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fantasticalfascination:

muchymozzarella:

The thing about how women in comics used to be drawn and sometimes are still drawn, you can only really understand the difference between an action girl being forced into unrealistic sexual, sensual positions, and an actual strong and well posed, empowering but still sexy female character, when you see what it looks like to have male characters depicted in overtly sensual poses

And I’m not talking about the Hawkeye Initiative or any given parody

I actually want to draw a comparison using art by Kevin Wada

Kevin Wada is a proud part of the LGBTQ+ community and he has this unique ability to sexualize mainstream male heroes without it looking like a parody. He draws covers for multiple big comic companies and his style reminiscent of old fashion magazines, drawn largely in traditional watercolor, has made him a stalwart of the industry.

He also draws a lot of naked Bucky Barnes.

Anyway, I want to talk about how interesting his art is, the difference between his power poses and his sexy poses for male and female characters.

A typical power pose for a male comics character would look like this

Whereas every so often with female heroes you get something like this

Not all the time, of course, but it happens and it happens in the wrong places. You wouldn’t be posing like a cover model in the middle of a battle, you really wouldn’t.

But when it comes to Wada and male and female characters, the difference is pretty clear.

When he draws male characters, they more often look like this

Sensual, in a pose you wouldn’t usually see a big, muscular hero doing. If not that, then playful, sexy, for looking at, but nothing about their anatomy overly exaggerated

How he draws women is also very clearly different from many other artists, from sexy pose to power pose.

Still posing for the camera, still to be looked at, but very, very different from how we’ve seen female characters portrayed in mainstream comics in the past.

And I guess it’s really just a matter of variety? Objectification in art is a long time debate and appears everywhere always, but for all that we can argue about its impact on popular media, there are a few things I know for sure:

1) having a female character pose like a playboy cover girl in the middle of a battle scene is just Bad Art and y’all need to find better references

2) female power poses will never look quite as right as when they’re drawn by people who know the value of expressing personality through pose (it’s basic animation principles and some artists still need to learn it) and who actually know what a female character’s personality beyond “sexy”

3) Iron Man or Batman posing like they’re about to beat somebody up is 100% not the same as a fashion drawing by Kevin Wada where a Typical Beefy Action Guy gets to pose like a flirty pretty boy

4) the MCU films have figured out the value of pandering to female audiences by sexually objectifying all their male action heroes while simultaneously appealing to the male demographic’s action movie power fantasy. Quoting Chris Hemsworth and Taika Waititi: “I’m not a piece of meat” “Uh, yes you are.”

They definitely struck some kind of balance there.

Also, more important than this entire post: y’all should follow @kevinwada on Tumblr and give him love because his art is divine and his talent beyond words

@bikiniarmorbattledamage

Really good writeup, @muchymozzarella, and deserved feature of a great artist, thank you! Though I wouldn’t say *all* MCU films are truly balancing things out with the male objectification, especially not until their mixed-gender teams start posing like this [source]: 

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We featured @kevinwada‘s Naked Snake last year and mentioned (as a couple times before) that if you really want to see the principles male gaze applied unironically to masculine characters, you gotta find pinup done by a male artist who’s into men. And Wada’s artwork is a great proof of that, without resorting to pandering exaggerations (which belong more to parody art). 

~Ozzie 

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locuas642:

hinoart:

cough

@bikiniarmorbattledamage thought you would like this one

NICE! We’re all for sexifying dude characters with feminine clothing as long as it’s not framed as mockery, humiliation and/or emasculation. 

And Reaper here looks positively glorious in both those dresses! They match his goth aesthetic quite well, too. All while showing off his biceps and abs! 

~Ozzie 

What I would do to see these kinds of skins in-game. Imagine him popping his Ultimate while wearing these! 

I suppose the only issue is gun storage, but he could probably use the trick that Wonder Woman used in the movie last year.

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Also, why are not talking about hooded dresses, which I need in my life?? 

-Icy 

More sexy Reaper on BABD

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bikiniarmorbattledamage:

(submitted by Jury) 

Whoah. The absurd of Tera, the universal example of logic-defying female battle outfits, advertising itself to have “practical armor”… that is skin-tight and boobsock-y on women leaves me astonished. 

This armor is so totally practical that even Erik Larsen, the devoted anti-practicality in women’s costumes guy, probably wouldn’t mind it. 

Dear Tera’s Creepy Maketing Guy: Just because boobplate and figure-hugging metal cover more than what you usually call “armor”, it doesn’t mean you should label it as “practical”. 

~Ozzie

I feel it’s time to bring this back, not just because laughing at Tera’s idea of quality armor never gets old, there’s a funny thing I noticed.  I feel like I’ve seen this… somewhere recently… 

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Yes to everyone assuring us that Blizzard is really trying… we have confirmation they are trying about as hard as Tera was last year.

Hooray.

– wincenworks

More on Overwatch on BABD | More on Tera on BABD

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Hel Hath No Fury

From one Hel to another, this week. This particular one is from SMITE, which is a game that lets you play as various deities from different pantheons. This was their interpretation of Hel, who they split into 2 forms instead of keeping to the original mythology, where she was a person who had 2 different-looking halves. Ok, fine. But could they not have made her just a generic white woman? Twice? 

So that was my main beef with the original, besides the nonsensical clothes: the lack of any connection to her Norse roots, and her original myth. To briefly describe her game mechanics, which I was also considering while redesigning her: White Bread is a healer/support, and the Jelly Sandwich is a debuffer and does some over-time damage. The player’s able to switch back and forth between them.

In that vein, I decided to make Vanilla Wafer and Blueberry Tart into Old Woman Healer and Undead Monstrosity, respectively.

[Warning: There’s a close-up of her corpse face below the Read More!]

I was sent some lovely reference pictures of traditional Norse clothing, which I used to build the warm, functional clothing for the Old Lady half. I went with a color scheme that would evoke the frosty conditions of Niflheim, the place where her domain was located.

She floats in the game, so I was able to get away with impractically-long skirts.

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I also made her a woman of color, because why not? Honestly, the sheer Whiteness of the original just had to change.

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The scarf is her dog, Garmr. Since this is her healing half, the dog is nonthreatening (even though I used a wolf scarf for reference, shh).

For her debuffing half, I just took the idea of the fact that in the original myth, half her body looked like a corpse, and went all out with it. And like a corpse, she’s got no tits, cause fatty tissue is the first to go in the decomposing process.

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Since she floats, she didn’t need the legs, and the dog becomes an angry knife inspired by traditional Norse knives. In-game, it would be mostly the animated knife that would attack. Over-time damage can be flavored as bleeding from a bite, stuff like that.

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So that’s my Hel. I had a lot of fun working on her, especially because we don’t get to work with older ladies a lot, and I got to use a lot of cool references.

Ozzie just gave me the idea of giving each version one eye, since the corpse has 2 and the old lady doesn’t, which would have been a cool idea.

Now if only SMITE would remove their depictions of Hindu dieties, but that’s a rant for another day.

-Icy

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Tidy Up Tuesday #78

A couple things to tidy up this week!

A reader asked whether we can announce subjects our redesign streams beforehand. Sometimes the notification post hints at it, but usually not, considering we tend to pick the theme last minute… 

…but this particular week we’re doing special #50 stream, in which we’ll be sexifying dudes from some particularly popular game. Hope that helps!

Topics we addressed before on the blog: 

~Ozzie, – wincenworks & -Icy