What do you mean this character is NOT a result of semi-incestious relationship between Angela and female Thor? Wait, this is supposed to be… Baba Yaga?
Zenoscope’s Grimm Fairy Tales never disappoints in being disappointing.
~Ozzie
Uprooting the Sexy Flower Warriors
[We’re not sure how a draft gets posted without our permission, but Tumblr might as well start collapsing from all sides at this point. Here’s the actual full post!]
This stream we decided to devote to Flower Knight Girl, another game that, much like Kanpani Girls, seems to be an endless depository of really generic moe warrior girls in creepily skimpy “armors”. With the added gimmick of each character being flower plant-themed.
Fritillaria/Chocolate Lily/Chessboard Lily (Evolved)
This dominatrix-looking lady apparently “evolved” by exchanging a short dress and no pants for short pants and two ribbons. Her previous form, for comparison:
Looking for inspiration, I just googled “fritillaria” and I learned that in Polish we call this kind of lily a “chessboard flower”, for pretty obvious reasons, once you look at its petals:
I decided that though this character seems based different species, fritillaria camschatcensis (there was no info on her being “chocolate lily” back then), fritillaria meleagris is much more striking visually, so I included its colors and chessboard pattern in my redesign. She doesn’t resemble her actual flower in the first place anyway.
While the costume is amazingly skimpy and objectifying (especially that excuse for a “bra”), it’s not without a potential. There’s promising metal cincher, which I decided to enlarge and turn into full breastplate, and she comes with POOFY PANTS, a staple of BABD redesign streams, which I adorned with tassets that compliment their shape and match the breastplate.
I got rid
of her long-ass pigtails and of all the action lines, which collectively made the composition more chaotic than dynamic. Minor thing that bothered me was her sword being stuck in the ground for some reason instead of fastened to her belt, so I quickly fixed that too. The final touch were, of course, sleeves and tights with purple chessboard pattern, which tie the whole thing together.
I found the abundance of fleur-de-lis symbols on her to be hilariously excessive, to the point I erased all of them during the stream. After some deliberation I figured that maybe the one on her hat fits, so I just muted its color, because magenta doesn’t fit the new scheme I gave her.
All in all, I find Fritillaria to be one of my most inspired redesigns, which makes me doubly disappointed in her creators, considering they could have just googled a flower photo to get some non-boring ideas.
~Ozzie
Love how she’s apparently Maple by the fact that she has some maple leaf hair clips and a bit of a maple leaf pattern on one small part of her mini skirt. So for this one, I channeled my inner Blizzard character artist, in that I wanted to way overdo the whole maple leaf theme. (I used samurai armor as reference.)
I ended up redoing almost her entire torso, since I needed to give her an actual breastplate, instead of… I guess it’s a crop top camisole? (Do those exist?) Then I gave her actual kusazuri (the plates hanging down her legs), and made them maple leaf shaped!
I did give her a less traditional chest piece, but there are so many small shapes in the design that we needed the main armor pieces to be bigger, I think. I did break it up with a huge maple leaf on it though.
I also hated everything about her face and hair, so I gave her a more traditional hairstyle to match her more determined expression. There were also a lot of smaller edits, like flipping her foot around so she’s not standing as awkwardly, and adding some volume and muscle to her sword arm.
And finally, I added a few more small maple leafs to her “skirt,” to really reinforce that maple leaf theme. I’d hate for people to miss it. Though, honestly, after finishing this redesign, I think she should just wear a maple leaf costume.
-Icy
A while ago, we got a submission of an Aspen Matthews figurine where she only had 2 1/5 pieces of bone armor on. Tumblr flagged the post as adult content, so here’s a picture:
Turns out, there’s another bone armor version of Aspen! This one has more bones, though I would still call this 2 1/5 pieces of armor collectively, since that torso piece is not a full piece of anything, besides Disappointment.
At least she has biceps? Though they seem to be coming out of her boobs.
-Icy
Riders of Icarus Switch
Another victims recipients of our switch treatment, after Saint Seiya Online, were costumes from Riders of Icarus.
Guardian
The change was a pretty simple copypaste job, I only adjusted details to better fit other gender’s figure. The lady’s weird incomplete underwear became full pants, the dude’s chin got exposed, so I gave him some lip gloss and goatee to flaunt it more.
As for most crucial difference, the exposed belly and cleavage – in the original the skin looks jarringly different from the armor, as if literally rendered with different engine settings. I decided to preserve the plastic-y look of the flesh to accentuate the guardian’s masculine body. Which, BTW, probably features my best painted abs so far.
~Ozzie
Wizard
This one, too, was basically a copypaste job, except that I hated the shiny pants texture, so I drew them in real quick. I also changed both of their hair to not look like Absolute Garbage. The weird… leotard? lingerie? cloth coverings do end up covering basically all of the fun parts of the dude’s torso, and unfortunately, I didn’t give him my patented Semi-Translucent Bulge™. Especially with that sharp ornament pointing right at his crotch. Believe me when I say, I will not make the same mistake in future streams. At least I made sure his coattails didn’t cover his ass.
Overall, it was a fun and laid-back redesign, I think.
-Icy
So, I was looking at the recent comics issued and I found there’s this new series that seems to feature a lovingly rendered horse… and what’s probably one of the most ridiculous outfits that’s ever been designed.
Yes… she has a steel undies on outside of her painted on pants… apparently.
– wincenworks
A Noble Guild Wars 2 Redesign
In the same week that Ozzie redrew the GW2 Halloween outfit, Icy decided to take out one of her pet peeves by redrawing one of the Noble outfits from the game.
