Guess i learned something today! But man I hope this isnt something too many people do to their teeth. Protect your teeth people! brush everyday!
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Why women criticise sexualised character designs |OT2| I have no pants and I must scream (READ OP)
- Thread starter Persephone
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Weren't they going to fix that DLC to be less shitty in an (still upcoming?) patch/update?
Dont most upper corner teeth of peeps already have a pointy shape? Mine do naturally. I guess this is to literally have em be extended and stick out of your mouth or have em appear longer than your other teeth?
Facial shapes, especially with female anime characters, is always a problem. A small character can still look like an adult if the head and facial features are shaped and proportioned right but typical anime styles have like, one or two head shapes that are mostly featureless, so age indicators just don't exist within many anime designs. This is why female characters either read as very young or very old, with nothing existing visually in between. There aren't a lot of female characters that actually look like 30 or 40 somethings. Male characters get more detail to their faces.
Its also a problem with ages in anime because they tend to draw 25 year olds like they in their Mid-forties early 50's sometimes lol
I started playing FFXIII the other day and was shocked to find out Sazh was 40. Not becuase I thought he was younger - but because he looked and acted like he could actually be a 40 year old man! Cid from FFVII, by contrast, is 32 and I thought he pushing 50!
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The facial detail point is interesting, when the nose tends to disappear as well it doesn't leave much to go on outside of the massive eyes.
I'm playing Tales of Vesperia at the moment, and the party keeps referring to one character, Raven, as 'old man'. He's only ~35! The exact same thing happened in Tales of Hearts R, where a character in their 30s (they all blend into one for me but the guy with the sunglasses) is constantly talking about retiring and speaking as if the teenagers are at least two generations younger than him. They are still relatively young adults but given a role of 'washed up old guy' because of use of the anime/JRPG time dilation effect, where anything of consequence happens in your late teens, early 20s is your height of your abilities, and then you retire and step aside. Very silly.
So sabrina was basically forced to back out of her position because someone couldn't handle criticism towards an artist making characters that clearly look underage but assigning them a higher arbitrary age number to them, something we have clearly criticized multiple times in the past?
Cool, I guess that's where we are at in this thread right now.
The design is not an adult at all and I immediately side-eye and call into question the artists intent when designing the character to be an adult.
Cool, I guess that's where we are at in this thread right now.
The design is not an adult at all and I immediately side-eye and call into question the artists intent when designing the character to be an adult.
Yeah, SFV has issues, but some of the Soul Calibur stuff is outright gross, like having Talim who is explicitly underage designed like this.
I was banned in the other place for arguing that many SC6 character designs are sexist and some are straight up pedo.
But hey, nipples, camel toes and sexualize teenage girls - all thats artistic expression that needs to be protected and mustn't be criticized. In the name of free speech of course.
Pretty incredible how its went straight to reactionary right wing, sexist shit hole over there.
I'd have to agree with appearing younger than intended, this design at best is young adult without the big anime eye face.
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Am I pedo-bait because I'm 23 but people often think I'm still in high school :/ Or my sister who didn't stop getting that until she was like 28 :/
Honestly, the idea that our arbitrarily decided age of consent can be laid out in a strict list of traits is ridiculous. Someone comes in here with a non-sexualized character and gets accused of having a pedophilic artist because the character isn't 7 heads high? lmao, take a breath
Honestly, the idea that our arbitrarily decided age of consent can be laid out in a strict list of traits is ridiculous. Someone comes in here with a non-sexualized character and gets accused of having a pedophilic artist because the character isn't 7 heads high? lmao, take a breath
Is this post in response to mine?
Were you and your sister commissioned designs by any chance?
No...sabrina was forced back out of her position because she was being an ass. Being disingenuous about it doesn't help anyone or promote informative discussion.
Why are you bringing dumb real life arguments into this? It's different in real life because real women & girls actually have agency on what they wear and they can't do anything to their young looks (not that they should have to do anything).
