AuthorTopic: GR#156 - Gothic Dieselpunk - Gameart  (Read 54578 times)

Offline tim

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Re: Sir Gregory & Creya

Reply #30 on: September 28, 2013, 03:00:00 pm
I think it fits in perfectly with a steampunk/gothic feel

Then I think you have a clear lack of artistic culture.
This is steampunk / Jules Vernes / art déco / gothic :
































Not this :



Now you might understand better.
This piece of art is well made, but it's both a deep misunderstanding of steampunk culture and an easy cliché representation of woman. If it was announced as kawaii steampunk cosplayers, ok, why not ! It's more cyberpunk than steampunk actually.

But it's really not a "dark, oppressive universe" and definitly not a "steampunk style with gothic elements" and not at all a "special kind of steampunk (but more or less inspired by Jules Verne)". I'm sorry, but I really have to protect this culture which I adore since I grew with it.
« Last Edit: September 28, 2013, 03:09:42 pm by tim »
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Offline Larwick

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Re: Sir Gregory & Creya

Reply #31 on: September 28, 2013, 05:34:22 pm
tim I believe you're thinking too restrained with the semantics here. Just because an artist says something is inspired by or is meant to resemble steampunk/gothic style doesn't mean it has to follow your idealized version of what that is. Let him make whatever he wants to make, the description is secondary. You don't have to 'protect' anything because nothing is being attacked.

To get on topic I feel like Sir Gregory's chin is pressed too far into his neck at the bottom, it looks quite awkward as a result. His pose gives me the impression he should be more relaxed than that.

Offline Pix3M

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Re: Sir Gregory & Creya

Reply #32 on: September 28, 2013, 05:41:44 pm
Don't tell me there are no other way to design female characters than sexy / kawaii.

We're not making art for the sake of art : we are an industry. We have some kind of responsibility in this world. And if we make what our brain want, without prior thoughts, without challenging ourselves, we are creating products with sexualized characters everywhere, because we prefer to draw naked, beautiful, standard people than less sexy ones. But what if instead of making characters sexy, we make characters interesting and original ? As I said, I think the female character design displayed here is not original, not interesting, and just plain wrong especially given the steampunk universe & the character background depicted.

This might be one of those "it's not the worst" arguments but I pay attention to enough porn artists out there who sometimes do truly sexist stuff. Sure, she's half-clothed and her clothes put visual weight to her assets, but I've seen plenty of drawings that are no more than shots of *certain* body parts and there is quite a bit of smut out there which its artists do not really try to convey a character's personality.

There are times I've been rolling my eyes at overt sexualization but I really don't think we should limit ourselves away from doing really saucy stuff. I've poked around with a bit of sociology and I know how sexualization can do bad things, but limiting people's ability to express is just as bad as societal pressures will do similar things to begin with. Lust is a form of insanity and you know what they say... insanity can drive artistic creativity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKeRBLYWGOs  :crazy:

From the looks of this thread, Cyangmou has already put effort into creating an actual character and not just an object to ogle. The issue is that we don't have all the info there is to know, so the only thing we have is a picture which by it nature will only get you to look at things at the surface. If this needs to be worked out more, I heard there's a tip to consider how different a character be if he/she is the opposite gender.

And as for being an industry, I believe you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot. When it comes to character design, sometimes homely is not appropriate. I think it can be fine for background characters (because they are background characters you're not supposed to pay much attention to). Then, while this trick IMO is pretty cheap, sex appeal can be used as a 'reward' which can be useful for game design purposes. As horrible as it is, like food companies add MSG to their foods, sometimes they have to rely on cheap tricks to add more appeal to their works.

Offline Ymedron

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Re: Sir Gregory & Creya

Reply #33 on: September 28, 2013, 08:32:31 pm
I must admit I'm also pretty peeved that the characters have this traditional setup (female is posing for the viewer, the male is standing adventurously) but I also have to admit cyang is within his rights to make whatever kind of pictures he likes.

HOWEVER... We are also within our rights to point it out that this is a constant theme in the pop. culture->become invisible, and stop being characters but rather stereotypes/props in the environment.

