The hilarious front line in the tragic war against ridiculous female armor
Tag: video games
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Azir Arises
[The title is a double entendre based on one of Azir’s moves in LoL]
For my first Sexy Male Armor redesign, I decided to do a male version of the trend we see with boobs being put on things that really shouldn’t have them. You know, like reptilian humanoids, bug creatures…. this….. so I went with Azir from League of Legends, to turn him into the sexy bird man we all knew he could be (while making many Hatoful Boyfriend references).
I tried to go for realistic-ish anatomy, working all I could from that sensual twist he does in this picture. I also took off all of his unnecessary chest armor. He’s a mage anyway, and we all know mages don’t wear armor. I only kept his arm and head pieces to tie into his belt and legs, and, of course, to frame his pecs, which is the purpose of armor.
Finally, taking inspiration from one of my favorite Sexy Male Armors on this blog (NSFW link), I gave him semi-transparent nipple coverings, and (what has become a trend in my sexy male redesigns, for better or worse) a matching semi-transparent loincloth.
Now Azir can go forth and restore his empire with confidence and empowerment!
-Icy
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Jarvan of the Thousand Abs
My first sexy man redesign (and, as far as we can tell, first stream done along with Icy), was Jarvan from League of Legends.
The initial thought was very basic: leave those enormous pauldrons while exposing most of his torso and also thighs. Then the idea to give him infinite abs was brought up and here we are.
While for thunder thighs I used some photo reference, with abzilla I was deliberately ignoring any anatomical knowledge. This was my homage to all the “creative” ways in which female bodies, especially boobs, tend to be drawn.
Every year when E3 comes out, I know that there’ll be at least one title that chooses the event to highlight to the world just how ridiculous their design decisions are: This year, so far, the number one contender is: Strange Brigade
The best that can be said for it is that in terms of impracticality they were at least different in their terrible design decisions – sadly they more than made up for it with the baffling racism.
The premise is in the 1930’s a forgotten ancient Egyptian witch queen has awakened from the dead and only a group of four intrepid adventurers can stop her – specifically by slaughtering wave after wave of zombies and monsters. The three white adventurer’s (two boys, one woman) dress in pragmatic adventuring outfits with pants and boots; and the black woman gets this hideous faux romper (this link nsfw), body paint, scarification and sandals.
Not only is this costume impractical for adventuring, completely at odds with 1930s sensibilities and general design – but this is a classic example of exotification. Her body paint and stretched ears seem to be inspired by the Mun people (adjusted to look more appealing to western audiences) and the red mud in her hair inspired by the Himba people (again changed for western audiences). These two groups lived 2,500 kilometers from each other (about the same distance as Switzerland to Turkey) and it seems more than likely the designers didn’t do that much research to learn the names or locations. Mostly she seems inspired by some of Grace Jones (who was born in 1948) movie personas.
This seems a particularly baffling bad decision to be proud of given that a huge factor cited in the the massive success of the Black Panther movie was the incorporation of actual African designers in making fantastic visions of Africa.
While looking into this, I was unable to find a name for this character, or any explanation for her design (such as naming inspirations) but I did find they have exactly one closed/locked thread in their Steam Discussions:
Yeah.
– wincenworks
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Hel Hath No Fury
From one Hel to another, this week. This particular one is from SMITE, which is a game that lets you play as various deities from different pantheons. This was their interpretation of Hel, who they split into 2 forms instead of keeping to the original mythology, where she was a person who had 2 different-looking halves. Ok, fine. But could they not have made her just a generic white woman? Twice?
So that was my main beef with the original, besides the nonsensical clothes: the lack of any connection to her Norse roots, and her original myth. To briefly describe her game mechanics, which I was also considering while redesigning her: White Bread is a healer/support, and the Jelly Sandwich is a debuffer and does some over-time damage. The player’s able to switch back and forth between them.
In that vein, I decided to make Vanilla Wafer and Blueberry Tart into Old Woman Healer and Undead Monstrosity, respectively.
[Warning: There’s a close-up of her corpse face below the Read More!]
I was sent some lovely reference pictures of traditional Norse clothing, which I used to build the warm, functional clothing for the Old Lady half. I went with a color scheme that would evoke the frosty conditions of Niflheim, the place where her domain was located.
She floats in the game, so I was able to get away with impractically-long skirts.
