The Dik dik

A new project i started.

I wanted to make a character based on the stereotype of 'Blonde pink loving high school girl''

Obviously that means make a Dik dik character.

A Dik dik being a type of deer/antelope

A size comparison and what a Dik dik is

So this is what the final design came to be. She's a moody tiny girl in a school full of tall regular antelope.

I've also decided to try and do 2D side-scroller based character.

In a similar animation style to pixles where it's a series of images for each of her body parts.

The aim is to do a short animation of the Dik dik girl (I just call her Blondie) to walk down her school hallways outside. Where someone steals her backpack.

And to show how short she is NPC's will be put in the background of the school hallway.

And here are the environments!! (The things i am not as good at!)

School hallway

Outside school

All together 

Negative female roles

Basically a list of what I’d like to avoid, although this is more how the character is written and used in a plot rather than a design. But i still want to make note of these kinds of characters.

This isn't just the role of girlfriend/mother/daughter/love interest. These are pure negative roles for women and just a character in general.

Smurfette Principle

I think it's pretty obvious how this isn't all too great for women's representation is games, there barley any woman let alone the diversity of women!

This is getting better in games, although in the main cast there's still a lot of smurfettes such as the Mario and Zelda franchises. Which is odd considering half the population is female and there is a growing amount of female characters in games.

Woman in refrigerators

This trope is more of a comic book one concerning super heroes.

When a super heroin is de-powered it's usually in a brutish way. and the female stays dead.

Whereas if a male super heroes dies it's likely they'll come back EVEN STRONGER.

A good example is in batman, a female named Oracle has her back broken and is paralyzed and to spend her life in a wheel chair.

Whereas when batman's back break he's fine! he'll bounce back.

Femme Fatale

Usually the villain, they're the kind of female that knows she's hot and uses it to tempt and confuse the males.

This style of character does give a fairly bad reputation to women, putting out the message that woman are manipulative

Manic pixie dream girl

These kind of females go hand in hand with the brooding male protagonist  these females have only one goal. To make that male OPEN THERE HEART and be happy with themselves and there life. Aww.

The character tend to come with the traits of 'bubbly' 'quirky' oh and let's not forget attractive!

But why is this character type usually a bad type?

Well this sort of females only goal is to make another character (usually male) open up. They are only there to support the male, they tend to have little development themselves or talk about their problems.

An example in a Video game would be Catherine from the game Catherine. A blonde pretty girl who is only there to be peppy and happy and give the male protagonist a good time. (Also the sex appeal of the game)

Image of Catherine here:

Straw feminist

This kind of character is used to very poorly portray what feminism is. They are over the top and the kind of man-hating female character.

A group of straw feminists are often used as rivals or villains.

I'll use a power puff girl episode as an example.

In the beginning of the episode it was explained how gender-neutral and equal there world was.

Then there was a female villain whose outfit was covered in the female symbol sign.

She has some legitimate complaints such as the lack of super heroines. But then manipulated the 3 power puff's into thinking men didn't do any work and just simply used woman.

The 3 power puff's ended up yelling at men and hating them.

Ironically the power puff girls were already quite a good symbol of a strong independent and well-rounded female characters.

It's as though writers think feminism mean a woman think's women have MORE rights than men. Giving a bad reputation of what it actually means. Feminism = EQUAL rights.

Thankfully this has not been abused very much in video games.

The Bechdel test

What is the Bechdel test?
Well it's something I learnt about this week so I'm going to go on about it!


It's a test with 3 rules in it, originally made for films to simply test the presence of woman in the film.

It does NOT test for stereotypes, or the quality of the film.

The 3 rules are:

* There has to be at least 2 women in the film.
* The women must interact
* They must talk about something besides a man, any man.

Now this is just for film, people have suggested it should be changed for games such as:

* Does the game have a playable female character?
* Who isn't fetishized to attract sales
* And isn't meant to be rescued at any point


Those 3 possible rules and explanations can be found here

http://gnovisjournal.org/2012/10/17/do-video-games-need-their-own-bechdel-test/


The rescuing rule had quite a good point for games that the main goal is to save a female and the world.
'' If the threat is that enormous, it’s more likely women and men will join forces to fight it. ''
Then the person went on to praise RGP's such as final fantasy as RPG's usually have a more even number of playable males and females.


Games have yet to be studied against the original Bechdel test but there only appear to be a few games that are mentioned for passing proudly such as Mass effect and Portal.


Although if games need this sort of test, that in itself proves there is something wrong with the amount of female characters in games and there roles.