Plus the person who posted that already admitted that her artist for that particular character usually draws extremely sexualized characters with big boobs & asses. I imagine that artist doesn't draw the faces & other aspects of his/her characters any different than what the character posted in this thread looks like, which would mean that he/she draws questionably young looking, sexualized characters.
It matters fuck all if real life has 23 year olds who look like 15 year olds when it comes to drawing infantilized "adult" cartoon characters.
What is wrong with you? So because something is drawn it has to meet your arbitrary list of requirements? Would an artist be wrong if I asked them to draw me and I had a midriff? We're talking about a commissioned character who isn't sexualized at all
Right...
Because she said "get a new artist" in response to a design which is clearly a teen where the artist assigned a higher age value then the design itself, something routinely criticized in this thread.
I'm not sure why criticism is being held back or words are being minced when these types of designs have been treated with direct language in the past.
If the artist wanted to draw an adult, they should've drawn a damn adult.
Because the entire point was whether the design looked like an adult or not? And it doesn't.
Is that drawing of an actual person? No. Your argument makes no sense. She asked if that design is ok and had to mention that it's actually supposed to be an adult woman. We said fuck no, that does not look like an adult woman. Your silly real life argument has absolutely ZERO relevancy here.
The character was posted as a design that wasn't sexualised. Everyone else other than the one who posted it decided that she was lying about the age
They commissioned a character that was meant to be an adult. The character does not look like an adult. The commissioner posted here to ask our opinion on it. So that was given by a number of posters. Then said commissioner said that the artist they commissioned usually does do sexualised designs. I imagine that the sexualised designs also have the same characteristics like the height ratio and the face, that make the character look young. Are we not allowed to comment on the problems with that?
Sexulization isn't the only thing that can be wrong about female character designs.
Like, drawing infantilized "adult" women is problematic in itself.
And we mock the "she's actually a 1000 year old dragon" trope here all the time. What is arbitrary is the age of fictional characters, especially when drawing such underage looking characters. Like, there's a reason why some Senran Kagura and/or Dead or Alive (Extreme Volleyball) characters have their ages changed up to 18 from the ages that the Japanese creators originally intended. It's easy to draw an infantilized "adult" woman and then say "oh no, she's actually 18".
I think this is the main issue here. A consensus of a young adult's proportions doesn't exist. One artist may see a 6 heads tall character as an adult but another may see them as a teenager. But I feel that a good height is 7 heads.
EDIT: Removed reference to a banned game.
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The entire point is that you're being 100% arbitrary and telling a female artist that she's "silly." They don't teach you characteristic arithmetic to make an acceptably "adult" character in art school I can tell you that.
Something can be a problem as a trend and not assumed to be the case every time. This whole thing started with accusations of pedophilia long before anyone had an idea of who the artist was. That's what upsets me.
The design doesn't look like an adult to me, and I'm a guy that was asked his DNI till his 28s lol
Honestly I think it's about the drawing style of the artist with faces, people here already explained it better. It's like... Honoka in DOA series, where she has big bust and ass yet she still looks underage because of her face (literally ripped from an underage character). Anime style lacks a lot of features when drawing faces and more often than not follow some infantilization traits to make characters look cute even when they're supposed to be adults.
That being said, there is really nothing wrong with it, the character isn't sexualized and doesn't look like Kokonoe isn't interested in that. The trend of infantilizing adult women is tiring but this doesn't come from a game or series, it's just a character for a person to have an avatar, if Koko likes that style then nothing I can do, this is not from a comercial product so it's different. Of course if you ask around what d yo u think about it people will agree or disagree about how old she looks.
Honestly I think it's about the drawing style of the artist with faces, people here already explained it better. It's like... Honoka in DOA series, where she has big bust and ass yet she still looks underage because of her face (literally ripped from an underage character). Anime style lacks a lot of features when drawing faces and more often than not follow some infantilization traits to make characters look cute even when they're supposed to be adults.
