Tag: no pants

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Wonder Woman and the Regime of Missed Opportunities 

I took Regime Wonder Woman from Injustice as my second stream fix project, because this concept art reeked of wasted potential.
And because as a big fan of the Cliff Chiang design I’d love to also prove that Diana can be done well while showing quite a lot of skin and doing a homage to Greco-Roman armor that fits her origin. 

There were elements to this costume which deserved to stay – the helmet, pauldrons and belt joined with tassets. Boobplate with giant cleavage, high heels and unarmored crotch had to go.
But first I gave Wondy a torso that can fit an adult woman’s internal organs. Funny how making her waist the right size all of sudden made her toned abs so much more apparent, even though they’ve always been there. 

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I remodeled her chestpiece into a half-breastplate that actually contains the boobs while retaining some of their shape. Did my best to not emulate the look of cleavage or draw the eye to where it would have been. 

Got rid of the absurd high heels and edgelordy spikes from her shoes. Then duplicated some straps from the tassets to the front, as there was never a reason to put her crotch on display.

Final touches was giving Diana a tiny bit more distinct facial features: wider jaw and lips, aquiline nose. Minimal change, but hopefully for the better.

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If there’s something I’d change if I had more time to work on that, it would be probably making her boots look less modern (and adding more gold accents to them) and drawing her right palm on top of her hip, which the original artists clearly was too lazy to do.

This was the first, but we keep coming back to redesigning Injustice regularly during our streams, because of how shamelessly “edgy” its sexualized female characters are.
And because its in-game color palettes are the ugliest ever! This piece is based on an official concept artwork, so the colors are quite brilliant, but once rendered into the actual game, everything gets murky and desaturated to the point of blending with dark backgrounds. 

~Ozzie

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hellyeahteensuperheroes:

So, Mike Choi’s redesign of Laura Kinney’s costume for new X-23 series is controversial. To put it mildly. I decided that the best way to express what the flying boar in a submarine is wrong with this outfit would be to borrow the amazing Female Armor Bingo from @bikiniarmorbattledamage . Thankfully he had enough decency to not add a thong or it would score a full row.

Now, people have been telling me to go read Choi’s thread on Twitter, where he goes through his previous designs. Supposedly, it will change my mind about the costume. We’ll see about that.

He put his points in several threads, let’s start with the very first.

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They wanted the outfit be different from her Wolverine outfit AND based on the X-Force one. This is bizarre. Her final Wolverine suit carries clear X-Force inspirations. It’s inspired by Logan’s X-Force costume. It just feels like they’re trying to bring back nostalgia to that specific time in Laura’s history. Which is funny, when you remember that the most of online fandom hated X-Force when she was on it (Kyle and Yost’s run). Despite the critical acclaim. It was seen as the epitome of why making comics darker and edgier is the worst thing you can ever do. I know, I got into arguments with these guys. But now the same people go online wanting it back if that means Laura will be showing off her midriff again. Go figure.

Now, if you pardon me breaking chronology a bit I want to address the second and sixth point on his thread together.

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So let me get this straight – he was told by everyone (and agreed!) how pantless leotard is out of character for Laura, and then gave her equally skimpy short shorts on another try? All while completely aware that her outfit will be drawn by other artists who will likely make the shorts smaller and sexualize her further? He needed two separate attempts and two different arguments to understand Laura needs long pants?

Now back to the chronological order of these tweets. Third part.

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Where do I even begin? If he accepts the blame for her having an exposed midriff, why not use an opportunity to fix it and give her an outfit that does not have one? What not being Wolverine has to do with practical costume design? Why cannot she still wear non-revealing outfit under new or old codename? How can he talk about respecting her agency and personality considering what book he is making these designs for? A series that, for all that we know so far, will force her back into a codename that she outgrew? Laura had a whole arc about it, with her proclaiming she is not X-23. To speak of respecting her character when such a big regression is done to her is just a sad joke. 

As a side note – the top picture? These words? They’re out of context. They directly quote a speech Laura makes in issue #19 of All-New Wolverine. A speech that starts with ‘I’m not X-23″ and ends with “I’m Wolverine”. They cherry-picked lines from that monologue and slammed them on a cover for a book that goes against the entire point. It takes away from her both Wolverine title and outfit and forces her back into codename and costume she left behind. In that context talking about respecting her character is just a piece of impudence.

 And this argument about her taste of clothes comes as asinine for a number of reasons. One is that she is a fictional character, she doesn’t really make a choice to dress like this – the artist does. Giving her a midriff always undermines her as a competent fighter. You end up saying she decided to expose herself in the fight, putting herself at risk for fashion.

