So, Rogue Company is the game with the most forgettable name… and the most forgettable aesthetic. At the time of this post their main video juxtaposes Ronin (above) with a male hero, Dima.

You may already have noticed some issues aside from the cringe inducing leaning into “Japanese girl with a katana” (who is also a street racing champion) archetype… in a game mostly about shooting people.

In fact, for a game about shooting people… a lot of these female characters seem determined to be shot in their sweet… sweet abs:

And/or remind you they have legs and tiddy:

So it does tend to give the impression that there is a particular design philosophy common to boys club studios…

But what can you expect from the studio that brought us Smite, Paladins and thought this was a good idea?

– wincenworks

Return to Soul Calibur: Cassandra, Part  1

Soul Calibur’s Cassandra, much like her Greek mythology namesake, is cursed. But instead of no-one believing her accurate prophecies, no-one ever gives her adequate costume!
And, as per usual in the franchise, designs basically only get worse over time. So we agreed to do a double-Cassandra stream and fix two different outfits of hers

Soul Calibur 6: Orange-white minidress 

While this is her latest iteration, I wouldn’t call the SC6 Cassandra dress the worst by a long shot. Still plenty shitty, though! See its bingo here.

It is rather surprising that after years of her main color scheme being blue and pink with white details, latest game changed it to orange and white with blue detail. The new, complimentary, colors look nice together. I don’t think the palette change was necessary, but unlike many designs we comment on, this one’s artists have their basic color theory in check. 

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Obviously, first thing to change was the boob window. I decided to color in that whole part white (not orange) and connect it with her collar, to give the remaining orange part a vest-like look. Moved its hem a bit higher, too, so that it stops implying low cut cleavage. Some subtler, but still annoyingly sexualized parts, like sideboobs and the belt on her chest, also had to go.
I usually don’t mind bare shoulders, but this design looked better with some poofy sleeves, in lieu of our stream redesign staple, the poofy pants.

I decided to extend the front and back flap on her dress, and to add two side flaps under the tassets, as an additional splash of color and some padding. And while I appreciate how comfortable her shoes looked, I turned them into longer boots that look much better with this cut of costume. 

Rather than a massive overhaul, it was the kind of redesign that consists of many small changes that add up. And I’m quite happy with the whole thing. Hope you enjoy it!

~Ozzie

On today’s episode of Literally What Happens When You Let a Hate Group Founded on Taking Comics Away From “the SJWs” Design a Superheroine – Peregrine! Whoever the fuck she’s supposed to be.
Credit to @renfamous for the apt commentary on Twitter.

Possibly the most ridiculously physics-defying boob window we ever featured on BABD. If this was the older version of  the bingo card, she’d also be scoring cameltoe

@eschergirls will definitely be interested in the anatomy. Someone in the thread already did a decent breakdown of everything wrong with her body. 

I’m  afraid the costume’s awfulness is overshadowed with the absolute mess of anatomy, and while it tried very hard, didn’t manage to score a bingo. I even crossed out “Looks nothing like the male equivalent”, as a safe bet. I’ve seen the way people in that movement draw. 

~Ozzie 

h/t: @hellyeahteensuperheroes 

freakin-edikan:

judgmentfist:

queen-gaymer:

Idk who they hired but I’m LIVING for these improvements

they did actually say who they hired! brendan george, a character artist

@bikiniarmorbattledamage

A lot of readers tagged us under this. 

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 giant boob window for a smaller boob window on Kitana? 

And can we please remember that zombie Jade was never as desexualized as dudebros insist she was? At least her living version completely got rid of gratuitous cleavage… she still wears pin-thin heels throughout all skins, tho >_> 

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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. 

~Ozzie 

whiteraven13:

starbuckssollux:

bumbleshark:

bumbleshark:

i wanted to fix some things that made me uncomfortable…also it was fun kinda redesigning these ladies from bnha cuz god damn their original suits are shit and dont make sense according to their quirks…. 

