Amusingly, when I was looking for characters to mock for another lesson in how game companies are doing it wrong, I had initially thought I was going to pick apart the Dead or Alive girls. But then I was looking through all the DoA cheesecake I could find and discovered... no... they're anatomically correct, as long as you assume that they're doing around two hundred crunches a day. They're disgusting, but not actually inhuman. Check this out:
She's got big boobs, sure, but they're not perfect spheres and they are affected by gravity. Furthermore, she has a ribcage and actual organs. So Capcom, you should be doubly embarassed that I'm picking on you today. If you're lower on the food chain than Dead or Alive, then I think that really says something.
I wound up settling on this picture of Chun Li after I found this photo of an official Capcom figure of Chun Li. It's currently $75.00 on the Capcom store:
Okay, so before I pick on anything else, just check out how small her head is. It's smaller than those ridiculously puffy sleeves of hers, and way too small for her body! The average human is about 7 heads tall. This Chun Li is almost 8 heads tall, which combined with her exaggerated proportions makes her look bizarre and inhuman. So first of all, before doing anything else, I PhotoShopped her head to the correct proportion:
Uncorrected on the left, corrected on the right.
You'll notice that already that does a lot to make Chun Li look more human. Now the only problem is that her costume, with its ridiculous sleeves, makes it hard to tease out the actual anatomy. So I've drawn in her actual anatomy over the corrected 7-head-tall figure:
Chun Li's sculpted anatomy is in red, along with my notes in green. First, you'll note that Chun Li's ridiculous thighs are actually 7/8 of the height of her head, despite having such waifishly thin arms that she looks like she's not used to carrying anything heavier than a newspaper. Second, you'll note that Chun Li's ass is precisely the width of her shoulders, despite the fact that her waist is approximately the width of her head. So like Taki, Chun Li has no rib cage. One supposes she's storing her organs in that prodigious ass of hers.
All of this is, I suppose, sort a refreshing change. For once it's not the boobage that's being completely distorted. But still, this is entirely unrealistic.
So, time to make corrections:
I gave Chun Li some more muscular arms. I figure if she's going to be smacking people around on a regular basis, she should at least have guns like Michelle Obama's (who I modeled Chun Li's new biceps on). I also toned down her absurdly muscular thighs, though I left them plenty muscle-y. As someone who takes tae kwon do, which is much more about kicking than blocks or punches, this is a much more reasonable physique for a practitioner of martial arts whose technique focuses heavily on kicking like Chun Li's does.
Lastly, I gave Chun Li a freaking rib cage. Once I did that, I didn't need to correct the boobage, and I only had to tone down the ass just a bit. I left Chun Li's washboard abs. I'll cut these fighting game girls some slack and assume that they're doing a regime of crunches so as to be in better shape for all that ass-kicking. (Oh, and I also de-muscled Chun Li's knees since they just looked absurd.)
I realize some of that is a little hard to see, so for the sake of clarity:
(I couldn't resist adding some shading to make it pretty)
So this is just to illustrate the adjusted proportions. When properly proportioned, her ass is still 3/4 the width of her shoulders, and her thighs are 3/4 the height of her head rather than 7/8. When you look at it this way, it's really not a huge difference. My Chun Li is still thin, muscular, and athletic and still manages to be attractive. And most importantly, she's human! So let this be a lesson, Capcom. I'm not asking you to make huge changes. Small changes like these would be great.