I also made her a woman of color, because why not? Honestly, the sheer Whiteness of the original just had to change.
The scarf is her dog, Garmr. Since this is her healing half, the dog is nonthreatening (even though I used a wolf scarf for reference, shh).
For her debuffing half, I just took the idea of the fact that in the original myth, half her body looked like a corpse, and went all out with it. And like a corpse, she’s got no tits, cause fatty tissue is the first to go in the decomposing process.
Since she floats, she didn’t need the legs, and the dog becomes an angry knife inspired by traditional Norse knives. In-game, it would be mostly the animated knife that would attack. Over-time damage can be flavored as bleeding from a bite, stuff like that.
So that’s my Hel. I had a lot of fun working on her, especially because we don’t get to work with older ladies a lot, and I got to use a lot of cool references.
Ozzie just gave me the idea of giving each version one eye, since the corpse has 2 and the old lady doesn’t, which would have been a cool idea.
Now if only SMITE would remove their depictions of Hindu dieties, but that’s a rant for another day.
This is truly fantastic not only for the authentic touch of the culture, but also for the excellent choice of a dancer outfit for a character who has elegant dancing sequences as her emotes. This is really the sort of thing I’d hope to see in a game as touted for diversity as Overwatch is.
I really do wish that Jeff Kaplan would look to these kinds of designs and priorities for his goal of “trying to do women characters better” rather than looking for ways to make their previous design standards seem more acceptable under casual examination.
– wincenworks
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This design comes from a game about Norse mythology. I challenge you, our readers, to take a guess at which character from Norse mythology this is. I’ll wait.
Did you say Hel, who is the villain of the game Viking: Battle for Asgard? If you did, you must have read our post about Foldable HumanDan Olson looking into So Bad They’re Good games from a few months back. Because that awfully specific answer is indeed correct…. unfortunately.
I can’t even comprehend what the art direction was for this concept. What in the Hel (ha) is this? I was only able to find this single promo picture where the full glory of this design is shown, which I can only assume is because if she stands in any other way, that belt bra will slip off.
But let’s also not forget Freya, who also makes an appearance in the game!
Every year, Hanzo bypasses the bodyguards of Hanamura to visit Shimada Castle, employing all manner of tactics, combat, and costumes.
Storm Arrows take the shape of rabbits.
Dragonstrike is now Rabbitstrike.
There isn’t a single thing I don’t love about this concept: The quiver that’s too short because it’s ~magic~, the tattoo going up his entire leg, the raw magic bow, the little mask.
We all know that Hanzo is a ranged combatant, so he doesn’t need to wear actual protective clothing. Indeed, those shoes probably help him be stealthier! And if someone does find him and tries to initiate in melee, he’s got the distraction tactic all ready to go with those buns. It’s perfect.
Blizzard really missed a golden opportunity with the magician skin idea. I am conflicted about one thing though…. which skin of the bottom 3 is my favorite!! How am I supposed to choose?
-Icy
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Starfire and the Legend of Murky Colors
Injustice 2′sStarfire was a challenge with very little potential, so I mostly redid her from scratch, arriving at a mix of her 2000s cartoon outfit and 80s comics hair.
This was by far the hardest design to work with palette-wise, considering not only how desaturated colors in Injustice graphics are, but how outright low quality the official image is – it looks like something’s wrong with how they rendered the lightning! Muted colors were a double insult, considering Starfire’s vibrant color scheme corresponds with her vibrant personality. Did my best to recreate it by cranking up saturation, salvaging the few colors it did bring out and painting over the badly-lit parts with them.
Changed her bodypaint-bikini into a crop top and shorts (with all do respect to Glen Murakami’s cartoon Starfire design, flying in a skirt is just the worst idea).
Only part of her Injustice design worth salvaging were decorative bits on her belt, which I recolored silver and recreated the pattern on her new collar and arm guards to match. Painted her limp, lifeless hair to actually look fiery without even being made of flame – by simply basing them on her original New Teen Titans hairstyle.
Got rid of those weird bellbottom things on her ankles, which served no purpose and seemed like a throwback to her ugly New 52 footwear. Also, as usual, made her less skinny.
All in all not necessarily my best or most original redesign, but it’s best I could do with limited time, constant computer crashes and very hard material to work off of.