@bonedragonsans 

first off: shutup omg. yall forgetting these are fictional women written by a man. “they design their own outfits” is a dumb argument. these women dont exist and didnt decide anything. the artist/writer did. get smart.

second. the only thing different with momo is i took away the tittyshow of a 15 yr old. she still has a window on her chest and tummy but a lot of the shit she forms from her body comes from her back and limbs. there’s an inch long difference between her weird ass skirt and the shorts i gave her– i think she’ll make do.

ashido is a disaster. her quirk is secreting acids so why are the parts of her body that show as much skin covered? legs take up a lot of the body. the only other difference in her uniform is–once again— i took away the tittyshow of a 15 yr old. i literally gave her MORE skin to show.

let me wrap it up with nemuri since yer argument to this was by far the dumbest. nemuri can still rip off her clothes. she is STILL showing the same amount of skin as the original. I just changed the color and design so it looked like this bitch didnt just roll outta bed and throw over a hot topic lingerie set over a white lace onesie.  

die mad about me. 

this post is literally the embodiment of this

@bikiniarmorbattledamage

Those are very awesome redesigns of some of the worst female costumes in current mainstream anime. Thank you, @bumbleshark, for saving those poor heroines. 

And no thank you to the rhetoric bingo scorer who actually thinks that anime waifus have any say in their character design (ノಠ_ಠ)ノ 

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And it’s not like My Hero Academia can’t do female costumes well. It just seems to mysteriously give up when a certain threshold of boob size is crossed ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°) 

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~Ozzie 

Well yeah, Ozzie; at a certain boob size, you gotta give them a window to breathe through. Then you strap them in with your boob sealbelt. And MHA’s got both!

-Icy 


See also: last time we had this @prozdvoices video on BABD 

Fire Emblem: Pantsening, Part 1

(The title is not a joke on Awakening, I know Nyx is not from that game.)

So, doing redesigns for the game series that keeps on giving… its lady characters no pants. I don’t even care if they’re garbage pants, can they please have something, so that they’re not riding frigging scaley wyverns with bARE LEGS-

Ahem. Anyway, Fire Emblem. I decided to redesign Nyx. I don’t know what it is with me and FE dark mage types. Mostly, what caught my eye was that this was another FE woman who looks way younger than her age, while wearing strangely revealing clothes.

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Most of the edits I did involved giving her an actual shirt, rather than…. uhh?? … as well as some PANTS. I also broke up her shoes into two parts mostly for the design aspect. Such tall thigh-highs make any non-leggings look weird. The last big change was her veil, which I tried to make a little more realistic-looking. I’m not sure how, in the original, the veil is supposed to be hanging down, but then be behind her long bangs that fall close to her face??

The dark skin-tone parts on her clothes are opaque, by the way. I was just too lazy to come up with another color for them, to be honest. This was definitely one of those streams where I was struggling to work with what I had… I probably could have done a better job given more time, but I’m fairly happy with it as it is now. I promise I’ll do a non-mage the next time we redesign Fire Emblem ladies.

-Icy

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Sooooo….. this is a thing.

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This the Demonic skin for Aurelia, an angel character in Heroes of the Storm. She normally looks like this:

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So of course when she becomes a demon (or almost, according to the backstory blurb), she wears an S&M outfit, cause that’s what demons are about? Where’s my S&M Azmodan skin, then, Blizzard?? 

The closest a male equivalent outfit gets is the Demonic Imperius skin, where he shows off his abs but unfortunately doesn’t wear a leather harness.

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At least he wears hot pants, but at the same time, he gets, like, a legitimate chest piece. Auriel is getting a nip slip the second she casts anything, assuming angels have nipples. Imperius also has an actual demonic appearance about him, whereas Auriel is just a Hot Chick with red wings. The fact that none of the angels have faces only makes it worse with her design.

Ugh. It’s such a shame, they could have made her actually scary-looking, but we can’t have that. After all, even an alien insect queen has to have a hot skin.

-Icy

Elvenar continues to be the kind of game with very standard, unsexy strategy gameplay and completely unrelated marketing imagery that is basically Fantasy Porn™ (read: standard for web ads). 

And this is the sort of design that amazes me. The kind that covers over half of the Female Armor Bingo card, but doesn’t manage to score a single row. All while not being a full body image. We can only assume whether it would score high heels and/or thigh-high boots if we saw more of this poor poor lady. 

~Ozzie 

That is very uncomfortable-looking bondage clothing

– Icy 

Marking it as sensitive, just in case.