From Maillot To Mail

[ThinkMinty]

Spoiler: Face

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For reference, I looked up an image of Obama's face. I used the Sponge tool to Desaturate her lips, followed by the Color Replace tool to apply the color of Obama's lips onto Artemis's. I Painted freckles onto her cheek and forehead, then Blurred them onto her face. I tried to add creases underneath her eye using the Burn tool, but failed to get a natural-looking result. So I copied and flipped the eyebag under Obama's right eye, changed its Hue to match Artemis, then pasted it onto her face. The end result is not what I expected, but I feel it's still satisfactory.

The fun part is she still looks really pretty, just...like a person rather than a pinup. Not that she has to be pretty or anything.

Anyways, if magical girls taught me anything, it's that femininity can be and should be as much of a source of power and agency as masculinity is. That, and people can save the world in a skirt if they want.

[Domochevsky]

Hm, iunno about those pose changes... you're changing her from someone walking to someone standing awkwardly, trying to avoid any and all notion that could be interpreted as sexual.
That may be overshooting the goal. :S

[happyturtle]

The feet shouldn't meet the legs at a 90 degree angle though. Pay attention to the way your own feet move as you walk, the ankles, ball, and toes.

[Anonymouswizard]

Dresden Codak did something similar a while back, it's worth a look! It's a really cool thing that you're doing, too. Though I imagine you mean that your edit for Noel is the one on the left?

I love them, especially the superman one. Gives me ideas for my superhero universe, which includes a woman wearing armour based on...Kamen Rider G3. As in simple armour over a muscle enhancement suit, complete with an essentially flat chest. The world includes 'corporate superheroes', where the superheroines would wear the sexy outfits, but they haven't created one with the required body yet. Meanwhile they range from stuff that is essentially 'tracksuit and cape' to 'trenchcoat and clothing'.

It's kind of funny how attempts to portray 'sexiness' in female characters often leads to things such as balloon breasts, extremely high heels, forced posing, etc.

More forced posing, complete with fixes (not mine)

Huh, I'd never noticed how forced the posing can be. I love the various fixes, especially the first one, which turns it from 'look at her she's got boobs' to 'look at her she's badass' through the pose change (although I'm sure they also solved her back problems).

[Madcrafter]

Hm, iunno about those pose changes... you're changing her from someone walking to someone standing awkwardly, trying to avoid any and all notion that could be interpreted as sexual.
That may be overshooting the goal. :S

Also... I'm still unsure of how to fix Artemis's legs. I'm trying not to move her thighs, since it's a lot of work to fill in the gaps on her thighs and groin afterwards. This might take a bit.

Meanwhile, here's a super-quick 'fix' I did. I adjusted her calves and her feet (beneath the mini belts on her shoes).

Spoiler: It's still rather bad though

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I agree with Domochevsky here. While you could change her pose, it seems to be a lot of work for little benefit. In fact, perhaps even negative benefit.

Basically, the way her upper body is positioned, it is awkward to have the sort of straight legged pose you're going for. You're going to have to bend a knee more somewhere, and the most natural place to do that is the left leg, putting it out in front. This basically turns her from walking into quite literally posing for the picture, because it's essentially the same position without even the suggestion that there might be another reason for it like moving forwards. As a knock-on effect, it also then makes you interpret the rest as being a static pose instead of dynamic movement, which makes the problems you see with things like the left arm even worse.

Now, you can give her a straight-legged pose, but it's going to be more work then just changing the legs around. The best solution I think is to just keep the original walking pose, and edit away the heels into regular boots.

[Mr. Mask]

Those feet.....
Realistically, the breast-shape in the magical girl's breastplate is questionable. You can sort of get away with "uniboob" as it's called, but it is creating a catch-point for the enemy's attack, as opposed to a peascod breastplate.

Of course, taking a breastplate and a top hat into battle is a strange mixture to begin with. Having no visible weapon is also strange, though maybe that wand is effective.

