“He knows how to design female armour because he spent years studying corsetry and lingerie.”
Me:
The scariest part of this is that so many of these concept artists who seem to “study” corsetry lingerie tend to overlook some basic details about the universal design principles:
Boobs are not excluded from physics, especially gravity
Lingerie is not generally held on by superglue
Women need to breathe and need internal organs
Different materials have different qualities, you can’t swap out silk or soft leather for steel in… sensitive areas
So yeah… horrifying as it is, studying corsetry and lingerie would actually be a step forward in many cases.
– wincenworks
We still can not emphasize enough that overall quality of costume and character design in pop media would increase if the artists actually studied corsetry and lingerie instead of just looking at lots and lots and lots of examples, starting at puberty, as our commenter put it.
Still, please remember that very little of that would help with designing actual armor, which is a whole another layer of costume and should be treated seriously on its own.
~Ozzie
I can definitely think of a few designswe’vefeaturedonthisblog that could benefit from someone with actual knowledge of corsetry and lingerie. And that’s just off the recentfirst page of our Bikini Armor Bingo tag!
Long post this time around as there’s a few issues:
If you know female developers working on indie games and incorporating bikini armor or similar tropes is to, at the appropriate opportunity express your concerns as concerns for their production – and let them decide on how important it is to them.
If they’re interested that’s great, if not, then it is very unlikely that their production will have a profound impact on the market and she could very well have her own personal reasons for it. Personal projects are just that, personal.
However, if you are creating a game or similar production and you want to make it as accessible and welcoming as possible to as wide an audience as possible then we recommend researching the works of those talk about these things already.
And many others. Also if your production is to feature someone from a marginalized background that is not your own and be prepared to pay them. Consultants are generally not as expensive as you might think but can add massive value to your production.
In terms of actually working for a company in the industry and managing to be a positive influence, then that’s the very complicated balancing act of expressing yourself and respecting your employers. (If you work out how to master that, please tell me how).
But largely the best advice I can give if you happen to be in a company meeting is to be prepared to talk about ways they add or detract value to the production and be eager to show your working. Example:
We are aware that the blog is apparently flagged as restricted/adult content by Tumblr… though because it’s Tumblr it’s still unclear what this does everywhere.
Since people often ask “Alright, well this is fantasy! Why can’t we have boob shapes in plate armor?!” I decided to make a post about it. My frustration hasnothing to do with historical inaccuracy and I’m all for imagination and freedom— but I’d like to (very quickly) illustrate this for you:
I purposely over-emphasized the shape of the two spheres in the armor so you can really think about this.
Look at the shape of the blue cups and the green line, think about the form of that on some beautiful ornate plate armor. A female warrior is charging into battle. In the midst of this, she trips! Or is pushed over, or takes a blow to the chest! So long as the force is on the front of her torso it really doesn’t matter for the conclusion:
She feels a sharp pain in her chest and hears the cracking of bone! Oh no, what’s gone wrong? Well she doesn’t have time to think about that, because she is now dead.
Her sternum just fractured, take another look at that green line, that’s where all of the pressure from any front impact is going to go because of the shape of the two blue cups made for her breasts. The rest of the armor slides around your body, but because of the two cups for breasts that are often made in fantasy female armors, the pressure point is directly on the sternum. The breasts are not going to stop the force of you falling onto them, and because of that the metal is going to push in and bash you in the sternum.
What does a fractured sternum do? Why it goes right into your heart and lungs of course.
(that was the sound of all of my followers inhaling a sharp breath between closed teeth at once)
Here are three great solutions to the problem:
GREAT EXAMPLE OF FANTASY TORSO ARMOR THAT IS FEMININE BUT FUNCTIONAL:
It is usually possible to bind the breasts when fighting if they really are far too large to fit into regular looking armor (there’s padding anyway), but most women can actually fit into a similarly sized male counterpart’s armor quite easily. Even if that’s the case, the armor can be made to have a curve to it without putting all of the pressure in one area, which was actually a style of armor for quite some time as shown here:
And don’t even get me started on the dreaded “Cleavage Window”
The “Cleavage Window” defeats the purpose of having any armor on your torso because it means you’re just going to be leaving open the vital organs the rest of the armor is trying to protect.
If people are going to protect themselves and not have much torso protection, invest in some blocking lessons, because the best defense is to not get hit at all. There are also advantages to not having plate armor, and plate armor was often really expensive anyway.
I’d also like to add that boob bulges direct blows straight to the sternum as well, rather than making them glance to either side. Good post.
This week’s throwback: one of the very first posts I reblogged and a big inspiration for BABD even existing. It is THE Boobplate Post – one with the most comprehensive explanations why semi-spherical individual compartments for each boob in armor are an awful, awful idea.
Meg Foster’s costume weighed a reported 45 lbs., and the actress sustained bruises to her groin from the breastplate she wears throughout the film. Constructed of fiberglass, Foster has said the breastplate restricted her movements a great deal, which is why Evil-Lyn is never show sitting during the film. Foster as also said that the discomfort from the costume helped inform her performance, as the weight and design of the costume forced her to puff out her chest during every take, thus generating the character’s slinky posture.
But people assure us that designs like this are totally practical for real armor…
Today’s throwback: real-life evidence of how uncomfortable lingerie-shaped armor is.
Another amazing thing about this costume is how they went out of their way to make it look nothing like it did in the cartoon (on the right there’s redesign from 2002 reboot, for comparison).
So yeah, not only was the movie character redesigned from scratch*, no-one took it as an opportunity to at least make the costume wearable for a living, breathing woman.
There’s still time to help fund a video experiment which proves not only that plate armor isn’t a hindrance to agility, but also that it’s no heavier than the gear modern firefighters and soldiers bear.
There’s still time to help fund a video experiment which proves not only that plate armor isn’t a hindrance to agility, but also that it’s no heavier than the gear modern firefighters and soldiers bear.
Would you like to help destroy the myth that bikini armor can somehow be justified with the explanation that it’s necessary for agility because plate armor is too bulky to move in?
Of course you would!
Daniel Jaquet, creator of two videos (1, 2) we’ve featured, amongotherexamples, plans to make a video demonstrating how it is possible to run a modern day military obstacle course in a full harness set.
