Powdered Shit Brown Dust Brave Nine, Part 2: Granhildr

This is the official illustration of Granhildr (whom we bingo’d in her “awakened” appearance), and she’s a one-winged valkyrie. Apparently she’s as good at making tea as she is at fighting, in a lazy attempt at fleshing out a personality, and I use the term “fleshing out” loosely.

This is definitely not my best work, but there was so little I could work with from the original, save from the shape motifs and colors of the arm armor. I wanted to keep the scale mail aspect of the original, and since I always do a plate armor breastplate, I decided to try something else. Clearly I need more practice at this kind of design.

I was taking so long trying to come up with any ideas that my rendering didn’t come close to the original, but at least she’s no longer suffering from a chafing nightmare.

I’d be interested in redoing this some time in the future. I think I’d want to turn that fur… whatever it is… into a cloak, or big fluffy collar or something, maybe to offset the single wing.

-Icy

Powdered Shit Brown Dust Brave Nine, Part 1: Frellea 

Speaking of Brown D… I mean Brave Nine, whatever the changes to the game’s name, story and character roster, it still remains a confusing mess, seemingly made only for the sake of its exploitative waifu art. So of course I proposed to Icy that we stream redesigns from it! We’re definitely alright after staring at them for hours ? 

This character is Frellea, older sister to the backstory comic’s protagonist demigoddess Eda and, I guess, from how well-endowed she is, a very powerful deity. I think, judging by character names (is Frellea a corrupted take on Freya?), they’re Norse mythology-inspired, like Odin’s Sphere’s butt-wing Valkyrie
And of course, literally nothing else about the designs communicates that. 

It was SO HARD to decide what should take priority in fixing this mess, but the mix of boobplate and scalemail boobsocks went first. I reshaped her breastplate into something plausible and decided to extend the scalemail into a long-sleeved tunic (though that one’s tight fit is mostly my artistic license). 

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Next step was to tidy up the messy design composition, including the color scheme. Both me and Icy concluded those huge feathery… trains? tails? were purely decorative, so we got rid of them. 
I decided to balance out the contrast by making that ribbon white (instead of the shade shade of grey as her hair), reusing redness of the other ribbon (and the feathers) on new pants and, most of all, recoloring her non-mail armor to brass color of her bracers.* 

Easily one of my favorite redesigns, but also one of the most work-intensive ones, too. Hope you enjoy it!

~Ozzie 

PS: *In the comic the helmet and greaves are slightly different metal shade from the rest of armor, so it seems like different artists couldn’t agree on the color. Pic below, for the interested. 

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Time to come back to Sideshow Toys and probably their best example yet of how much amazing craftsmanship (that sculpt! the intricate paint job! the fabric and synthetic leather details!) can be wasted on super garbage design.
This time, a classic garbage that is Red Sonja in her standard scalemail bikini

How do the mail bra and loincloth even hold up with such flimsy straps?
What is the point of protecting your neck with metal collar when your heart, guts and skull are all totally exposed?
Why worry about reasonably padding your leg and arm protection, but wear a scalemail bra (that will sand your nipples off) directly on your skin?

“Looks nothing like male equivalent” checked, of course, because of Conan.
Not crossing out “High heels” square, since that (cw: gore) is a reasonable heel size for a horse riding and wouldn’t be out of ordinary for a male character either. 

Also note how all those arrows that apparently completely missed Sonja, presumably due to her “costume” being more of a plot armor than anything else.
Reminds me of those couple “bikini armor makes you completely resistant to arrows” parodies we featured before: 

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Full comics to be viewed here: 1, 2345.

~Ozzie

I never got around to bingo-ing the Amazon from Dragon’s Crown, seeing as:

a) her anatomy and posing are a MUCH more noticeable issue (hence she’s been featured on @eschergirlsfrequently)
b) her outfit is a very plain (if gravity-defying) scalemail (?) bikini 

But seeing as we brought some new attention to that character with a post on a figure that makes all the problems with her design tangible and 3-dimensional, I figured “why not?”. At the very least we’ll learn how much a generic, non-fancy bikini armor scores on average.

I checked “Looks nothing like male version of the same outfit”, because while there are obviously no male Amazons, her male playable equivalent, the Fighter, wears a full suit of armor, including a helmet that obscures his bishounen face. If they were equals, he’d look closer to this

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(artwork courtesy of invaluable @psdo )

Guess that’s my second Dragon’s Crown Bingo this month, oh well. Both those designs are terrible in different areas.

~Ozzie

more Dragon’s Crown on BABD | more Female Armor Bingo on BABD