@aromanticpirate submitted:
So I was looking for some silly RPGs to play to pass the time and I found Valiant Force, which is where this lovely piece of work comes from.
And a piece of work it is. It’s always a trip to see generic bikini armor that is at the same time exceptionally overdesigned. (Also I just want to note that her back leg is fully on the ground, heel and all, which means her legs are different lengths.)
So Valiant Force is another mobile action MMO where you collect the greatest “Heroes (capitalized) to have ever existed.” And just like all the other similar games we’ve featured here, the sexy girl aspect of it is completely irrelevant to gameplay. Or anything.
But that doesn’t stop the game’s website to feature this in its promotional art:
So much creativity on display here…! ༼ ಠل͟ಠ༽
-Icy
Velvet’s Thermian Argument
Following up Ozzie’s redesign of Magilou, this is the character from
Tales of Berseria
that I picked to redesign for the same week: Velvet! I started out by giving her actual pants. Then I moved the leg armor she has from her right leg to the left, in order to balance out the armor on her right arm, to which I added more parts. I decided to keep the leg belts because she seemed like an edgy character from the backstory I read up on the game wiki.
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to do about her red shirt. There were probably like 6 different iterations, and I didn’t really like any of them. The final design before this final one was actually:
Because despite the awful execution, I could see what the artist was trying to do: frame her body with large shapes (the coat, the monster arm, and the hair), and fill the inner body with small shapes. I did like the torn edges to her shirt, but didn’t know what to do with the collar.
Then after the last stream I spent working on her, we got an ask from @solaela explaining that her outfit was put together from prisoner belongings when she escapes from jail early in the game. That gave me the idea that, what if she found an old breastplate that was confiscated, or on a guard that had to be knocked out, or whatever? It wouldn’t fit her perfectly, and it might be old and dirty, but even if Velvet doesn’t care about modesty, she should probably care about staying alive. So I gave her a breastplate and broke it up into smaller shapes.
While the Thermian Argument is a poor excuse for bad design, I do think knowing about the character helps to makes for better designs.
-Icy
It’s been some time since last we visited @pointandclickbait to binge on some quality, totally serious game journalism.
Since then, they touched upon such important issues to us as:
- “Respecting” sexy female characters while being creepily attracted to them. [article]
- The sad omission of Junkrat’s sexyness, despite him being one of the few shirtless (therefore totally sexualized) male heroes in Overwatch. [article]
- The unbridled “creative freedom” that comes with a job in video game development! [article]
- All the definitely justified and rational spite, rage and bigotry gamer dudebros have for anyone with different opinions than their own. [article]
[article]
[article]
[article]
Also good to announce: Point and Clickbait launched a Kickstarter to publish print version of their best 2016 articles!
If you’re interested in quality game journalism in print form (or PDF, because Australia Post’s shipping costs are intimidating), there’s a week before the campaign closes.
~Ozzie
Magilou and the case of book-skirt
The first stream redesign I did was for the infamous “leatherbound books make a perfect skirt!” costume of Magilou from Tales of Berseria, which we bingoed before.
I suppose the creators thought that being a magic user excuses her sense of fashion, but I wouldn’t know how to begin explaining their exact thought process.
Agreeing with Icy that poofy pants are great (and would compliment the shape of Magilou’s hat), I decided to put them in place of the mind-boggling book-skirt.
Without books, her furry collar became the only splash of brown in her design, so I got rid of it, replacing it with a collar that would make her top wearable.
While working on that I noticed that the alternating blue-pink rythm of her color scheme was inconsistent in some small details, so I recolored her left shoe and painted light pink diamonds on her right sleeve. Also added a fringe to the pants and an undershirt that, along with new collar, fit the scheme of details being lighter shades of pink and blue, while primary shapes are colored darker.
Her hat was pretty awesome and its color asymmetry not really distracting, so I left it as it was.
~Ozzie
[ Original tweet ] [ OP’s Twitter | OP’s Tumblr ]
It’s okay, Ismael, we at BABD also apparently don’t have any respect for other people’s work.
Besides fixing the boobplate, look at all those added details that greatly improve this design; the added armor to the legs, the shape changes to the pauldrons and couters, the tabard, it all looks so much better. Now this is a skin I would love to have, if I played as Brigitte.
-Icy