That being said, there is really nothing wrong with it, the character isn't sexualized and doesn't look like Kokonoe isn't interested in that. The trend of infantilizing adult women is tiring but this doesn't come from a game or series, it's just a character for a person to have an avatar, if Koko likes that style then nothing I can do, this is not from a comercial product so it's different. Of course if you ask around what d yo u think about it people will agree or disagree about how old she looks.
What female artist? Kokonoe's is the commissioner, not the artist. And the artist apparently normally draws big busted, big bummed pieces which this thread has no trouble criticising regardless of gender of artist.
I'm talking about me lol. Not that it matters. You all made up your minds and it's perfectly fine. I've been a regular since the first OT, occasionally popping in, but I'll let you guys have your fun and leave.
If you draw this big of a pea into your nostrils because people criticize a very generic animu character that portrays some very clearly underage characteristics and start comparing this to real women who look young, then yes, you are being silly.
Again, the only arbitrary thing here is the age. She clearly portrays underage characteristics but is given a more acceptable age of 18 because of *reasons*
Maybe they should, considering how much problematic female character designing there is in the world. Maybe it would be good to point out in some class that hey, maybe not all women have melons for boobs and there are women there that look some age other than 15-18.
Sorry if we are too jaded that when something shows all the telltale signs of someone who perhaps likes to draw very young looking "adults", we tend to not give the benefit of the doubt. But in my eyes, that character design just rung all the alarming bells of a character who is drawn by someone with questionable motives/"creative passions". And lo and behold, we were proven right.
No, the discussion spiraled off because when the design was posted, the descriptor used to reference the design was that "she's an adult."
And the design doesn't look like an adult.
That is most certainly not all that was said. The insinuations and presumptions were getting a tad inflammatory (based on just that one drawing) and I've definitely seen people temp-banned for going too far down that road. Reins needed to be pulled.
Look the words describing the artist as "pedo" were too strong, but I can kinda see why as people can get very fed up in this thread and it can lead to very heated emotions. I would say there are legitimate problems in that design which are a trend we see often in other designs. In saying that, I'm sure no one in this thread thinks you are silly and I don't want you to feel you are unwelcome here either. I hope you do continue to post your thoughts in this thread in the future.
It's not arbitrary, it's all about norms. I think the majority of people you asked would say the commissioned art was a kid, not an adult.
Are there people who look younger or older than their age in real life? Sure. But there's a reason people say that they don't look their age. Because there is an average look that people associate with ages. If I looked like I was 80, I wouldn't tell people that no, no, no, they are wrong and I look 30 something and they need to check their "arbitrary" criteria at the door. I would say I look 80 even though I'm 30 something. Because the understanding is that I am the outlier, and the average 30 something looks nothing like me.
If the character is an adult, fine. But it will be hard to convince me that the character looks like an adult.
Yeah, SFV has issues, but some of the Soul Calibur stuff is outright gross, like having Talim who is explicitly underage designed like this.
Yikes. I haven't played SC since 2 and Talim's outfit in that was downright modest in comparison. Though the art book had one (thankfully cut) outfit that made me wonder if the artist was told she was supposed to be like 15.
That wasn't meant to be a summary of all that happened, just pointing out the pointlessness of asking for feedback if you're going to ignore it. The accusations of pedophilia are indeed and definitely Not Cool; I don't even agree that the avatar itself is particularly sexualized.
Thanks for the contribution, quality discourse right there.
(there's a joke to be made about Kokonoe's avatar being the one that needs to grow up, but that'd be a low-hanging fruit).
The last few pages must have been hard to read for you. For what it's worth I think the picture can only be criticized in the context of the anime industry being terrible with this. And the language used was too strong for sure.
I hope you will still feel welcome here and that the general hostility we had here recently is dialed back.
The poster I was defending, sabrina, did not do so. She was forced to back down because folks couldn't handle criticism of the artist.
That is, quite frankly, absurd. So let me reiterate, if the artist wants to draw an adult, draw a damn adult. Drawing a kid/teen and trying to pass them off as an adult immediately puts you on the ", shit, that's suspect" list.
Being excited about a drawing you commissioned and immediately being told it is pedo-bait and to get a new artist is hard to swallow. It's harsh, and anyone would bristle at it!
