The hilarious front line in the tragic war against ridiculous female armor
Tag: Overwatch
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The video as a whole is a really great introduction to character posing in animation and why Tracer’s “lookatmubutt” poseneeded to be replaced. But the last bit is the most important part for BABD, as Dan brings up how sexualization tends to compromise everything else that is established about a female characterinstead of being properly used as a character-building tool. Not surprisingly, twoheroines we talked about a lot on BABD are brought up as examples.
Regarding Tracer’s pose redo, while I agree the new one is technically more in-character and dynamic, I still think Blizzard did a half-hearted fix job by choosing posing that’s still gratuitously sexualized for the “improved” look.
Since Overwatch’s release date is pending, I’ve been seeing a lot of people getting excited about it’s diversity (particularly in comparison to it’s primary rival) and Tracer as a character – and I’ve noticed something.
Pretty much every favorite Tracer moment tends to frame her from the shoulders up for two reasons. The first is that her facial expressions are magic (hopefully Disney is taking notes) and secondly because most of the top half of her costume seems designed with her personality and role in mind.
The rest of it seems designed with the intent to make sure that there’s no confusion here, the plucky, fun female character is also definitely slim and ha great legs and butt.
Clearly her appeal is enough they really didn’t need to do that.
The video as a whole is a really great introduction to character posing in animation and why Tracer’s “lookatmubutt” poseneeded to be replaced. But the last bit is the most important part for BABD, as Dan brings up how sexualization tends to compromise everything else that is established about a female characterinstead of being properly used as a character-building tool. Not surprisingly, twoheroines we talked about a lot on BABD are brought up as examples.
Regarding Tracer’s pose redo, while I agree the new one is technically more in-character and dynamic, I still think Blizzard did a half-hearted fix job by choosing posing that’s still gratuitously sexualized for the “improved” look.
Since Overwatch’s release date is pending, I’ve been seeing a lot of people getting excited about it’s diversity (particularly in comparison to it’s primary rival) and Tracer as a character – and I’ve noticed something.
Pretty much every favorite Tracer moment tends to frame her from the shoulders up for two reasons. The first is that her facial expressions are magic (hopefully Disney is taking notes) and secondly because most of the top half of her costume seems designed with her personality and role in mind.
The rest of it seems designed with the intent to make sure that there’s no confusion here, the plucky, fun female character is also definitely slim and ha great legs and butt.
Clearly her appeal is enough they really didn’t need to do that.
Probably a good time to bring this back since, well we’re still having people assuring us that Blizzard – a company with literally billions of dollars and armies of talent people… is really trying! Just look at them trying so hard with Overwatch! Examples include going from this:
To this:
This is not, by any stretch of the imagination – trying. There is no classroom in the world where this would be considered a passing grade improvement despite the claims of caring by lead. (If you missed the outrage by… people claiming others are outraged, there’s a great summary here.)
Yes, it is scary for companies to change up imagery when working with an established brand – but making the actual changes is the only way that it still perpetuates all the problems. Ultimately, all they’re doing is well…
The only way they’re going to fix things is to really take an actual whole new direction with it – and they probably won’t get that right the first time either.
Neither of these games improved by trying to get credit for minimalist changes and writing nice quotes about how their game is for everyone. They did by actually digging into what was wrong and looking at ways to avoid doing that.
Probably a good time to bring this back since, well we’re still having people assuring us that Blizzard – a company with literally billions of dollars and armies of talent people… is really trying! Just look at them trying so hard with Overwatch! Examples include going from this:
To this:
This is not, by any stretch of the imagination – trying. There is no classroom in the world where this would be considered a passing grade improvement despite the claims of caring by lead. (If you missed the outrage by… people claiming others are outraged, there’s a great summary here.)
Yes, it is scary for companies to change up imagery when working with an established brand – but making the actual changes is the only way that it still perpetuates all the problems. Ultimately, all they’re doing is well…
The only way they’re going to fix things is to really take an actual whole new direction with it – and they probably won’t get that right the first time either.
Neither of these games improved by trying to get credit for minimalist changes and writing nice quotes about how their game is for everyone. They did by actually digging into what was wrong and looking at ways to avoid doing that.
One of these things is not like the other, One of these things just does not belong, Can you tell which thing is not like the others By the time I finish my song?
So the basis for Widowmaker is that she’s top tier assassin who is emotionally absent and conditioned to be the perfect operative *. For some reason her outfit doesn’t seem very much like those belonging to male characters from similar archetypes (all of them being the “best of the best”).
Which is kind of a shame, because I did a mock up of what she might look like if she took her clothing pointers from the more established members of the archetype and personally I think she still looks pretty damn sexy.
This is before we factor in all the options they had in terms of “inspired by but very different to”, future fashion trends, alternative themes, etc.
– wincenworks
* Of course, hers is a “I was a nice lady and then brainwashed into being a super assassin.” rather than anything that suggests she actively choose her profession – it’s unclear whether this is because Blizzard cannot envision a woman choosing to be an assassin for her own reasons, if they just felt the whole “she was once nice” cliche helps or if they plan to use “well a man picked her outfit” as an excuse later on.
