Ausdoerrt said:
Well-written article, I think it drives the point home: it's possible to design female armor that looks realistic, unless you're making fantasy porn. Most just don't try hard enough.
Yes. And the problem which I see from it is:
Everything will look and feel the same.
I see where the guy is coming from and agree with him. A setting like skyrim with females ruining around in some negligee fighting orcs during a snow storm is rather silly.
So this for a game like Skyrim is not so well.
BUT. And this is the point to remember. We are talking about "art" here. Not a history class/lesson. So the picture above makes in my eyes perfect sense for a setting/movie/game about Red Sonja for example. Because she is a quite unique character and personality. And it plays a very important role who is the guy which has drawn here. What his personality is like. You dont want to see Red Sonja runing around looking like Jeanne d’Arc. At least I would not want it. Because that is (eventually) not part of heir personality. For example I dont see that many complaining about her "clothes" or "armor" in the movie either.
When I do my art be it fantasy, sci-fi or real (I could show a few examples if people care about it) I have constantly to fight with what I personally believe is "cool" and still somewhat "logical" - Iam by no means a professional but I want to be one at some point and many believe that I have some skill. But hands down. If we always go only with what makes sense at some point everything would look "real" or very similar from its style and setting. And that is not what you want to achieve for all of your work. A scifi tank or armor has to look a bit strange sometimes if you want it to give you the idea that it is not from this world. Take command & conquer for example. Who is going to argue about it that some (if not all) of their units could never work from an engineering point of view or if we go the route of a "simulation" because of the way how the tracks are arranged or how the turret fits the armor adding a ton of "weak points" where shells might bounce from the front and penetrating the bottom of the turret ? - This was actually a real life issue with some WW2 tanks like the German medium Panther tank. It had a shoot trap right under the turret where rather weak low caliber guns could hit it and the shell would ricochet from the mantlet right on to the armor above the driver section! So some weak spots on the armor are not always THAT unrealistic to say that. Even engineers are only humans.
[spoiler:5aa5667bff]
notice the space between the turret and the hull which gave skilled tankers a chance to hit the lower part of the gun mantlet and it would actually direct the shell right to the top of the front hull. This was a design-flaw of early Panther tanks and got later fixed with a changed mantlet[/spoiler:5aa5667bff]
Someone who makes real life armor or equipment has to keep many limitations in his mind. It does not mean that its worse. But as artist you have it usually much easier. - Well of course we always have the limitations from our client but I hope people get the point. The people which make those kind "art" with armor, weapons, equipment etc. are usually not engineers. They only look at real life equipment as reference. Like real tanks, guns or armor and weapons. And then they twist it around in their mind till the point they or their boss feels satisfied.
Overall I love the article. he points out many things which feel wrong. I just think he went a bit overboard with the criticism on some of the armor as because we are still talking about games. Probably because he is working with real armor and thus he got a very skilled eye for it. It slowly starts to be that way for me when it comes to design - for example regardless how many people "like" minecraft for its graphic/visuals I think it looks from the design outright shit.
