The Masculine Beauty of Superhero Figure, Part 1

Time to fix a Sideshow Toys figure! With male empowerment!

The modular design of Iron Man’s armor lent itself really great to a sexy redesign. Tons of clean lines to replace metal plates with some hot, hot bare skin and also anatomy-inspired detailing that served as a reference to painting his musculature. 

image

I also decided while getting rid of the whole helmet might be against keeping Tony’s hero persona iconic, I did  leave out the lower part, giving it the jawline from the figure’s creepily realistic replacable Robert Downey Jr. head.

image

The only actual changes to metal pieces on his costume I did were: 

  • moving those glowy things under his pecs to right over his nipples – glowy nipple armor for the win!
  • changing the shape of his shoes to super pointy heels (also very smol size, because if female designs aren’t allowed to have feet proportional to their bodies, why should male?)
  • giving him an oversized codpiece, so that we know he’s very confident in his masculinity ? 

While I went lazy on the rendering of repainted parts, I’m still quite happy with the results. Hope you guys agree. 

~Ozzie 

the-pigeon-king:

letmelovewomenfool:

Yes! …and no. While not overtly sexualized, they all have femminizing features that…become impractical. If I remember right the WASP suit had heels instead of flats. Valkyrie’s outfit is, just bad? It doesn’t seem to fit her and is guilty of boobplate and worse. I agree that these are great steps in a direction, like holy hell it used to be worse, but these are not without their faults.

Maybe @bikiniarmorbattledamage could explain better?

We touched on Marvel and their love of boobplate before, as well as the fact that coverage of skin does not mean nonsexualized by default. Now, we’re not saying that all femininizing aspects of costuming are bad. However, for a warrior to wear heels, or clothes so tight that they can’t properly move (to get that perfect Ass and Legs look, etc)… that’s just not practical, and will probably lead to injury.

Of course some of these costumes have positives; it’s not often we see a lady character wearing a helmet, for example. But we can definitely do better, and we should! And hopefully, we will.

-Icy 

Leveling up with Angela

Trying to recapture lightning in the bottle that was my original Angela redesign, I decided to have a take on her upgraded armor… And it was beyond me, really. 

This thing was so bad to begin with that it should have been remade from scratch, not by modifying the unsalvagable original. I did my best, though.


Before doing anything to the costume, though, I had to take care of the ABSOLUTE GARBAGE color composition on this whole splash page. What genius thought that orange background was optimal way to present a character with big orange hair and even bigger orange wings? 
Fixing it required all the sophistication of the easiest color theory trick in the book – I recolored the background. Wow, amazing! What do you mean orange pops out from blue better than from more orange? What even is complimentary colors? 

image

Only then I could start working on the armor itself. Boobplate proved to be much less inspiring than Angela’s normal golden bikini top, as the shape language and colors in the original gave me much more to work of off. This I could only change into actual, rather boring, breastplate. 

I had no idea what was happening to the leg region, so to cover the nonsensical crotch area and to give the design some consistency with my previous one, I recreated the mail tabard (just in gold this time) and gave her an updated version of the belt I was so proud of the last time. This time not only I let her keep the butt cape, I made it bigger and recolored it to light red, for another splash of color. and also to recreate the look her gambeson tassets.

image

The lesser changes include: fixing the giraffe neck, getting rid of the 90s comic hair (which also seemed to be clipping into her wings?), making her headpiece bigger and connected in the middle, giving her a bit smaller wedge heels and stockier built. 

I’m afraid this really isn’t half as good as my previous Angela redo, but I hope you guys like it anyway!

~Ozzie  

Marvel Villainesses: Hulk-stomping edition! 

Not long after our last take on DC evil sexy ladies, we decided to balance things out with some Marvel characters as well. And by complete coincidence, we both chose artwork in which they stomp on Amadeus Cho! Clearly, that means they’re dating.


Lady Hellbender 

While Frank Cho is a human dildo, I will admit that unlike most other whiny dudebro artists he has actual skill and grasp of human anatomy (when he wants to, at least). This is a technically good drawing, with Hellbender’s bizarrely sexualized costume as the only real flaw

(again, those panty-line bars! (ノಠ_ಠ)ノ). 

Obviously I started the fix by getting rid of the cleavage, boob cups and pinched waist from her metal leotard. It no longer looks skin-tight, especially since I’ve added some padding in the form of the same black fabric she wears under her boots and gauntlets. I liked that material enough to extend it into faux-pantlegs that cover what her new shorts (replacing what seemed like a thong) don’t reach. 
Along with her armor, I reshaped her upper body. The suggestion of muscular arms was nice, so now they’re bigger, with solid thick torso to match. And a brand new arm scar, fitting the facial one.

image

One last thing about her costume that needed fixing was her left foot, which inexplicably is drawn as if the boot was a wedge heel, asymmetrical to right foot’s flat sole. 

After I was done with the outfit, her face called for some un-genericking. There is a promise of unique features in there (mainly the visible scar), but it falls short, quite obviously due to Cho’s cowardice at making her *too* far from conventionally attractive. As we mentioned before, the color scheme makes her look quite close to Harley Quinn (and arguably also Poison Ivy), which is just bad character design. 

I started by changing the hairstyle into more practical one – the braid was already there, so why not make all the hair be part of it instead of flying loosely? It’s also not visible at this angle, but I decided that her right temple has some undercut action going. 

image

Next I made her scar more prominent with color change. Then very subtly turned her features a little more square, gave her a bigger nose, thick natural eyebrows and a tiny bit of facial hair that so much mainstream media denies to depict on women. Also extended the dark lower eyeshadow. 

