Artist's Lady Knights Series Creates Diverse Women Warriors

[conmag9]

For number 5:

Mook: Is...is that a tiger on your mace?

Sentinel: Yup.

Mook: I'm just gonna hurl myself into this convenient bottomless pit. Have fun with the dungeon boss.

Pretty interesting designs. 1 and 3 are also nice.

 

[Impluse_101]

I actually saw this Lady Knight character generator and I threw my hat into this!

Spoiler: Here is what I rolled

Based on 5 things in the gif, it was Weapon, Build, Culture, Animal, and Personality.
Culture being where she came form.
Build being her body size.
Weapon is obvious...
Animal being the style of armor being based on an animal.
And then Personality is also obvious.


Weapon: Sword

Build: Short

Culture: Persia

Animal: Bird of Prey

Personality: Cranky

Spoiler: And here is the Lady

 

[Elfgore]

Am I the only one who loves the Roman Eagle lady? I think she has to be my favorite..

You aren't alone, brother. That one just made shout cute at the top of my lungs.

But all of these are awesome. And none of the women, besides the egyptain, have skimpy armor on. Kudos to the artist.

 

[KOMega]

Number 3. I'm a sucker for the mystic arts and that kind of stuff.

 

[Bombiz]

Aztec one looks cool. Same with the Roman one(although her pose could be a lot better).

 

[Infernal Lawyer]

Oh man, those all look so freaking awesome. Bit weird that the Aztec one appears more "conventional" compared to the others, but then again it's not exactly an environment where you want to wear triple layers.

Edit: Though I have to say, now that I think about it, the Indian Shark one looks a bit, I dunno... unrealistic. It DOES look a lot like a frail girl inside a massive suit of armor way too heavy for her.

 

[KOMega]

Can't we have some decent characters that are just people and not symbols of equality?

They are only symbols if you will them to be.

Seriously though, I thought these were just cultural representation of warrior women concepts or something. I feel kinda icky getting mixed into

Like there's the roman woman, the oriental woman, the russian woman, the egyption woman, and then some random ones based on fantasy nations, like the rabbit place and the dwarf place because I guess they would be in a fantasy setting.

I like the third one though. This trope has that "graceful anger" vibe coming from it. Also magic and snakes!

Say what you want about JRPG's, but at least when they're designing the cast each key character usually gets their own model.

And for the art gallery I'd be all for that in a game, and the Asian snake lady is my favourite here.

Here, Here!

 

[MrHide-Patten]

I really like these!

Maybe not the Egyptian one, as it goes to towards the more conventional more skin less armor but the others are great! The green one reminds me of Melissa McCarthy!

They all look like they have a personality without them saying a word and they actually look like a woman would when going to war, not with tits popping out but clad in armor!

Well the Egyptian one is a bit more accurate for the society (I think), fuckin' deserts and all that. Whilst it may be a more conventional type, it is still one that exists.

Granted I would just like to see more games with a stylized atheistic, where you can illustrate different and exaggerated proportions more easily.

It's Aztec guys

Not even complaining about the right culture

It's the dang colour scheme! Puthin' me off, makin' me think of Egyptians and junk. Granted I don't think ancient cultures gave much crap about clothing unless they were somewhere cold.

 

[TheSYLOH]

They're nice, but I really don't like 6 and 7

#6 what the hell is the point of up armoring the top if the lower body more or less unprotected. Also the balance would be awful for combat.

#7, just look at it! Giant exposed unarmored spot on platemail. True its better than the boob window, but its still a bad vulnerability. Also the ears are giant and from the looks of it, non-breakable hand holds.

Still, I think I can just write off #7 as ceremonial armor.
#6 requires some kind of religion to justify something that goofy.

 

[Morti]

It's like you said, they're only symbols if we make them out to be so, but that goes the other way around. Just because femshep has a "boob armor" chestplate, it doesn't have to be a sexual symbol, unless you make it out to be so.

Yes, it does, because there is no logical reason for boob-armour other than going "look guys: BOOBS".

Now, that may in itself be a valid, in universe, explanation. Like the roman muscle cuirass, a high ranking female office may choose to flaunt her figure a bit when she's not expecting to do any actual fighting. In a combat situation? Noone is going to give a toss that you have breasts and it will just act as a funnel to encourage projectiles towards your heart.


On topic, been seeing alot of the designs coming out of this on tumblr for a while now, lot of really interesting and fun work being done as well as putting a nice middle finger to the idea that varied female characters are harder to create than men.

I think the great thing about something like this, is that it forces you out of your comfort zone, it makes you think it ways that you probably normally wouldn't.

 

[Tradjus]

I immediately started like, thinking about a backstory for the Indian girl in the shark armor.
Her entire stance and her expression said to me that she was uncomfortable in her current position, and while it's totally possible it's some other reason, I thought that it was likely that armor wasn't originally hers. Perhaps it was passed down too her by her mother or father who was some great warrior but was struck down, and it fell too her to take up the mantle and become a warrior as well and avenge their parent, even though they're not really into the idea.

 

[Batou667]

I'm going to have to be one of the few voices of dissent in this thread: I don't think many of these character designs are particularly good or even interesting. They resemble an awkward mish-mash of random ideas (i.e., exactly what they are). The only one I'd consider "good" from a design view is the snake lady.

It's nice that people are thinking outside of the box, but if the intention of this article is to prove that "Those sexualised stereotypes are completely unnecessary, look, I pulled half a dozen superior examples out if my ass in five minutes flat!" then I think there's a bit of self-deception going on. Calling this a victory for Feminism In Games would certainly be a bit premature.

 

[Rastrelly]

Did anyone notice that this diversity is based on stereotypes? Some of which are quite rude?

 

[Ushiromiya Battler]

I find it fun that three of the characters have armour clearly fashioned around their boobs when this was supposed to be some practical armour show off.
Actually, pretty much the roman armour is the only practical one, everything else looks ridiculous.

 

[DigitalAtlas]

So women characters should just dress more like the male characters?

Sexist.

 

[Elijah Newton]

Great stuff. This need not be the last word when it comes to character design, but I think it's a vital part of the conversation. Randomization as an approach is a good way to shake off some tropes which aren't fully noticable until they are absent.

I immediately started like, thinking about a backstory for the Indian girl in the shark armor.
Her entire stance and her expression said to me that she was uncomfortable in her current position, and while it's totally possible it's some other reason, I thought that it was likely that armor wasn't originally hers. Perhaps it was passed down too her by her mother or father who was some great warrior but was struck down, and it fell too her to take up the mantle and become a warrior as well and avenge their parent, even though they're not really into the idea.

*chuckle* I feel obliged to note that when I first saw the thumbnail I immediately assumed it was a reference to WH40k Space Marine armor and, with the mincing pose, a pretty funny reference at that. It wasn't until I read 'shark' in the descriptor and looked more closely that I had the 'oOoh, I see' moment.