On a similar note, Artemis has strapped a lot of steel to stuff that isn't going to be very helpful. I mean really, a steel-plated quiver? While there are some tendons and veins in the legs, those little metal plates would serve the stomach, head and torso better. That crown grafted to her skull also looked extraordinarily painful. If it gets hit.... I don't envy her (how does she do her hair with the headcrab's bronze cousin attached?).

[Mr. Mask]

If the adventurer is rather 'large', then get a front chest piece a size or two bigger, then use padding and sarashi to make sure it's a good fit. That's what I've heard of being done for such cases. The guys in the real weapons thread might be able to give more specifics.

To be fair, there's no reason a mage can't wear armour. Having a breastplate but no helmet is simply unusual (since if you need one, you generally need the other).

With the added metal, I thought details considered impractical were being removed so that the characters could fight.


The first knight is well drawn. Making the mid-section scale was an interesting idea. That elbow looks like it'd weigh twenty pounds.


The second knight, bare skin on steel plate... ouch. Interestingly, some people were approximately that naked while wearing armour (kilts FTW), but not having a layer of padding between plate and your skin is pretty inconvenient (generally you'd just not wear leg armour). That and her arms makes me wonder if you can get away with having padded long gloves and padded stockings, rather than a full jacket and trousers. I suppose you could, if the padding was essentially sewn into the plate legging and gauntlets, though I'm not sure if it'd be highly secure. You're also going a bit extreme on the weak points, not even having a mail skirt and shirt as protection (compared to the thick steel plate). Looking at her neck (how log is her neck)... I'm not sure what that visor-looking thing is for (heat vent? That's be an interesting if suicidal idea), and that neck guard is going to make looking around and down very hard. She also can't lift her arms without stabbing herself in the head.

To be honest, that thin layer of cloth won't be any protection for her armpits, but some kind of shirt and padding is necessary to make that armour effective (if that's the thickness of her padding, getting hit will smart like heck).

The red cloth pants looks like someone skinned her thighs to the muscle layer. The long stockings/pants are better.

Shouldn't the eye-gouging shoulder pads be fixable, as the background behind the spikes is clouds and blue sky?

Those look more like platform shoes than high-heels, to me. They might even be really thick-stilted geta. Of course, making it that thick and out of steel is going to be akin to concrete shoes. She could step on a landmine and not notice, in those boots.

[Mr. Mask]

Equality earned through embarrassing epitaphs. "She stabbed herself with her own shoulder."

Naked with style.

About the same as the concrete shoes (great for diving).

I think that's her helmet. That or the steely equivalent of the puffed sleeve. Good job on the spikes, she probably won't die now (though she can't raise her arms higher than her shoulders).

[JackPhoenix]

EDIT: Spikes have been removed. Wait, is that another spike on her left hand? What is that anyway?

I *think* that's supposed to be a helmet held in her left hand and partialy hidden behind the leg. It doesn't match either right hand or the armor on the right thigh.

[Vinyadan]

Did you take a look at Drowtales? They have pretty much all variants of armour and clothing, from the most inappropriate (well, to any situation I can think of which isn't a lingerie fashion show after-party) to the show-off to the heaviest. The comic practically only cares about female characters.

[Submortimer]

Some time ago, on a DnD Demotivators thread on these very forums, I spotted this demotivator:

*Snip*

Oi...this one is really, really painful to look at.

While I get that you want to take things out of context and look at them objectively, in a lot of cases the picture only makes sense IN context.

This is, near as I can tell from both the imagery and the text, a summoner and the succubus he summoned. that tells us two important things:
1. This is not a human character, and is in fact a creature that, classically, is the embodiment of sexual lust and perversion.
2. There is absolutely a master/subordinate relationship being portrayed here.

If we're comfortable making assumptions, then we can also assume that the summoner is probably evil, and so is far more likely to push the "I'm the master, you're the slave" angle. He's covered because he absolutely is the one with the place of power here, not because he's male, but because he summoned her with demon magic.

Point being, the edit takes many things away from the context, the joke is much less funny, and trying to make a purposefully unequal situation equal destroys the picture.

[CharonsHelper]

Don't you know? All fantasy armor for women really covers everything; they are just glamoured to look extremely revealing in order to distract their foes!