Final touch was, of course, the expression – no more vacant supermodel stare.  Someone stomping the Hulk to the ground deserves to make an intimidating face at the camera

It’s one of the most satisfying redesigns for me. Hope you guys enjoy it too! 

~Ozzie 


Enchantress

Another Hot Chick who was supposed to look intimidating but does not at all; is this a redesign type I have? All of my design choices centered on this one around making Enchantress into someone to take seriously. Most of the changes were small, outside of her tiddy situation.

image

I gave her a leotard-type of thing with some nice lines to break up the big shape, and some small details in strategic places. I also made her weird side embroidery into a larger part of the color scheme. I gave her some sick abs under that costume, as well as bigger shoulder and arm muscles. To finish off the upper body, I gave her spots of black to tie her color scheme together. It’s honestly kind of jarring how only her legs have the black in the original.

Next, the leggies! I got rid of the big circles that were Bad, and gave her some stitching down the side of the leggings instead. And I gave her platform shoes to really stomp on that Hulk, rather than… daintily breaking perspective with how the Hulk’s got no shadows on him, but the chain and foot are in front of him….?

Finally, I changed her face and headpiece. I wanted her to actually look menacing, rather than like a beauty queen wearing a tacky green crown.

image

And yeah, I guess I got a thing for one-sided smirks, but she’s still hot. She’s just got more attitude and control and a more interesting face than… nothing. Y’all really have no idea how I hate the White Girl Nose so many lady characters get in comics.

This was definitely a fun one and I like what I ended up with. I personally think Ozzie and I did super well with faces this time around. Give us more Intimidating Looking Ladies!

-Icy 

signalacoustic:

theclawedking:

francisxie:

filling up more rule 63 request!

mystique & emma frost~

Daken approves of this bold new character choice 

@bikiniarmorbattledamage

Another venture into the world of sexy gender-swapped superheroines and villainesses! Somehow, for some reason, never a type of design choice made in canon with characters who are male in-story… ζ༼Ɵ͆ل͜Ɵ͆༽ᶘ
Just imagine Gambit or Nightcrawler being this fashionable! 

Funny, because Emma Frost in particular is second only to Bayonetta among (dubious) examples that are thrown our way as a female character expressing her sexuality “done right”. Yet other than fans turning her into a dude, there’s no direct male equivalent to her brand of sexy empowerment.

~Ozzie

bikiniarmorbattledamage:

dr-archeville:

pixiebutterandjelly:

I literally just read somebody suggesting that the “iron man” in all new all differen avengers van’t be pepper potts because the armor has no boobs….what ._.

But Rose, how can fans possibly believe it’s a G I R L in there if the suit doesn’t have BIG IRON TITTIES?! [/sarcasm]

In case anyone wondered what All-New All-Different Avengers is:

image

Regardless of who this particular Iron Man is supposed to be, Pepper Potts rocks the boobless Iron Man suit just fine. Ask Stjepan Sejic (seems this artwork was deleted from dA. Here’s it’s archive.com copy).

~Ozzie

People really need to stop playing their faith in boobcups. They’re not necessary if you have boobs, and by now everyone should know that the boobplate does not guarantee boobs underneath:

image
image

– wincenworks

more on Iron Boobs | more on boobplates

edit: found another post about gendering Iron Man’s suit!

Throwing this back as a friendly reminder that boobs on armor are neither in any way necessary for a female wearer, nor are they a warrant of feminine body inside said armor. 

Sadly, still a point that needs reiterating. 

~Ozzie 

Mike Choi on Instagram: “An interview in progress”

Mike Choi on Instagram: “An interview in progress”

hellyeahteensuperheroes:

You might remember when I put Mike Choi’s new, godawful redesign of Laura Kinney’s new costume and his arguments in defense of it through both bingos from @bikiniarmorbattledamage . Going by a picture he posted on his Instagram (you can also find it on his twitter), he didn’t take the backlash against the outfit well. You can see it here:

image

I’d say I need to update rhetorics bingo but I don’t see a square for outright calling people assholes and telling them to go fuck themselves.

I like how he has to go and actually repeat points from that rhetorics despite how bad they are. I mean, he even went back to the old “she chooses to dress that way” argument with “Women like Laura do what they fucking feel like”.

I would lose all desire of supporting Laura’s new book after this if it wasn’t for the fact that I know Marvel will learn nothing from its eventual failure. They will claim they were totally right to force her back into a skimpy outfit because “sex sells” and to undo her character development and force her back to a codename she rejected (and that stands for dehumanization and abuse did to her more than anything else) because “X-23 is an established brand” and will simply blame Mariko Tamaki for not being able to stop a boat they blew dozen of holes in from sinking. I will still give serious thought if I actually will support that book because it feels to me Marvel is hell-bent on making it fail and I could use my time helping other titles stay afloat.

– Admin

So remember those new skimpy Laura Kinney/X-23 costumes Mike Choi did and how he explained his design process without actually explaining anything

Well, he’s back and ready to prove unambiguously that he belongs to the camp of butthurt industry professional artist.
Congrats, Mr. Choi, you can proudly take place next to people like Thierry “Save the BoobplateVan Gyseghem, J. ScottShoulderpads are UnfeminineCampbell, ErikSave us from PracticalLarsen, Tony “Fake Geek Girl” Harris and Frank “Pissy Baby Tantrum” Cho! What a company to be in. 

I guess Choi is at least honest about all the spite he’s stewing in.

~Ozzie