How sexy is TOO sexy
So I am making armor. I make guy armor then have to usually convert it for females. Sometimes feminizing it means making it "sexier" meaning less clothing. Now the troublesome part is some people are super offended by this and the age old argument starts, why does the female needs to have less of anything at any point ever compared to the guys. (even if there is an option to NOT be less covered or to wear something that is under the exposed areas is not enough) thoughts?
http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6550847/female-armor-sucks
http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6550847/female-armor-sucks
Replies
Anyway, you could try reading this (warning: links within will lead to your day wasted)
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Everything is fair game in male designs, I don't see why we should be reinforcing a double standard for women. Like Leilei said, the overwhelming majority of your complaints will be from men who think they have to protect the weak and fragile women from their sexuality.
If you're doing this for your portfolio I'd suggest trying to demonstrate variety though.
Almost all fantasy armor designs are immersion breaking, the weapons are generally even worse. A third person camera is often immersion breaking... so are minimaps, bad voice acting, fast-travel, and basically all combat mechanics in every game (except for maybe demon/dark souls) ever and most combat animation. The OVERWHELMING majority of games are not immersive and it has nothing to do with how much armor the characters are wearing and everything to do with the fact that immersion isn't always good or fun.
More polycount reading on this: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=86457
You can't reconcile that.
Do what you want or what fits the game best.
(and the sexiest female character is one with a good personality)
where can i see that morrigan you got as avatar ?
Ha, I was going to post this exact same tumblr!
This.
How about something, you know, functional.
If your fantasy world is out of the imagination of Boris Vallejo, then anything other than a smirk and a circlet somehow twisted into a garment is going to be out of place.
If you're designing for a semi-historic inspired game, then make the outfit climate and activity appropriate.
Challenge yourself. If you have some male full plate armor, make a female set and keep the same coverage. Figure out what lines imply a feminine form.
yeah, I feel like some people don't respect context as a variable. A truly realistic game's immersion might be undermined by much sex appeal to armor or stylistic liberties with weapons for some people. While more aesthetically prioritized contexts may not necessarily follow the same rules. Or art styles that rely on overemphasized qualities of the character to look cool - whether its masculinity, femininity, sexiness, goofiness or whatever. And then technical shit like gender identifyability at the player-scale if that's important for any reason.
But I actually feel the true things we're balancing are:
- Cool & Functional - and what kind of 'sexy' is cool in the context, if at all
- Sexy & Least-Offensive
and then portraying what we [or someone else] thinks the audience thinks is 'cool'/interesting, which I think is many of our jobs. And trying to avoid offending that audience.and
I actually love the look of games like Blade&Soul, Monster Hunter, etc. even though they may have designs that compromise practicality to achieve what I consider 'cool' in that universe. But I also have friends who don't seem to like anything that's not realistically plausible.
Anyway while it's nice to hear everyone's particular opinions about this [again],
I'm actually more curious if ya'll do something mentally to strike the correct balance for a particular context like Vailias started to touch on?
Just for me, when boobs start to exceed the size of the character's head, I begin to question the design's purpose. Is it a design for the sake and benefit of the character, or is it just for sexual appeal?
Also:
What kind of game is it for?
Is it stylistic or realistic art direction?
Is it an arcade game or a simulator?
Does the character have an important role in the story or just an extra?
What is the characters personality like?
What is the characters social status?
What is the character about?
If the game has a stylized art direction, you can get away with designs that doesn't make "sense" but looks cool. Also you can accept non-realistic gameplay.
Lets take Quake 3 for example. When you play it, you accept rocket jumping, strafe jumping, taking 100 bullets in your face. Why? Because of the stylistic art direction! Since you accept that it's not realistic, they can have outrageous character designs with sci-fi bikinis, half naked bodybuilders and just cool looking characters.
Quake would be ridiculous if it had a photo realistic art direction like Battlefield 3.
We can also do it the other way around. If the characters in Battlefield 3 would have female soldiers with their 66DD tits about to pop out from their shirts, it would ruin the illusion of realism and just be annoying.
I think the super hero picture Makkon posted is a bad example because if they would dress for fightning, they wouldnt have big, long hair and capes either. They would dress like MMA fighters with tight shorts and boxing gloves.
I hear many people "complaining" about female characters have too sexy outfits because it "doesn't make sense that they are half naked when in a battle against a dragon" when they don't even notice the male barbarian in nothing but furry underwear next to her...
Also, I dont think stylistic design is a good excuse to have giant tits with cleavage.
awesome example. it all ties very nicely together and's contextually something a women might actually like to wear. its pretty and sexy without being cheap.
Armor wise I would say its down to context if the dudes are in canonically correct armor then the women should be too. If your wavering in the fantasy direction a bit then you have a more freedom.
And from what footage I've seen the men in the game will look as realistically frumpy/average (rather than the 'roided up superhero types) as possible.
Well, if it's required to show a lot of skin on a character to reveal it's a female, the artist have failed
But the amount of skin that is appropriate I'd say it depend on the context. It's also a part of (western at least) culture. In general, female clothing usually highlights female features such as bust, shoulders, collar bones, neck and back.
The thing that's so wonderful with stylistic art is that you have the freedom to decide such things. You can have huge tits or flat chest, defined muscles or obese, big nose or tiny nose etc.
