We’re interrupting this week’s muscular women discourse for some sexy dudes we redesigned during couple streams. It’s the men of Pathfinder. This week Ezren, the iconic Wizard. Because Ozzie and silver foxes is a pattern, apparently 😉
I usually keep the silhouette roughly the same for male characters, just uncovering as much of skin as possible, but this was a special case, cause male wizards tend to dress in tons of unsexy layers. I had no choice but to recreate his legs, arms and abs from scratch, without much indication of how ripped he should be.
No sleeves, no coat flaps, a crop top that reaches juuust above his male presenting nipples. Now that’s empowerment.
Hope you also liked the new stylish shoes I designed him from scratch.
Everyone knows that when fighters and barbarians go topless, it’s to display their physical strength, right? Clearly, when squishy magic user does the same, it’s a sign of magic power making up for their vulnerable bodies! At least that’s what we usually hear when a witch or a sorceress of some kind runs around in a bikini.
We decided to try our hand at a combined redesign, where each of us picked a character in the same picture and redesigned them. And we thought this image, the cover of an old Dungeons and Dragons adventure called “Queen of the Spiders” would be a good candidate (blame for throwing it at us goes to @theoldhack).
This is where the infamous drow race is introduced, where I guess they were just... evil women of color. 😬 Unfortunate. We decided to make them purple-skinned like they are in more modern lore.
At first, Icy thought the “queen” in the title referenced the lady in the middle there, but it’s actually one of the names for Lolth, the spider goddess whom the drow venerate, so.... We’re sure the drow on the cover are important mini-bosses somewhere in the adventure, probably, maybe.
Full write-up and close-up images under the cut.
What’s-her-Face on the Right
Just gotta say that it’s a huge pet peeve of mine when (usually male) writers write a matriarchal society as, air quotes, “sexually liberated,” otherwise known as “an excuse to draw them in lingerie because I can’t imagine women’s bodies not catering to me personally in any scenario, while still drawing men in full body armor.” Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Okay, so.... I’m not sure what she’s supposed to be... besides a swimsuit model, which maybe the drow do have. Is there a quest where the players go to the underground beach to play underground beach volleyball? Cause if not, why is she like that???
I decided to make her a mage (this was a 1st edition book, so that’s all we got). I ended up changing.... everything, really. I think the only thing I didn’t change was her nose shape. It’s not my fault though, the redline for her original pose was an unsalvageable eldrich nightmare.
I gave her a more confident pose, more comfortable magic-user-friendly clothes (with the spider motif, cause spider god), and even different hair. The original hairdo just wasn’t doing it for me. I wanted her to look cool enough to have her own illustration in the book. She even has a little magic flame (mostly cause I didn’t know what to do with her hand lol)!
Her hair didn’t quite turn out how I wanted it to, but overall, I think it’s a good redraw. She’s got lots of fun shapes, an actual color scheme, and an attitude. What else do we need?
-Icy
Queen/High Priestess Crotchleg
The composition was so awful that I had to actually largely re-do it by changing the third lady’s position from right to left and recreating large parts of the throne... some of which ended up covered by the main drow’s dress anyway (probably for the better).
Speaking of which, boy was she hard to fix without just throwing everything away and starting over! First of all, the way she sits on the throne seems like a product of an alien who never experienced what a chair is... which might also explain the throne’s uncomfortable-looking design. I actually ended up giving it a bigger seat and more lumbar support.
The pose, of course, got changed to something less concerned with showing off her immaculate Brazilian and more with looking comfortable and intimidating in the authority position. I also noticed her neck was disturbingly short, so I moved her face a tiny bit up. Now her spider crown is more of a tiara than a hat. And she got a golden choker to match.
A lot of questionable physics of how she actually sits got covered up by roomy, relatively simplistic clothes I gave her. Maybe I’d consider something more elaborate if the rest of the painting didn’t require so much fixing. What matters is that it’s not a painted-on swimming suit anymore. I’m overall satisfied with the design of her top and the spiderweb skirt. Hopefully the golden spider jewelry (the legs are thin chains!) gives it some regal feel.