I just want more ladies in suits; why is that so hard? Besides that, when I saw this dress and noticed that she’s, like, 13 heads tall, I just had to fix it. I started by redlining the original to figure out how tall she was actually supposed to be.
[Informercial Voice: “Look at the difference!!]
After that, what I ended up doing was basically copy the dapper noble man outfit.
It was a pretty simple redesign, besides having to figure out how to get that frigging vest to look good. I also fixed her hair just a bit.
Even though I wasn’t designing the new outfit, it was still fun to work on this, and I think it looks good. I get that GW2 is another semi-industrial fantasy world (but with a race of robot-builder scientists… sure), but that dress was just hideous, in my opinion. Anyway, enjoy a lady in a suit.
-Icy
theoldhack submitted (and Ozzie bingo’d):
Here is a brilliant example of how armour magically shifts shape depending on whether it is worn by a man or a woman. All rights, privileges and blame belong to Blizzard Entertainment. I do not own these images and seek no profit from them, but merely to entertain, enrage or explicate as each viewer sees fit.
Not marking “No head protection” because this is basic armor with no additional gear, like helmets and shoes, equipped, so neither male or female PC gets one. But knowing the track record of WoW and Blizzard in general, it’s always a safe bet that those would also have their share of frustrating double standard.
But feel free to check this square on your personal bingo cards, especially if you also would count this sort of panties as “thong” – you’ll get a bingo row 🙂
Marking “Skin-tight armor” though, because we can see this being tight (albeit equally for both male and female player).
~Ozzie
A Quick Return to Heroes of Newerth
While Icy was working on her list of WIPs (some judgment, mostly from Icy herself), Ozzie trekked beyond the usual Heroes of Newerth gallery and found some officially posted concepts on Art Station. And they were all great, right? …. Right?
Looking at this set of character concepts I noticed certain… discrepancy between male and female-coded ones. It seems that the designs are pretty nice and geometrical, and work pretty well overall. Until a woman is being designed, where the priorities seemed to be cleavage and leg over a cohesive overall look.
I believe it was one of the technical difficulty/limited time streams (also the pics were relatively low-res), so I opted to do very simple, minimal changes – just by covering up this pink/teal Grim Reaper-y (?) lady’s bare skin and giving her wearable shoes.
Bonus for no more “eye” designs on her boobs. I kinda like the skirt I gave her. Not much to say beyond that.
~Ozzie
Return of Kanpani Girls
Our second Kanpani Girls redesign. Fixing more soldier waifus!
So this character is supposed to be the highest ranking soldier among the Holy Knights (whatever they are in the game) and basically is supposed to be perfect leader and fighter, including über-pretentious part in character description:
There’s not a single hole in her fighting technique. The spear is actually a perfect metaphor for her existence itself. She very rarely takes center stage.
Mary-Sue-ish description aside, I gotta admit that Elmina’s stance and *parts* of uniform do inform what a confident authority figure she is. Then there are ridiculous patches of bare skin, schoolgirl face and ridiculously busy costume shape.
First, obvious thing to fix were the random cutouts. Then I decided that whatever that giant pauldron thingy on her right arm is supposed to be looks just too absurd and uncomfortable to leave it as it is. Instead I recreated her left pauldron best as I could, to make it a simple symmetrical uniform.
Next thing was to give her face conveying the experience and age you’d expect from a high ranking officer. I made her look older with a bigger nose, some minor wrinkles and a tiny bit more detailed lips and jawline. Crossing scars over the bridge of her nose communicate that she acquired her mastery of the spear at a cost – no real badass warrior authority should go scarless.
Also she got a haircut. Her cape is epic enough to blow in the wind and the long hair just asked to get stuck in her weapons or armor.
The rest of the stream I spent reversing all those tiny little ornamental shapes from her uniform into simpler, bigger shapes that don’t tire the eye so quickly. Most such changes can be observed on her greaves, as her legs were the least exposed part of the costume.
~Ozzie
I decided to tackle the lovingly-rendered but very unfortunately dressed Helga. She has no backstory that I found, so nothing was stopping me from doing whatever I wanted. Insert evil redesigner laugh!
I started by giving her an actual breastplate to replace the…. um. I’m not actually sure what she was supposed to be wearing in the original? It’s not pasties, but there’s not enough coverage to call it a bra… anyway. I got it outta there fast. I also gave her a sleeve while I was at it.
I used the same breastplate design as I used for my other Kanpani Girl redraw, because the metal bits under her breasts lead easily into it. I just moved it down to that it’s an actual armor. And thanks to feedback on the previous design, I knew to give her a brigandine under that breastplate: that’s what the metal rivets are.
Next, I debated over what to do with her legs. At first, I wanted to give her a tabbard and get rid of her massive skirt almost entirely, but I actually like the skirt. It goes well with her flowy sleeve, and I decided that she was a noblewoman who learned sword-fighting. No backstory, no rules!! It wouldn’t be the most practical, but I decided she still held onto vain nobility ideals and thus kept the skirt. I just made it a little less wide.
I also noticed that her short inside skirt had the beginning shapes of pants, and I ran with that. The trademark Poofy Pants™
make an appearance again, with white tights underneath for contrast. I moved her stocking decorations to her shins and made shoes out of them.
And finally, I made her actually look determined. She feels like a person who only recently picked up the sword, so no scars for her yet.
I definitely had fun rendering this out, though having to switch to a different idea part-way through once again meant that I didn’t finish this during the stream. I’m better about it now, I swear!
-Icy