I just think that many art directors and/or artist simply think big brests are aesthetically pleasing.
Yes. Like armor, where it is ALWAYS stupid and never appropriate ^^ And western culture? Id say japanese games/media does this MUCH more. Giant tits on every girl over 9 years old :P
Truly, and it's fantastic!
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haha wow look at the art for that game
Big ol' stack of nipples. More nipples is more sexy
This is, in my opinion, the second best character design of all time in film/video-games/entertainment. And it has plenty of nudity. In fact, I can't even imagine someone doing a female version of this (with the exact same wardrobe that is).
Why is it awesome? Because he's f'n Conan the f'n Barbarian. He's savage, mean, and kicks ass. He simply needs NOTHING else except his sword and some animal-skin underwear. No armor, none of that nonsense. They even use the fact that he doesn't wear armor as an opportunity. They found the biggest buffest guy on earth to portray him. He's a savage guy that's all muscle. Doesn't need anything else to be an asskicker.
In short, his design is appropriate for who and what the character is.
On the other hand, if you design a knight-templar character that's supposed to be heavily-armored with banners of the Cross over it, and then make it a female in a metal-bikini, then you fail. The design isn't appropriate for who/what the character is.
Everything with taste. Everything has a time and a place. It's about knowing when and where.
Anyway
I think the bottom line is thoughtfulness in the design. Being too sexy will only be an issue if it contextually doesn't make sense, or if the underlying purpose of the design is sexyness and doesn't support the character's role or personality.
But I will say in my own taste, boobs larger than the character's head I think blows all thoughtful design out of the water. I just can't appreciate that, even if it's well crafted. It's just not thoughtful or interesting design in my opinion. But games that have this feature I don't find to be very fun anyway, so whatever!
Lets put it this way, Tropical desert, post Apocalypse weather? Kinda like Rage? Both male and female characters where shorts-shorts, tank tops and a hat to deal with the weather.
Cold weather in which you will have nipples so hard you can cut glass with it? I would say some of the later Tomb Raider games did this justice with her head to toe fur coats.
On the other hand, as many stated (and no offense to anyone) but if you want to take cues on what to NOT design on female character, go with Asian Market. I mean honestly, it's getting really painful to see the Asian gaming market is still being marketed as if every single guy there had ADD, with a chronic semen build up that needs releasing like the Yellow River of Jizz.
Example One:
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Tight clothing and high heels for a Sniper in a battlefield, who instead of wearing contact lenses, puts on glasses, makeup and doesn't even properly tie back her hair.
Example 2:
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Amazon is risque, sure, but considering on how the dwarf is also almost naked, save for his iron skirt, that would be a good even Steven situation, but the sorceresses is the main culprit here, especially when you compare to the male mage.
Example 3:
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Guys covered head to toe, girls almost have no armor other then a few fetish chains.
Lastly, a little video to understand that even with sultry clothing on female character, sometime the issue is a little something different:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/4719-Gender-Games
It's a self-perpetuating problem. We target at men, so only men play it, since only men play it we might as well target at men.
But if we want to open it up to a larger audience, we would be wise to target it at everyone.
http://life.icrontic.com/article/why-grown-ass-men-love-my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic-so-much/
So, why don't we follow suite?
This was actually a source of endless contention within ArenaNet (and I'm sure almost every studio out there that designs "sexy" armor). What we ended up with was to try and have enough to cater to all interests. It's easy to champion a case for coming up with fresh and new ideas that won't offend anyone, but more often than not that just results in unappealing and boring designs.
Fun facts:
- A big reason why a lot of the lower level armor sets are so similar between male and female is because it's just way faster to build the armor set once and then reproportion it for the female.
- Some of the most revealing armors in Guild Wars were designed by females.
- And some of the most famous illustrators working on those eastern games some of you seem to despise so much are also women.
I personally think the Final Fantasy series does a fantastic job of keeping things tasteful yet awesome (the MMO games and Ogre Tactics comes to mind)But yeah, context is always good. Pretty sure naked chicks would suit some games and fully clothed 19th century outfits would suit others. Shit has to suit the game and then look cool at the end of the day ^^
Also cool to hear about that stuff haikai. Wasn't bayonetta's costume design done by a chick too (alot of people were complaining about her outfit being too sexy originally, the assumption being guys designed her)?
and not everything in life can be solved with ponies makkon
I work on a project that is for the Chinese market, and I'll just say that what the US thinks is feminine is much different from what the Chinese think is feminine. The same could be said for what is masculine.
From an MMO stand point I'm all about reuse, whenever possible. In the case of armor, I've always seen the benefits from first making male armor then reconfiguring and reshaping to fit the female body. However, this isn't necessarily the right approach for all markets, and I think it's best to assess your target market before just deciding the 'right' look for women.
good discussion and hilarious videos.
peace
B
just going to leave this here...
While I indeed agree with you that this is badass, it isn't realistic and Robert Howard had Conan in armor quite frequently. Not all the time, and it was always sometihng light, but generally he was clothed. I think it depends on if you want to be realistic or not. I also think that a female or male can be sexy without showing much. You just have to show some skin in the right places.
If you need sex appeal to draw attention then it probably wasn't good to begin with.