The hilarious front line in the tragic war against ridiculous female armor
Tag: redesign
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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.
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
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BattleWrong – We’re sure that Joke hasn’t been done before!
Battlerite’s a bit of a disappointment in its character design. They seem to have cool ideas (for the male characters and Iva), and their art style is cute and colorful… and yet. So why not try to fix some of their more uninspired designs?
Blossom
To be honest, my desire to redesign Blossom was from my deep-seated frustration with animal-looking characters having a humanoid body shape. Why couldn’t she just be like Puss in Boots from the Shrek movies? Just a deer that stands on her back legs, without breasts and a skinny waist and hips. I realize that she’s a “faun” according to the wiki, which means human/animal hybrid, but the fact that she has both hair and fur on her head/face makes it look like they just slapped some tits on an upright deer. Maybe they were going for something new, but boy did it not work.
I tried to give her more clothes at first, but then decided…. screw it. She’s a deer now. Why does she wear clothes? So in the end, I just gave her a simple poncho. I did want to show off her deer-ness, so I left her shoulders uncovered and gave her upper body some fur, so it’s not weird that she has the same on her face.
I also changed her face to be less Generic Cute Girl.
After I finished the edits, we started making jokes about just Photoshopping a deer head on her instead, so I did that. Got some images of a deer and a birb off the internet, and so Blossom’s True Form came to be. (You can still see the lines from the stock image watermark.)
[She’s beauty, she’s grace, she’ll throw an acorn at your face.]
The result is fairly simple and could probably use some embroidery or patches of different-colored cloth, and some people might say this was an easy cop-out on my part. But I just want her to be a deer, not a deer with boobs; is that too much to ask for?
-Icy
Freya
Thing about Freya’s original design is that I don’t actually find it overall bad – the random bikini top that looks like coconut shells strapped to a choker is the only thing that ruins it. As mentioned back when we bingo’d her pre-update design (with even worse, sideboob-y bikini top!), she looks pretty great from waist down. Also, while far from unique, her face shape is allowed to be a tiny bit more angular… when viewed from certain angles, at least.
(basically it’s Zarya level of safe approach to diversity in female facial features – still conveniently attractive and wears makeup, but allowed to have square-ish jawline, given that you tilt your head and squint)
But since I couldn’t spend 2 hours of stream only painting her a decent top, I decided to build upon what’s there and add some more actually distinct features.
Of course, the boobplate had to go first. Since it bore some resemblance to Angela’s (coincidentally, also character associated with Norsemythology), I decided to base Freya’s new breastplate on my earlier Angela redesign. Also a blue tank top matching her bracer and tassets, for minimal layering. Left her shoulders bare, just gave them a tiny bit more heft.
I approached tweaking her face to create a more believable character. No makeup (which, unfortunately made her blue eyes with orange eyebrows stand out less), more prominent freckles, bigger nose, more sunken cheeks… All to create an image of a warrior who’s more concerned with surviving battles than spending hours in front of the mirror.
I’m rather pleased with the subtle changes to this design and my painting technique in this piece. Hope you guys like it too.
~Ozzie
PS: I didn’t know that while doing this redesign, but apparently some genius on Reddit, upon seeing slightly more boob coverage on Freya’s official updated design decided to “fix” her back to her original bikini. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Not unlike with Arhian, I decided to change character with platinum blonde/near white hair into an older person who grew into this silvery shade. Also Lex happens to remind me a lot of my OC who is an older, handsome gentleman, so I gave him similar facial hair.
As with many other my sexy male redesigns, like Poseidon, Loki or male Witch, I decided to reduce the amount of skin covering without changing the silhouette significantly. I concluded that the little capes on his arms and sides should stay, as the shapes that most define his costume. I also left most of his belts, but had to repaint them a different shade, as they turned out to blend with his skin tone too much.
I’ve spent some extra time and attention on detailing the
thigh muscles, abs and crotch bulge. Also a happy trail linking the latter two.
~Ozzie
Jenos the Tease
We ended up both doing white-haired characters for the stream, but I decided to make mine more shy, by empowered man standards. The biggest edits were to his chest and upper thighs. I removed his shirt and opened up his coat to show off his Hot Bod, but still leaving a bit covered up for that ~mystery~ element. I gave him cutouts around his crotch to show off some leg as well.
Then there were a lot of small changes: A bit of body hair on the legs and torso, longer hair in the front to further frame that collarbone, and blushing cheeks. His face was actually not made of ugly rocks covered by skin, so I didn’t have to change it!
I’m still not sure about the tall underwear, and I could have definitely shown off more of his legs, but this is a more covered-up empowered man. It’s like when boobplate and pants on a woman are considered “good” because it’s not a bikini! You can’t even see his nipples, it’s totally acceptable for combat.