If we want to educate people, open their eyes to problematic aspects of art and designs, we can do so in a kind manner. We're all people here, and deserve respect.
If we want to educate people, open their eyes to problematic aspects of art and designs, we can do so in a kind manner. We're all people here, and deserve respect.
But we have more context now. The artist is a woman who looks younger than her age. She should be able to draw someone like her without getting accused of being a perv or pedo.
On an industry wide scale I agree it's suspect but in this case this doesn't feel warranted to me.
And this too.
^
You're not adding anything other than further hostility by continuing to tell women what women are supposed to look like by your standards. The entire point of this thread is discuss women in games and how gaming can exclude women, not to further drive them away by blatantly infering they're peadophilic when there's a slight disagreement over an image that's relatively non-sexualised either way
There's been a mod warning, step back and calm down.
Where was this established? The only thing we know about the artist is that they like drawing (pedo-bait) sexualized big boobz, big ass characters outside of the one drawn in this thread.
Absolutely, but oddly, there's always an exception people find when women want to criticize something about art, especially when it is about patterns. We always have to shut up.
Of course it's bad to call the art pedo. The piece itself was entirely fine on that level, unsexualized. It wasn't pedo.
At the same time, it was also of a character that looks clearly young and fits a pretty normalized pattern that we can see in most places, to the point that most female characters now exist either as "very young looking" or "sex bombs" or both, but very rarely anything outside these patterns.
Look at the backlash towards She-Ra's design, for example - "looks like a man" was thrown around immediately, despite the character being very clearly not, because the pattern is so ingrained and people only accepting either "very young" or "very sexy" as acceptable molds.
And yes, I would absolutely say that the piece falls *squarely* into that pattern. Intentionally so? Probably not, but that's not exactly changing anything about said pattern. Quite the opposite: That both artist and commissioner didn't even consider that angle says a lot: It's now utterly normalized.
That doesn't make the artist a pedo, much like an artist that just happens to wear high heels a lot giving every character in their art high heels makes them someone that wants women to have issues with our joints. But it is part of the pattern that does, and it should be allowed to actually talk about it as such.
Much like a female artist that is very skinny and draws extremely skinny characters is part of the pattern that keeps female characters solely in that camp, even if they themselves do not wish to promote anorexia.
That it isn't even acceptable to point at the pattern really is classic gamer forum, much like guys overreacting on behalf of women on all involved sides is. And good work, now women have to shut up on all sides...
...and criticism got properly silenced. Don't call such art pedo. All it does is help shut down the actual criticism of the actual pattern. If it is "pedo" or not is entirely besides the point and not any part of the problematic pattern that could be discussed.
I mostly just like to read this thread, I don't think I usually have anything important to add to any discussion.
In this case though I think it's important to remind people that there is literally nothing wrong with "not looking your age" I even don't like using that phrase since it comes off as condescending more often then not, but when people bring forth the notion that there should be a more standardized look to how adult characters are drawn I think some people may take that as if you're trying to say that there's a problem with being a young looking adult and that problem should be corrected when brought over to fictional depictions.
I don't think that's what anyone is TRYING to say but proper framing would definitely help potentially make someone feel less attacked
This is basically what I agree with, I'm pretty sure the entire reason the poster showed that character here was to get feedback and maybe get it recommissioned in the future with the advice in mind. Why else would she come in here and link it???
Being snarky and off-the-cuff with no actual constructive criticism is fine when it's some big artist who'll never read this thread, but when it's directed to a fellow poster it's just unnecessary and unproductive. There were decent posts after the fact that were constructive but the well was already poisoned by that point and anyone would have reacted defensively to that.
I'm not telling "women what women should look like", I'm saying infantilized female anime characters are a widely common & problematic thing and that the character design posted here is a postergirl for that kind of design. My issue isn't with the way she looks per se but that she is being tried to be passed as an adult when clearly her characteristics are that of a (teenage) child. I'm not the only one saying she looks like a child.
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