Gender swap! The Magna Carta edition

It's been too long since I've done any original art for this blog, and I've been itching to do more! I knew as soon as I started working on that post about Hyung Tae Kim that I wanted to do another gender swap using his artwork, but it took me a while to find the time to sit down and do one.

Choosing an image was difficult. A lot of HTK's art is heavily distorted, and I wanted to experiment with actually not correcting anatomy this time around to see what the effect would be. However, I also really wanted to see what would happen if I took on a figure with an unnecessarily detailed crotch. For some reason, I wasn't able to find an image that was both very, very distorted AND very crotchular, so I settled for something crotchular and still a little distorted:

So this is Celestin Roaa from the Magna Carta series. This presented a huge challenge with the crazy boob perspective, and also with the costume - but I think it turned out well:

The costume presented quite the challenge, in that there wasn't any real male equivalent of the clothing that she was wearing. I compromised and gave my gender-swapped version a codpiece and chaps. Amusingly, I didn't realize how phallic the design on the codpiece was until after I drew it. I did try to give him a bulge, since Ken-doll superheroes with no visible bulge have always irritated me, but I think it was a bit obscured by the crazy codpiece. Alas.

The figure is softer than I intended, but I think that's more a result of me attempting to change as few lines as possible; I changed as little as I could to have the figure still be interpreted as male. (I'll admit the beard was me hedging my bets.)

Anyhow, in all other regards I'm quite happy with how the ridiculousness comes through. The chaps + codpiece are a wonderfully ridiculous combination, and the codpiece especially draws attention to the "HEY EVERYBODY LOOK AT MY CROTCH"-ness of the original pose. I think the low cut of the codpiece also helps make the sexualization extreme enough that it actually reads as sexualization. Were he wearing pants, I don't think that even the bare chest would really read as extreme sexualization the way the mostly bare chest with bikini top does with the original figure.

I think next time I'll tackle something with more obvious figure distortion, just to see what happens. I suspect it won't translate well, since the parts of the female body that get distorted don't really have male equivalents. But that unknown is part of why I'm doing this. I enjoy highlighting the ridiculousness of the imagery, sure. But the experimentation of what works and what doesn't is neat too.

I'd also like to do more re-designed characters, but I was having trouble deciding which character I should take on next. Anyone have any suggestions?

Re-launched WoW Galleries: Let's end with a gender-swap

As promised, I have another gender-swap to finish out this series of WoW posts. My first attempt at a gender-swap was reasonably successful, but I discovered that a lot of the sexualization gets lost in translation since the "collection of bits" phenomenon has to be unbelievably exaggerated in order to come across on a male figure.

Thankfully, the new WoW galleries provided plenty of ammunition!

The ladybit assassin (see part 3) was almost my choice, but I was afraid that people have been so desensitized to Conan-type beefcake that it wouldn't have the impact I was looking for. So instead, I went for my second, uh, favorite:

God. This makes me want to facepalm every time I see it.

And here is my take, what I have dubbed a work of "mancake":

I got lazy and didn't bother reproducing the bad PhotoShop filter frost magic effects. Also, I changed the colors and simplified the design of the robes. That was out of copyright concerns, not laziness.

This time, I was every bit as successful as I had hoped. This time, the sheer ridiculousness of the pose and costume wasn't lost in translation, even after correcting the anatomy to give my gender-swapped mage a rib cage.

We have the usual suspects when it comes to sexualized female figures. Her costume has both a cleavage AND a midriff window. Anatomy is similarly distorted in the usual fashion. Ginormous fake boobs? Check. Lack of rib cage? Check. Impossibly flat abs? Check. But honestly, that's not what I was after.

The most obvious object of ridicule is the pose. Her back is arched with her breasts and ass being thrust out at the same time. I'm really not sure how she's supposed to cast magic like that; I tried to get into that pose myself and it was all I could do to not fall over or accidentally injure my back. (Give it a try when no one's looking. It's pretty hard.)

So I'm pretty pleased that most of that still comes through with my gender-swapped version. I'm not positive that the cleavage window has the same effect, even with him thrusting his chest forward. Without actual cleavage I suspect some of the impact is lost. But the intent still comes through loud and clear, which makes me very happy indeed.

Now to be fair, a fair number of the comments in the WoW gallery revolve around how it looks like she's about to take a crap. But there's just as many comments about how "real" this looks - which kind of freaks me out that nobody notices basic shit like WHERE ARE HER ORGANS? And then there's an even scarier subset of people who, predictably, find Crapping Frost Mage hot:

she definatley... wants it in her anal cavity

she hot she most will be a porn star

Delicious

Mage porn star.

Oh, internet. I'm finding it harder to be surprised by this stuff anymore.

Anyhow. I'll definitely do more of these in the future (though perhaps not right away since my time is at a premium for the next few weeks). I had way too much fun doing this one!

Gender-swapping female characters: Vanille

Some of the arguments here about the sexualized design of female video game characters got me to thinking about how I could illustrate this more clearly, since some people just seem to understand that idealization of male characters JUST ISN'T THE SAME as the sexualization of female characters. I got to thinking about a post I saw several years ago on LiveJournal in which a female blogger photoshopped hypothetical comic covers with extreme male fanservice.

I wanted to do something along those lines, only with game art and perhaps a bit less extreme. When discussing sexualized character design, people seem to focus on the body parts - perhaps just because distorted anatomy is very easy for us to recognize. But posing plays just as big a part - even when it's not the subtle-as-a-brick "take me now" posing that all of us are pretty used to seeing. So I decided that I'm going to start doing a series of gender-swapped female game characters, starting with Vanille from Final Fantasy XIII - mostly just because that's the game I'm playing right now.

So here's female Vanille:

And here's my genderswapped "Van":

CLICK FOR LARGER VIEW

I did contemplate leaving Vanille's ridiculous bikini top and mini skirt combo intact, but I decided that instead I would swap the clothing for their nearest gender equivalents - which is why Van is in a wife-beater and shortish shorts. Van here comes off as pretty gender-inappropriate by conventional standards, and not just because I kept the pink shirt. According to what we're conditioned to expect, everything about the pose is incredibly inappropriate on a male figure.

Vanille's spine is arched in such a way that her breasts are thrust forward. Her legs and clothing are arranged in such a way that your eyes are drawn to her ladybits that are just barely covered by the arrangement of her limbs. And despite this being a somewhat action-y pose, the posing of her arms doesn't suggest strength or action - they suggest softness and femininity. Everything about Vanille's pose is designed to be inviting and appealing to the male viewer. And yet a lot of that gets lost in the gender-swap. Van isn't that much more covered than Vanille, but you don't get the "collection of parts" impression looking at him that you do looking at Vanille.

So all in all, I consider this a pretty successful experiment, and one that I'll definitely repeat. My only regret in that trying to go less extreme than the photoshopped comic covers, I think I went a little too far. Next time I'll pick a character and pose that are a little more obviously sexual and see what happens. (Suggestions?)

Lastly, as recommended reading I'll suggest you check out this great LJ post here with lots of scans from a book on how to draw comic characters that highlights a lot of what I'm talking about. Especially check out the first three scanned pages which highlight pretty much what I'm talking about here.