Thing I notice about Soul Calibur is that with every installment of the franchise new costume designs are introduced for established characters and they usually go the pretty straightforward path of de-evolution (see Sophitia as an example and keep in mind she’s far from the worst).
We already devoted a couple of bingos and stream redesigns to them, but with the SC’s momentum leading up to the prophecy, we will probably never catch up completely to every awful version of every female character in the games.
~Ozzie
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Boring LoL ladies redesign, Part 2
Unimaginative and pointless bikini armor? Clothes that don’t make sense? A two-color color scheme? We’re got it all, on this week’s League of Legends redesign feature.
(We included a bonus image cause the redesign picture doesn’t show the full Generic-ness in all its glory. Enjoy!)
Boy, do I know how to pick the worst ones. So according to her (old) backstory blurb, Janna is an Extremely Talented wind sorceress, to the extent where she sort of became one with the wind. She’s aloof and fickle, focused entirely on her craft. Maybe that’s why the designers thought they could dress her in a swimsuit? “She doesn’t care what she’d wear, right? Just put her in underwear!”
I figured the opposite: being surrounded by wind (she floats and everything), she’d probably want to be warm. I decided on a sleeved poncho so that she would be warm, while also wearing a loose cloth that can flutter in the wind, for the Aesthetic.
I made it a single, large, flowy shape, keeping the smaller shapes to frame it. I found some fun winter tights online that I used as reference. I made them asymmetrical because besides the staff, her design would end up perfectly symmetrical (hair doesn’t count), and I try to avoid that when I can. I kept the original color scheme to a simple light/dark greys and blue, colors that I associated with the wind and clouds.
The blurb said her powers gave her an “otherworldly appearance,” but her face was just bland and generic, like most of the LoL ladies. I gave her a more elongated, narrow face, with wide narrow lips. The hair detail was mostly just me trying to work with the low-res original I had. I did shorten her bangs, to unify the hair shapes.
Finally, I changed her awful staff into a more simple wind-looking shape, and added some orange to her tights to tie the color of the gems in the staff to the rest of the design.
For people who keep up with the LoL lore (the LoLore, if you will), this design will not work for her new backstory as a wind spirit. Still, for the original concept, I’m pretty proud of this one. I feel like it’s one of my better full redesigns. It did take me longer to do than a single livestream, but I think it was worth it.
-Icy
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So… this latest version of Jeanne D’Arc (aka Joan of Arc) is apparently a dragon (hence the tail) but seems to also have incredibly ridiculous armor. Why does she look like a generic waifu? Um… honestly I have no idea, and I think I’m happiest not knowing – this is what the “main” dragons look like:
I’ve been trying to play the game since it came out, but the ridiculous outfits the ladies have are very distracting, and not in a “battle tactic” way; in a really off-putting way. And that’s without even talking about the game’s depiction of the protagonist’s sister.
LoL heroines were among the first stream redesigns by Icy, but this was my first attempt at redoing a lady champion. I chose Ashe, the archer. While she has completely serviceable color scheme and some nice looking shapes in cape, hood and limb departments, her core costume is just a short dress with deep cleavage and fabric belt. Also nipple adornments ¯_( ͠° ͟ʖ ͠° )_/¯
Since LoL fails at giving most female characters distinct facial features, I felt obliged to change this generic oval face with tiny nose and pouty lips into something more interesting. Now her face and nose are longer, with sharper jawline and cheekbones.
I decided that instead of her ghastly pale skin, the design should be broken up white elements that will compliment her hair and belt. You can never go wrong with Elizabethan pants. I’m especially proud of the matching poofy sleeves broken up by golden arm braceletes that were already there. Obviously, I wouldn’t leave ornaments on each of her boobs, so I reduced it to a single one at the center of her chest. And her pauldrons no longer just hover on her shoulders, they (and presumably, the cape) are connected now at the sternum.
Last change, suggested by Icy, was a codpiece, matching the period fashion of her pants. Yes, my redo of Ashe is an openly trans lady, because why not?
All in all, I’m quite satisfied with how I managed to keep the silhouette and shape language relatively unchanged, while adding some more interesting stuff where gratuitous skin displays were before.
~Ozzie
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So, on top of the other issues with SNK Heroines – it also has this odd quirk where one of the characters is Terry Brogard, who (if you’re ancient like me) you might remember from classic arcade side-scrolling beat-em-up Fatal Fury (first released in 1991).
Now, this design first appeared in SNK vs Capcom: Chaos as an effect that could be rendered by Dark Stalkers (ie Capcom) character Demitri Maximoff. Neither Demitri, nor any other Capcom influence appears in the game. Back in the original… Terry looked like this when changed:
It was 2003, which means this game is possibly older than some of you reading this blog (and probably older than anyone furiously typing a comment to defend this outfit). It was a one off gimmick for a game that was ultimately a transparent cash grab and generally agreed to be forgettable.
But, fast-forward to 2018 and it appears that SNK have decided that just because they don’t have a reason to, doesn’t mean they can’t explore the concept of gender-shifting in a serious, considered and mature… I can’t do this…
That’s right, putting a guy into a female body in a degrading outfit that makes fun of their origin is a “prank (?)”. The fuck did these people get up to in college? Are they considering the whole “abducted, put into a degrading costume and forced to fight your way out” part a prank to? Did anyone think about any aspect of this game before green lighting it?
