Things from blogs I found useful

A series of quotes and imagery I've found that have helped when thinking about gender, sexuality and sexiam in general.

All reminding me that it's not just me bothered about these issues! A whole world out there of people who want some form of change.

Some quotes i found that i liked when it came to marketing game towards women.

http://jezebel.com/5381665/why-is-marketing-to-female-gamers-considered-challenging

''Instead of paying attention to why women play certain games or speaking to women who identify as gamers, it appears that game companies prefer to work with stereotypes. ''

''Advertising through the same old outlets will get you the same old results.''

Different kinds of attractions

I liked this as when 2 characters are together they are usually romantic or sexual if they are male and female. I feel sensual attractions, 'squishes' and atheistic attraction are those that aren't explored as much.

I'd probably class my 2 main character 'Tetra' and 'Weathercoats' in the Squishes catagory. close and friendly, not afraid of physical contact but platonic.

Original post here: http://secondlina.tumblr.com/post/21955456091/a-comic-about-the-different-types-of-attraction

This one i mostly found amusing. Although i go like the message that not all women have curves. Does'nt stop them from being a 'real' woman!

This is just a quote that i found actually, quite true!

“Femininity is depicted as weakness, the sapping of strength, yet masculinity is so fragile that apparently even the slightest brush with the feminine destroys it.”

--Gwen Sharp

This is something I've found that sum's up words used for women fairly well. You rarely hear about the middle ground between the two extremes.

Source: http://picgusta.com/pic/BMKeW/life-as-a-woman-according-to-society.html

A nice sum up of what gender.

Source: http://snoogan2dope.deviantart.com/art/Gender-is-Gender-is-not-174870726

Two very different takes on a body campaign....

Something wrong with one of them!

This is also a pretty cool video talking about how women's poultry in all media is really effecting how people grow up and perceive woman and men.

http://vimeo.com/28066212 

some quotes from the video:

''10 hours and 45 minutes of media consumption a day'

For the average teenager.

''girls get he message very early on that the most important thing is the way you look...''

''...And boys get the message that this is what's important about girls''

''there is no appreciation for women intellectual''

''The fact that media are so limitings, and so derogatory to the most powerful women in the country then what does it say about medias ability to take any woman seriously''

'The notion that these media companies are just 'giving us what the public want' No. They've giving us media companies want giving us what the advertisers want and packaging it in such a way to make it seem like it's our fault and it's not''

''We're socializing boys to believe that being a man means being powerful and in control. Being smarter than women being beter than women, our needs get met first in a relationship with women. That's not genetically predestined it's learnt behavior.''

''media can awaken people and change minds. It depends on who's piloting the plane''

And one day hopefully people will not focus on a persons appearance!

More 3D time

Modeled Tetra.

 I quite like her broad shoulders. They add her her masculinity.

Came out at about 8,500 Tris.

Still nee to do her inner ear. Although I'd say her texture is done. I just need to find out some real good rendering techniques. I already know how to use render layers so maybe play about with that.

Also need to give her a set of blend shapes for her head.

And then rig her.

Her weird ape feet, they seemed cluttered with 5 toes.

Zbrush in her clothes creases and marking out her markings on her face, making texturing much easier!

Using the green channel in photoshop i was able to instantly add detail to the diffuse map.

And some head shots. As i adore drawing expressions.

(left her ponytail out as it takes up a lot of room. not sure if i should keep it removed)

Chris' model came out at about 8,600 tris.

Never sure about what the 'right' amount of tris. for xbox and larger consoles there polycount is 10K - 20K for main characters but for other devices. not sure.

He also needs to be rigged and blend shaped.

The main cast for new project.

Okay so I've started my next project.

Started being more aware of stereotypes for both genders.

So hopefully with any 'unpopular' traits for characters in games i can still create some likable character!

If i were to give these characters an environment/ story i would say they go to school where they are judged for not following the 'norm' of there gender.

Sort of the underdogs but it's not like they get physically beaten and bruised, all have divorced or dead parents. I'd like to make it seem more believable then the other the top hero stories.

The main. Tetra.

Gender: Female

Tetra is an energetic girl she also has a fairly big mouth on her.

She prefers to be thought of as 'one of the boys' and just hates displaying any physical feminine features.

Although she is thoughtful, emotional, and kind. Somehow these good traits seem to be linked more to feminine than masculine.

Although she isn't afraid to get dirty and rough house with the other boys, and make really dumb faces.

Although due to her behavior in school she is often called 'Dyke' or 'Gay'.

Most girls don't seem to get along with her.

Boys tend to be okay with her, although they leave her out of any of there sports games of general competitions as they wouldn't want to be beaten by a girl.

The sidekick. Weathercoats

Gender: Male

In contrast with Tetra masculine features, Weathercoats is quite feminine. 

He cares more about how clean his clothes are clean, his hair is kept neat. And he would most likely run away from conflict.

Him and Tetra understand each other and accept each others breach of the 'rules' for there own gender.

In school he is called 'Gay' 'Faggot' as people would assume it from his appearance. 

So majority of his friends are female, although they to assume him to be homosexual. 

The negative attitude from others has caused him to be terribly skittish and nervous to act.