The original shoes were quite stylish, but looked neither comfortable nor matched the fashion sense I went with for the character (also didn’t match the angles at which I redrew legs). So I ended up giving her sandals with golden ornamentation, matching her gauntlets. Sorry not sorry for half-assing the legs. One has to prioritize while on a deadline*.
I’m generally happy with the results, considering the sheer scale of changes we had to apply to have it meet BABD standards for positive example.
Disagreeing with Disgaea's Designs, Part 1: Barbara’s Suit of Armor
After the Beastmaster bingo, we agreed to do some character redesigns for Disgaea.
The game’s wiki lists Barbara’s costume as a minor edit of the female Armor Knight, a rather inaptly named character class. Though yes, this is basically just recolor of their “armor”.
Other than reshaping the ugly AF boobplate and patching up all the random skin showing I didn’t have a concept for this until @filipfatalattractionrblog suggested using the pin-stripe suit-like elements, which was a stroke of genius.
It ended up being a mix of 3-piece business suit with plate armor, with breastplate as the vest worn on top.
While I didn’t manage to keep her proportions stylized like in the original (because, obviously, it was stylized in a very sexualized way), I am really happy with how Barbara turned out. Hope you enjoy it.
I went into redesigning this with no idea who that character is supposed to be, and frankly, looking her up now, can’t say I’ve missed much back then.
Can you believe she’s supposed to be a Valkyrie? Judging by her (and her sister’s, Griselda’s) design, Gwendolyn looks more like a really weird mashup of Odette/Odile from Swan Lake and lingerie model with random armor bits on legs... plus the ass wings.
Call me weird, but I never got the idea of putting wings on humanoid characters’ butts/hips/lower back instead of shoulders. It’s not like regular laws of physics apply either way, but this seems like a much less uncomfortable way to fly than with the upper back.
Of course, first thing I did was move the wings to more conventional position, then copypasting her a brand new left arm, it fitted surpirisingly well.
I kept the changes to the outfit to a minimum, giving her tights and expanding her frilly top, so that it doesn’t slip off her chest (both in matching yellow/gold). Also got her some pauldrons (edited from the armor on her thighs) and recreated from scratch a bit of her dress that was hidden behind the ass wing (quite happy with how I painted it). Another minor detail was changing her left shoe’s shape into something that doesn’t require foot liquification.
Much less radical redraw than Icy’s excellent Velvet (who’s apparently Gwen’s half-sister), but I hope you guys like it!
Hyrule Warriors has been on our radar for some time, so we finally decided to try making its female characters live up to the game’s name.
Basically only Impa is anywhere close to consistent with how male warriors are depicted, while other ladies at best look like they’re on a runway rather than battlefield, and at worse are Cia the Boobplate Witch.
Linkle
First planned either as female version of Link or his sister, Linke apparently ended up as a separate character who just happens to be very similar to him... And also to many other green archer ladies, especially the Elf from Dragon’s Crown.
Reminder that, based on concept art released before inclusion of the character in the game, it could have always been much worse than just cute and vaguely derivative. Bingo-worthy worse [image source]:
Her final costume is quite fashionable, just not very functional when directly compared to how Link presents in this game, wearing layers of armor, including chainmail under his green tunic.
While all she gets is short poofy sleeves and the fetishy “absolute territory” of bared flesh between a her skirt/shorts and thigh-high boots.
So, of course, my aim with her redesign was to give her some layers and basic armor while retaining her individual fashion sense.
Now her poofy white blouse is gambeson padding that she wears chainmail over, much like Link does. And the poofy sleeves are bigger, cause why not?
Speaking of sleeves, she also gets some additional orange undershirt that matches her skirt. And her gloves got a lot longer, to cover her forearms from harm.