Honestly if your best idea for a gender exploration/shift in a character is “a macho guy gets turned into a sexy woman, and is angry and humiliated… and just keeps checking their ass and boobs” (which is all Terry seems to care about when notified of the transformation… despite the suspicious lack of muscle tone, their old clothes, etc) you should just take that idea and burn it, then scatter the ashes and rethink your life.
Get this: the “plot” is that the villain kidnapped female characters from various SNK games, forcibly put them in fetishy costumes and makes them fight each other while he is watching as they feel completely humiliated.
Athena Asamiya’s default magical girl outfit is relatively tame in terms of showing skin (fetishization of girlish dresses is another issue entirely), but since there HAS to be at least one bikini-shaped look per character, the game makes up for it by giving her an alternative pre-existing costume of her namesake, Princess Athena from another game. As we all know, there can never be a single Athena in fiction >_>
Thong as a question mark because while the panties do not seem to be an actual g-string, those additional straps sure make it look more like stringy lingerie than comfortable underwear.
~Ozzie
Stay tuned, as one more SNK bingo is on its way… Now with extra trasphobia!
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We often see the rhetoric “she’s a magic-user, she can’t/doesn’t have to wear armor” as defense for bikini armor, so this week we have some mage ladies who are dressed for action. They’re not wearing full plate or anything, but they have very practical outfits, each in their own distinct style.
This is Carabel (top) and Gislan (bottom) from the game Nine Parchments, a co-op game about magic students going on an adventure together. The character roster also includes a cat and a robot owl, of course.
Carabel specializes in ice magic, and I think that everything about her design really illustrates that. Gislan, meanwhile, likes nature magic, and her design similarly informs that. Neither lady is put in a bikini to showcase their magic roots, because there’s simply no need.
I recommend you guys check out the art of Nine Parchment’s art director, Charlotta Tiuri, who designed these lovely ladies, for character sheets and other cool projects.
-Icy
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Fire Emblem Gals Part 1
We are assured that Fire Emblem is great game franchise with engaging characters. We have to take the readers’ word for that, because we always find a distinct dissonance between how FE female characters look and what their bios tell us about their stories and personalities. This week, my take on Nowi, the loli dragon.
“She chose to wear that!” is a bullshit excuse for a grown woman character running around a battlefield in a bikini, let alone for a thousand year old magical creature who also chooses to have the body and face of a child.
Since she’s really a dragon and probably needs no armor, the goal of redesign was to give her clothes that would look appropriate (rather than protective) for someone who takes form of roughly a 12-year old.
I actually found the color scheme and many shapes in Nowi’s costume very good, just wasted because the focus was on showing skin and adding too many decorations.
I decided that her teeny tiny scaly bra would make a good vest, if put on top of a crop t-shirt with the same lace finish as those white gloves… which she wears under the black gloves? Then, since I liked the scale pattern a lot, I recreated it also on her belly. Is that a matching undershirt or her real dragon skin? Who knows! It looks cool.
The area between her belly and knees was made of pure visual noise. It was sexualized and overdesigned at the same time. The only ridiculous thing I decided to leave in were the crossing belts, because they look cool enough and aren’t implausible… Provided that I added belt loops to her pants. Speaking of which, fetishy short shorts connected to stockings with garter belts had to go, for obvious reasons. Since her shoes had such a strange shape, I decided to turn them from thigh-highs with inexplicable ankle boots bottom into tights and ankle boots. All it took was to reverse and change the hem of the boots into that of short pants.
Ribbons weren’t a bad idea on their own, but they just completely didn’t belong as decoration on her sides, so I got rid of them and just transplanted the long tails onto her chest ribbon, making it both cuter and a more prominent splash of pink on her upper half.
All in all, it’s one of my favorite, while most subtle, redesigns. Probably also my best simulation of the original’s coloring style. I really hope it managed to turn creepyness of a sexualized childlike character into cuteness.
~Ozzie
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Bingo-ing her was a bit of a challenge. Not necessarily because Slash checks out too little or too many squares, but because a lot of elements, like the original’s crotch window and the new version’s crotch belt would require custom bingo to actually score.
~Ozzie
So, some of my friends started Quake Champions and I figured… this should be relatively safe game. I mean, the original Quake guy had a cube for a head and Quake 3 was… well for you kids who don’t remember the 20th century, it was what we killed our friends in before Fortnite and PUBG. The games industry has moved on in a lot of ways since then.
But apparently Slash’s outfit design (originally from Quake 3) has not moved on… just like, weirdly sideways and swapping out a garter-belt dress for a crotch belt. (and like… a leather garter belt under spandex shorts as well)
Please take a moment to consider how uncomfortable that would be to wear normally. Like, just standing around.
Now remember that Quake is the property that originally popularized (in first person shooters anyway) the gaming stunt we know as the “rocket jump” where one sets off an explosion underneath themselves mid-jump so the force of the explosion will launch them up.
For those of you typing comments frantically, yes it is true that Quake has never placed much emphasis on realism or even making sense – but I’m supposed to grimace in pain when I get gibbed with a rocket… not when I open up the character selection screen.
Hence it is now one of the few games/properties/products which I truly wish would return all the way back to it’s roots and the glory of 1996.