The 'Manly' one. Chris.

Gender: Male

He is closer to the more 'regular' personality for a guy. More masculine.

He is pretty protective over his sister, although his bark is worse than his bite, he has yet to brawl with someone. 

He's fairly closed off emotionally, he only ever confides in his sister Bex reminding her to not tell anyone about the things he tell her, majority of his confiding in bex is for some sort of support of his sexuality, as he is homosexual but feels it would threaten his masculinity if he was 'out' and be treated differently, although out side of school when around people he trusts he is okay to come out to them. 

He is lazy most of his time is spent sat, possibly drinking and smoking with people. Or alone.

He gets along perfectly fine with other boys, and finds is easy to talk to girls, generally sociable though he never gets to 'deep' with other people.

The 'Girly' one. Bex

Gender: Female

The oldest of the 4 'kids' being 18 and in her last year of sixth form.

She is very shy when talking to people in general, she would rather hide behind her laptop which she carries around with her as though it's her child. 

On the internet she is very good at speaking to others, even strangers.

Drinking also helps her speak to others as well. This is her main way for meeting guys. She will often bring guy's home on her late nights out and sleep with them.

This isn't because she has a problem with self esteem or her sexuality. She enjoys it, it's how she wants to live her young life.

Although she has gotten the labels of 'Slut' and people only really know her for that.

Girls don't particular get along with her as she is not good at talking to people to begin with. 

Guys in school try to chat her up and feel entitled to sleep with her because of the rumors from outside school.

The 'Brawler'

Gender: Female

She's been through the name calling and assumptions about her due to her appearance.

She has learnt to love herself and ignore any stigma she may get.

She's basically the 'kids' go to person for whenever they feel stressed or bullied and feel they can't talk to there parents about it, although she usually has an uncaring attitude to the kids due to the thick shell she has had to build to shield from everyone else but she does feel for the kids and there problems.

And also if they need a strong person she is willing to smash!

Also i tried doing them as humans, I prefer them as animals.

A reference for what there skin tones are though.

In one of my uni lectures there was a talk by Candy Guard, an animator. Who animate very simplistic cartoons. She said she feels the simpler the character is the more universal it is. as her character were just outlines, they didn't require colour, so were relate-able to any race.

I found it difficult to put a skin colour on Moo Chris and Bex.

I also have friends who think of Tetra and moo as white girls.

So i feel it's more universal if they aren't human.

Sketches and start of another project.

So while doing Moo i was trying to come up with a reasonably armored female after looking at:

http://womenfighters.tumblr.com/

Made the idea of a moth lady who's armor is made out of sea shells.

Although i wasn't very fond of any of these ideas.

So I went back to doing happy fun time cartoons. These ones designed to be aimed at children.

I personally love sea slugs for their markings, there vibrant colours, and if you can get over the association of them being linked to land slugs they're pretty cute!

Not sure if i would come back to the little slugs but...

I started adding to the characters that would be in the same world as the purple large handed Moo.

And well.

I just got really into this little project.

After a lot of time looking into female gender stereotypes and talking to friends casually about it.

I'm not sure if it was the fact that most of them were male so noticed more faults with there own gender in media. But they also brought up that males are also very poorly portrayed in games.

They to have that 'default' body type, also instead of scantily clad, it's the body builder look. (Although males still have a larger variety if you were to look at a full cast in a game).

You won't find many other body shapes being the lead of a game in western cultures.

We have the 4 'main' kids. I'd say they're about age 15-16.

The lead being the white lemur in the upper left. Tetra.

upper right would be her meek nervous sidekick to be dragged along. Weathercoats.

The bottom 2 i'm not sure on there role quite yet.

Bottom left. Chris. 

Bottom right. Bex. Shy quiet but smart with computers, possibly some kind of research support? 

Moo and gender stereotype questionair

This is Moo

She is a true beauty, and basically a strong melee female character.

With her soulless dead eyes.

Throwing her weight around and smacking people with her big meaty hands in her specialty.

All the poly's go into her face to enable smoother blend shapes and facial animation.

And blend shapes for her eyes, mouth, nose, brows and bottom row of teeth.

There's about 3 times the amount of blend shapes then below.

She still lacks texture 

For her I am going to do a chunky normal map for her and use the channels from that for the texture. 

or the basic guidelines for the texture.

Psychology students questionnaire

A 3rd year student in psychology was looking for games design stunts who were interested in taking a questionnaire about gender stereotypes within games.

So I was obviously up for it considering my whole MA subject. It wasn't a long meeting I had with her in the library but it did open my eyes to both male and females.

She had a 2 mood-board's one of males, and the other of females of characters from different genres.

She simply asked to note anything down and say what we thought of what we saw.

And both side, to me, were pretty bad. Females may have it worse, as being noted as the more 'sexual' gender does have some pretty harsh side effects in reality.

But males are also lumped into some bland repetitive stereotypes combining:

Physical strength, aggression, lack of emotions, and the same body build of huge muscles.

So in spirit of doing more male characters. And involving males as well as females:

Had a go at doing a male lemur, he's unfinished as I've started on another project (also going to involve male characters!)

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