These outfits would be okay as everyday clothes, I could tolerate them if she wasn’t wearing a costume but was just one of those superheroes who fight in whatever they are wearing at the moment like Luke Cage or Jessica Jones. But she is not, she goes and dresses for a mission, why should fashion sense or taste of clothes have anything to do with it? 

And finally…. if he cares about staying true to her character, why did he try to put her in shorts after being told bare legs are ooc for her?

Let’s go to the fourth part

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I agree that talking about fictional character’s agency is an oxymoron. Which is why comparing Laura to real life women, who can choose their own wardrobe, makes no sense. While Choi acknowledges Laura as a fictional person, he still frames it as if he wasn’t the one in control of her looks. This is what trying to call the critics “narrow-minded orthodoxies” and claiming they accuse HER of being some sort of temptress boils down to. It is the artist we have a problem with, the artist who made a choice to dress her like that and now tries to say it’s liberating. He asked his students what they would wear as superheroes. They told him they wanted to express their independence. And somehow this shit is the only way to convey that he could think of?

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And finally the fifth part. While he speaks about the boots, I need to bring attention to what he says about practicality and realism

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Again with false equivalences. Superhero costumes can look cool while still being practical, many male outfits prove that. Hell, Snake-Eyes is a good example. And I’m pretty sure “that thing” on his face is eyes protection if a stylized, properly stylized, one. To say you cannot make a character look practical without losing the cool factor is an admission of a failure as an artist.

And for the finishing touch, I decided to put his arguments on the second famous feature from @bikiniarmorbattledamage , the Female Armor Rhetoric Bingo. 

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 His points I spotted are in green. I also put in purple arguments I’ve seen from people trying to defend his designs and the fans. Arguments that were always thrown in defense of sexualized outfits for Laura, by the way. The “Great story makes up for these ridiculous designs” is one I especially need to highlight. People are coming to me saying that I should not judge Mariko Tamaki’s story before it appears. And I need to underline that I’m sure she can write a great story with Laura. In fact, I hope she does. But that will in no way change the fact this outfit is horrible.    

Just like is the case with Mike Choi’s designs – they suck, all of them, be it unused ones or the final one. And while I can understand some parts of his thought process in working on them, they do not justify what he created and cannot serve as a good defense for the outfit he went with.

– Admin

So not only all those new outfit ideas for Laura were the generic “must. show. female. skin!” shit and the one approved in the end is no better than the rest… The designer also walked us through his “creative” process and didn’t manage to give a single satisfactory explanation to why he landed on any of those! 

It’s pretty amazing how so many completely valid points, like consulting actual women, considering how other artists will draw it and referencing the character’s history were supposedly taken into consideration… and nothing about those boring rags informs us of that. 

~Ozzie 

Why does it feel like every time Mike Choi talks about the “research” and “introspection” he did with regards to women, he’s actually trying to blame them? 

Also, I really love that this veteran of the comics industry apparently assumes that, if anything has even one impractical element, then it is 100% impractical. If that’s the case, Laura’s outfit is immediately impractical, due to the fact that I don’t see any bra straps under that see-through fabric! And wearing a strapless bra into the kind of acrobatic fights that Laura gets into is a bad idea. Too bad he didn’t ask any of his students about that, though he probably would have ignored them anyway.

-Icy

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Ophis (Dragon’s Dogma)

qvlqu:

Ophis (Dragon’s Dogma)

Okay, I just have to include this blurb about her from the wiki because it made me laugh:

“The leader of the Westron Labrys band of lady bandits in the western part of the peninsula. She loves to fight, and hates men.”

Is that why she doesn’t wear a normal breastplate, cause it’s too man-like? Seeing the designs of other lady NPCs in the game, this looks like just another generic bad armor design rather than any attempt at characterization. It’s disappointing that they decided that she needed sleeves, but not the rest of the undershirt, which would have prevented the chafing that’s probably the reason she’s so grumpy.

My headcanon is that she’s killing men because they’re the ones wearing comfortable armor, and she just hasn’t looted a breastplate that fits her well enough yet.

-Icy

“I hate men, therefore I dress in a way that panders to them!” reminds me of Oglaf’s Glamazon Way strip.

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Except Oglaf is a self-aware parody and makes a point about gendered double standards instead of playing them straight with no subversion.

