Thursday, December 9, 2010

Fanart Hall of Shame: Reiq

Okay, folks. Things have kind of blown up around here the last week or so and I'll admit that I'm pretty drained from arguing with people on the internet - even though I said I wouldn't. Rather than being lazy and posting some links, though, I figured it was about time to induct a second member into the Fanart Hall of Shame.

So first of all - legal boilerplate. All images you see here are the property of Reinaldo Quintero (Reiq). I don't own a thing. The artist's website can be found here and his GFX Artist profile can be found here. If you want to see his hentai (read: Actual porn, NSFWer) site, you can find it at jigglygirls.com. (Real URL, I swear!)

With that said, on to the shaming!

I first stumbled across Reiq while I was doing Image searches for my original post about the ridiculous Soul Calibur women, and the link went straight into my bookmark folder for future shaming. It was impressive to me that with the wide variety of disgusting Ivy fanart out there, this was by far the worst I've yet seen:



The sad thing is that even as I'm repulsed by the image, I have to admire the technique that went in to creating these textures. This guy has serious artistic chops, and I'll freely admit that skill-wise he's probably better than me. But talk about an artist abusing his powers for evil. I think even Wayne Reynolds would be embarassed to draw something like this!

I shouldn't need to point out all the things that are wrong with this image. Boobs, check. Nipples, check. Ass, check. Overall proportions, check. I'll just add that boobs are NOT like balloons. If you squeeze the top, the bottom does NOT expand. Contrary to popular belief, boobs are actually just bags of flesh. (OMGWTFBBQ!)

Thankfully that's the worst of them, but there's still some heart-breakers - like TWO different renditions of Samus:






Oh, Samus! What has he done to you? The Samus I know and love would never passively flaunt her sexuality with a come-hither look! The Samus I know would be kicking ass and taking names! What evil did Nintendo unleash upon the world when they created the Zero Suit? Is this how you're destined to be remembered? As a busty blonde in blue spandex, completely stripped of any power or consequence? Honestly, this bothers me so much more than the big fake boobs and distorted anatomy.

Although, Christ, people. If you're going to draw chicks in spandex, don't give them cleavage that could rival the grand canyon. That just doesn't happen. Unless she has a separate spandex compartment for each boob, which seems unlikely.



THIS is why I immediately tune out whenever anyone starts talking about how Cortana is a "strong female character". I've never played Halo. (I'm not a huge fan of shooters, I just made an exception for Mass Effect because it's Bioware.) But looking at crap like this just makes me completely lose interest.



Is there anything more ridiculous than ass cleavage? I mean, I'm pretty shocked to see Reiq take on Crimson Viper considering that she's almost completely covered and then pose her so that her boobs are not visible. But clearly the lack of cleavage was getting to him, so he gave her ass cleavage instead.

Honestly, I don't know how she'd fight like that. I mean, her pants are so far up her ass that they must be lodged in her colon, which has GOT to be uncomfortable. Personally, I really don't think I could fight like that.



I'm ending with this one because I wanted to go from worst to best for once. Aside from the big fake boobs, I actually like this rendition of Wonder Woman. She doesn't have massive camel toe, she's not passively on display, and she looks like she's daring you try something so that she can use that lasso to choke the life out of you. And that's the sad part. If this was the rule rather than the exception, I'd sigh about comic character design and big fake boobs and move on with my life.
Clearly Reiq has it in him to draw only minimally distorted women with some sense of agency - he just chooses not to.

I suppose it shouldn't be too surprising, since the profile on his says that he is male (surprise surprise) and 27 - which puts him firmly in the "young and pervy" segment of artists. But considering that he is now working as an artist full-time with the income from these illustrations, that also puts him in the "perpetrating sexist stereotypes for fun and profit" camp.