Going 3D

So I decided to do ahead and do my lovely lemurs and hyena.

Originally i was going to try and do a higher poly 7 - 9K models

But then Bi foun out how low poly Back water gospel was so i decided to follow that route. Although Shove my own style in the whole thick line art way to texture.

So these guy's are about 1000 - 1500 polys.

And EXPRESSIONS Also thanks to backwater gospel with there alpha layered mouths. I liked this idea so much i did it for the eyes and brows as well as the mouth. To me it's the easiest (and funnest) way to go about cartoon expressions.

Unlike the lemur above This one here has a modeled mouth, although still a 'switch off, switch on' styled animation.

Hyena girl follows a more traditional kind, her mouth and ears are moves via joints. It is only her eyes with the off and on switches.

And now on 14th December i upload my first walk cycle!

Available on Youtube here:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPMf4gW553w

Here's some work!

 Alright! Here we go, the past 2 weeks work. Mostly fumbling about trying to design some non-sexualized female characters that are also pretty cool.

Here we have a gender bent hell boy. And idea to gender bend a lot of masculine characters but that idea was soon dropped as i like making my own original concept.

Some mother nature kinda...blob thing. Mothers seem to be a class of characters, usually not a sexy role. (though there are characters like Moxxie in borderlands) 

Younger females also being in the not-sex-appealed role. Although a cheaper easy way out make an innocent design.

Monsters are also an easier alliterative. Personally I'd like to see more monster females that don't have the curves of breasts and have actual monster anatomy and features.

Here's a stylized action girl, Not exactly armored up, but not in a bikini shirt and hot pants.

And then I made some animals because i LOVE animals, they vary so much in anatomy, markings, shapes, behaviour. So a tall Giraffe girl here, and below a Hyena and two monkeys, a red-ruffed lemur and Coquerel Sifaka.

As both Hyena's and Lemurs tend to have the more dominant females than males. 

So there's some experimentation work!

Still on the road of making not-totally-hot chicks! And giving them Attitude.

Good Old Female Counterpart

So I've decided to look into female characters in the general media as a starting point.

And one of the ways to insert a female in your game/movie/TV show is to make that female-to-your-male character. There are many of the female counterpart’s examples below of the kind of games I use to play. 

So as you can see the women do....differ some compared to the males even if there animals. Male characters seem to be able to vary more in anatomy, size, shape, you know the things that make good silhouettes for a design. Female characters may have to rely on their hair shape or what they wear to make that silhouette, as when it comes to body type curvy is the way to go!

Obviously there's a reason for it. 

It sells.

A 'sexy' woman will gain the attention of a teenage boy (or girl) or even the older audience as i think it's safe to say majority of the population are interested in sex, and those kind of women deliver it to a game.

It just seems a little unfair that the male characters aren't instantly designed to be the 'hot one' A male character tend to be made attractive to women by the way they act. Or if they're given a six pack and a square jaw. Usually this trait also comes with other attributes like strength, bravery, the ability to kick ass.

Whereas a hot woman is usually just a hot women. As the damsels in distress and the brave fighter woman generally have that same body type and appearance. The brave girl just might wear hot pants and a bra-type-thing instead of a skirt.

There's also the few cases of literally just flipping the gender of your male character. 

Design wise the female tend to be a lot of attractive to the other cast members and maybe the audience. Despite their male counterpart maybe being considered unattractive.

This is quite a good way to make a female character instantly like able, as the audience already knows that character and there history. 

And it's sometimes done well like the Futurama screenshot above, those 3 in the background don't fit that stereotypical standard and stay roughly close to their male counterparts overall appearance and scale on the attractiveness ladder.

SO. Let's try and make some female that are a little more equal on the design front. Stepping away from that hour-glass figure styled character. 

Or is I do make a woman of that shape...Not to make it the main focus. Hell maybe even cover her up and not display the cleavage!

I have arrived...

...To do masters.

About characters.

CARTOON characters.

2D or 3D. Well designing in 2D and gesture drawing. But the actual 'finished' looking work in 3D.

With all them normal maps and clean meshes and all that other hot stuff.

As for character themes and such, still not quite sure. Currently i love messing up the typical gender roles. Making butch woman and effeminate fellas.

That and androgyny in general. We need more tough masculine girls who don't fight in bikini's! Or the kind of men who stay out of combat and care about their appearance a bit too much.

So let’s see how that totally gets de-railed and turned into some other theme.

Good day to you.