~Ozzie

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We don’t have a title for this new segment yet, but as Ozzie and I have been doing livestreams for a while now (thanks to everyone who chimes in, whether you’re active in chat or not!), we wanted to show our redesigns on the blog. I started out doing streams solo, so this and the next few posts will be just on my process.

One of the first redraws I did on stream was Caitlyn from League of Legends. I read her backstory blurb, and she’s apparently a sheriff, though she doesn’t have a badge or… wear a uniform? ¯_(ツ)_/¯ Guess she’s too Strong and Independent™ for that. My redesign was basically to give her actual clothes an officer of the law in a technology-based steampunk city might wear (and a badge!). This was also the stream that started the Poofy Pants tradition of BABD streams.

Poofy Pants: For Any Occasion ~

For people interested in seeing more redraws, check out our redraw and redesign tags, which is mostly filled with fan submissions at the moment, and the Repair Her Armor blog, though it has been on hiatus for a while.

-Icy

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eschergirls:

animaloftheelements submitted:

In
relation to the “Super Manga Matrix” book, I actually have a fairly
similar book called the “costume matrix” and well… It’s far more helpful
than what I’ve seen of the other book.

its
basically the same concept, take a “base” clothing style (school
uniform, military uniform, japanese clothes, gothic/formal, casual,
foreign cultures) and mix it with another base, or with a “motif”
(animal, elements, scifi/mecha, seasons, plants).

each section of
the book has one of the bases and combines it, usually showing at least
two designs (in terms of motifs though, there may be more than one
design but they would use something different i.e. having four school
uniform x animal examples but with four different specific animals) so
there’s a little more variety

It’s
mostly a reference book rather than a “how to draw” and even then they
have a little brainstorming game using web diagrams and word association
to make a design

It’s got absolutely no escher girl posing however they do have a few slightly questionable designs

the worst of the bunch being this girl

it
is combining Military clothing as a base (specifically armor) and a
dragon and they got this. Granted its far better than what I’ve seen of
most womens’ armor(even by the same author) but it is a disappointing
one compared to everything else

I guess what I’m trying to say is, here is the same concept, with better designers

That’s really cool!  And it does seem very helpful for brainstorming, especially since they show you a variety of combinations and bases! 

The dragon armor amuses me, but I do like how the dragon design wraps around her, even if it’s bikini armor x3

Thanks for sharing!

Sigh, even in a practical interesting book that helps with costume design there had to be a physics-denying bikini armor, huh? 

What upsets me the most is that this book’s idea works basically the same as @dogbomber​‘s Lady Knight Generator, so the result could look like any of these awesome characters, yet this artist’s first idea for “dragon armor” was the underbooby thing in the last image :-/

~Ozzie

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bikiniarmorbattledamage:

bigbardafree:

female characters 

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can be

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covered up

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and objectified

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female characters

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can be

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pantsless

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and not

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objectified

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IT’S UP TO THE ARTISTS AND WRITERS

I dedicate this reblog to anyone who thinks that we object to women showing some skin by principle… No, we don’t. Just as we do not think covering everything up is a universal solution to the problem sexist costume designs.

The way a character is framed (visually and story-wise) makes a world of difference between just having a questionable costume and being outright objectified.

And as much as bikinis, bathing suits, cheerleader outfits etc. remain a silly wardrobe choice for an on-duty warrior/crimefighter, above here we have small sample of evidence that pants or full-body suits can actually look worse.

Let me refer back to @pointlessarguments101​’s article that I quoted waaay back:

Putting a female hero in pants does not mean she is somehow protected from an artist positioning her primarily for the male gaze. For example, Marvel Comics recently began a new ongoing called Fearless Defenders which stars Valkyrie and Misty Knight. Both of these characters wear pants and, yet, I lost count by about page five of how many times Misty’s ass took center stage in any given panel. Basically, where there’s a male gaze will, there’s a male gaze way — pants or no pants, tights or bared legs.

Preach! 

~Ozzie 

more on costume design | more on character design | more about the iconic example: Starfire

This week’s throwback: the significant difference between sexualization and showing skin. Yes, amazingly, they are not and never were the same thing.

We talked lately about how presentation/framing of the character via such things as posing and camera angles is what ultimately decides whether or not the character is objectified.

Skimpy costumes, of course, more often than not also serve female sexualization more than anything. Still, there are certain, very limited circumstances that can justify something as absurd as chainmail bikini.

Not to mention all the various non-bikini forms of partial nudity that are decidedly non-sexual and equivalent to many shirtless male power fantasies.

~Ozzie