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.
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!
A while back, I found the Female Armor Bingo Card by @bikiniarmorbattledamage and I remember seeing a particular candidate for that while binge watching Anime America. So I went ahead and did the bingo card with Dragon Half’s main character, Mink! Afterwards, I thought it would be fun to do a redesign of her, and even if it took me a while to finish, here she is! I love her color pallette, btw. ;D
Now this is a legit bingo contender! I think we could also mark “Boob window” and “Sharp ornamental pieces” too, scoring another row.
And just in case we get responses from people claiming that it’s ecchi comedy series, so any sort of non-porn sexualization goes… NOPE. Armor bikinis don’t start making more sense just because the series is made mostly of slapstic and fanservice.
I really enjoy the redesign, it’s cute and simple. Amazingly, giving her pants and a shirt doesn’t make this half-dragon heroine look any less like a fantasy character. And golden greaves, bracers, pauldrons and ornamentation still communicate both fantasy aesthetic and that she has a capacity to fight.
Thank you for the bingo contribution, @geistaku0719!
So, what does the original give us? Amazingly washed out monochromatic color palette, generic witch hat, bare thighs and shoulders, majorly over-designed bone ornamentation that looks super stabby (not to mention, frames her boobs)… and, of course, male version which looks nothing alike.
After covering the gratuitous bare skin parts with poofy pants and sleeves, I decided to stick to two priorities:
Make her color scheme more balanced (original, especially model sheet version I found on GW2 Wiki, is basically all just one shade of emerald!). Hope that dark teal, moss green and ebony compliment each other better when not so washed out.
Turn those needless small ornamental shapes into bigger, less distracting and less likely to stab her if she leans down. Obviously most of what was on her chest had to go in favor of something that doesn’t focus on the bebws.
All the actual design details and shapes were mostly incidental, as I was changing everything as I moved along, over two or three separate streaming sessions.
I guess I could have gone the path of whatwe did to Saint Seiya Online and change the lady’s design to that of her spooky (warlock? lich?) skeleton male version, but I don’t like his design either, just for reasons different than overt sexism. His bone motif is somehow even more overdone than hers (three little skulls on chest, one on right arm, another one on his… crotch?) and there’s the vague “witch doctor” vibe to him that puts this in exotification category.
I decided to go with the traditional sexified male armor path of stripping him down to as little clothing as possible without changing the silhouette. And gave him face skin, because if lady witch doesn’t have a skull head, why should he?
Also made that weirdly suggestive crotch skull actually frame his package with its scary jaw, because we would never miss such opportunity.
~Ozzie
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Gotta Fix Everyone’s Weird Boob “Armor”
I was frustrated with how Marvel’s Valkyrie was just a sequence of weird design decisions. This particular version ticked me off because they had the cool cuirass with the abs, but then the chafing and the metal boob cones…. ugh.
I started with fixing that chest armor: getting rid of the weird metal bra and adding cool (to me, anyway) shoulder guards. I wanted to give her a more powerful look. I added some small dangling leather straps to mirror those on her belt.
When it was time to fix her…. boots? I took the liberty of, at the same time, painting over poor Hel’s painful-looking <biggest air-quotes ever> “armor.” I actually started giving her a more reasonable breastplate but gave up. That would be a project all on its own.
Those leg ropes seemed very stupid to me, and they didn’t go with the rest of the design, so I gave her plate armor that kept the small shapes. I then gave her simple pants to be the large shape in the design. In hindsight, I feel like I should have gone through with the metal gauntlets I wanted to give her but bailed on.
Finally, I replaced her Generic Pout™ with a more determined expression. Now both ladies can go forth and fight whoever it is they’re fighting.
-Icy
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Heroes of Newerth’s Boudica Legionnaire Cleavage Johnson
This redesign happened on a day of very annoying technical difficulties. Since my computer was refusing to cooperate, I ended up reaching for some easy fix material to Heroes of Newerth, a game prominent for its creative bankruptcy. HoN’s image gallery is our emergency stash of subjects for bingos and/or streams.
This boobtastic, vaguely-Pict lady looked so amazingly generic that we didn’t care to look up whether she’s an actual named character (apparently she’s supposed to be queen Boudica’s legionnaire). Instead, we dubbed her Cleavage Johnson and I proceeded to fix her namesake.
All it did to make her look like a somewhat competent warrior was to cover her cleavage and belly (while making her armor not-boobplate and adding a bit of girth to her improbable waist), then giving her kilt a couple more inches and getting rid of its shmexy thigh cutout.
Frankly, while the changes were deliberately small and easy to do, I think just that little made her silhouette stand out from the background a bit more. Amazingly, bare skin and meaningless tribal tattoos* somehow didn’t prevent her from blending with the environment.