Sorry for the botched shading on chainmail, I copied it from Link, but didn’t have time to re-shade properly... or to layer it in a way that makes sense 🤔
Finally, poofy pants, to match the sleeves, and to properly protect her legs. Covered with some more layering of chainmal and longer skirt. And the boots have functional knee-high length now.
All in all, with the amount of edits this went through, I’m not unhappy with the results. Hope you guys like it too!
Fixin’ Up Some Figurines, part 2 - Lizard Boobs Edition
While we’re likely to go back to fixing some Dark Sword Miniatures in the future, this here dragonkin lady was the reason I proposed redesigning the figurines in the first place.
The butt cape window was always amazingly mesmerizing, considering it displays her very human glutes with no trace of reptilian tail, which would be much expected in such character design.
So I simply changed her metal thong into a decorative belt that rests on the base of her new big tail.
Another obviously non-lizard anatomy on her were the human breasts, adorned with a really ugly boobplate. So I flattened her chest and redesigned the breastplate to be more interesting, while still exposing some of the pec.
Also added a tiara with a matching jewel, for some non-tiddy-based feminine touch. Her weapon/scepter got a matching jewel as well.
It’s one of the subtler redesigns, but also one with more deliberate process behind it. Hope you like it!
Right around Halloween last year we decided to fix up some poor Zenescope comic heroines with Autumn-appropriate sweaters, similarly as we did with Applibot ladies before.
Wicked Witch of the West
In case this wasn’t clear from this old bingo, we hate what Zenescope’s Grimm Fairy Tales franchise did to Oz characters, especially the Wicked Witch of the West. Attempts at reinventing this villainess since the 1939 movie were hit and miss (mostly miss), but this one is easily the laziest and most insulting one.
What the hell was the thought process behind the outfit is beyond human or Munchkin comprehension. I refuse to believe that evil magic is what keeps this thing on her body. It’s just too nonsensical.
Thankfully, with the sweater theme I didn’t have to reinvent the costume from scratch, just throw something comfy on top. I went with a loose turtleneck tunic, matching in color the inside of her cape and her hat’s detailing. I didn’t fix anything about her pose, but she did get pants/tights that match her gloves.
Thing I noticed rather soon was that after covering all the gratuitous flesh she became a blob in various shapes of purple, especially since her hair blended with the hat and cape. I figured that if her skin isn’t supposed to be green, then at least her hair can be, both for contrast and to match the overall image’s composition better.
I didn’t remember it while editing, but other images of the Witch we had on the blog actually did sport very dark green hair, along with sickly pale greyish skin. Whoever changed the color scheme for that particular cover made a mistake and stripped the character of the last bit of distinctness.
Very casual redesign overall, and while much less detailed than the rest of the image, I’m rather happy with the improved color scheme and the shading I did to match the cape. Hope you like it too.
Since “real fans” demanded for Mortal Kombat 11 to bring back the sexyness, we decided to succumb to the demands and fix some disappointingly unsexy characters.
If women in martial arts games are titninjas, it only stands to reason that male equivalent is a pecninja, right?
Scorpion the Yellow Pecninja
This design was surprisingly generous in showing us his oblique muscles and a tasteful sideboob sidepeck, so I had something to work of off! I reduced the top only to two strips of cloth forming a V and definitely-not-useless pauldrons that don’t even reach his lovingly rendered biceps now. And, of course, the male-presenting nipples clearly on display!
Since I went for the aesthetic that female characters sported for the last couple MK games, he ended up with long, laced stockings and arm warmers. Also obligatory zero pants.
The shoes are stolen from this edgelordy Mileena concept art from MKX, which we bingo’d before.
The last fix was, of course, giving Scorpion an attractive face. Since the hood concealed most of his head, the look had to be redone from scratch. I went with Icy’s suggestion of stylish wolf’s tail as a hairstyle and paired it up with bold eye makeup, to give him a striking gaze.
I’m quite happy with the result and how much of his original costume’s silhouette and color scheme I managed to preserve.
Let’s hope this satisfies the boner culture 👀
~Ozzie
See also: Havik, the Pink Pecninja by @judgmentfist