I'd kinda liken it to the antiquated stereotype asian - slit eyes, buckteeth, upturned nose, yellowish skin... Any of these traits individually do not become offensive or stereotypical, but when most of them are combined together it creates a offensive stereotype.
Just like, I guess, a sexualized pink-wearing cameraposing female whose outfit clashes with their counterpart (functional pirate-adventurer vs a saloon girl)... hmnyeah.

Of course all of these things can be explained ("she IS a saloon girl! She likes showing off her body! She doesn't have anything else to wear! *cough bioshock infinite cough*") so I guess the main thing is that her story must fully support her - don't tell us about a tough fighter and show us a skimpy bimbo. You know.

With all this going back and forth... hrm.
Bottomline: If she must be that way to fit the story you have, fine. But make sure it's not the story that's made to fit her.
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Offline Helm

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Re: Sir Gregory & Creya

Reply #34 on: September 29, 2013, 04:03:52 am
dunno if this has a chance with the anime you want to go for, but it's worth a show



BTW I have to echo Ymedron's observation about the sexual thing here, but it's your picture.


edit: Whoa whoa, reading up a bit, what's this, Wolfenoctis, "I'm so sick of the femo-fascist thought police barging in everywhere and belowing their pompous and pretentious opinion as some kind of moral absolute."

Stop this. This is insulting and overblown a response.

Actually, you know what? Unless Cyangmu wants to talk about the design agency around his stuff, let's avoid furthering this argument. If you want, take it to the general boards. If Cyangmu does want to talk on the subject, then by all means, but if I see more mentions of 'femo-fascists', there'll be strikes and talking tos. Sexism is the same as racism, as far as Pixelation is concerned, so outright racist slurs and such are not accepted, so no sexist slurs either (and that's what 'femo-fascism', is, by the way). If you want to vent about the feminists oppressing you, go to any other place on the internet, almost.
« Last Edit: September 29, 2013, 04:10:20 am by Helm »

Offline Cyangmou

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Re: Sir Gregory & Creya

Reply #35 on: September 29, 2013, 09:04:42 am
I wasn't here the last 24h - so I will make it as short as possible.

There are 11 new replies, the only ones which are actually is a bit helpful for me are:
Helm's edit for the face for direct comparison and
Larwick's sentence lets me rethink what to do with the neck.

I don't want any discussions about feminism in this thread, it's not the matter of subject. If you like to discuss about femininism I remember a thread here in the general boards and they also had something going on at Pixeljoint's chatterbox. If I want to add something to the feminism discussion anywhere, I will write an answer.

For this artwork here I am actually acting like an artist - I am trying to create something unique and new and experimenting a lot.
It's nice that there is already a lot of art-deco and steampunk stuff around, but it don't matches anywhere with my vision of the world I want to create and I won't apply a lot of the stuff you'd understand as Steampunk or Gothic - I lack currently a word for the style I have so far, so I called it simple steampunk because my idea started with reading literature of this epoque and the description of the time seams fitting. those books I read had descriptions, some images, but no fixed designs or styles - that's all - I am starting at the same point where the first designs of other artists started which style is now "established" for that term.

I am familiar with the stuff Kriss and Tim showed off - and I am also working in the industry and would know how they'd handle "steampunk" there in a lot of cases - but I don't want to make the tenth variation of already existing concepts and applying those to my artwork - it won't fit for what I have in mind - no need for showing them aside for detail references.

here let's start where I ended with my last post:

Regarding to the pink color:
I tried earlier to create horryfying creatures of darkness with bright tones (http://cyangmou.deviantart.com/art/Merry-Christmas-Mr-Beast-382162691)
Creyas pink color won't hurt the impression of the dark world, or would you all say the zombie don't works just because it's not nighttime in the picture? Nighttime is for sure what you'd usually expect for something like that.
Creya is a girl - pink is appropriate for a girl - pink is also appropriate for a friendly person - in the world the sprite will also have this pink tones and the color on top will do a good job for making her stick out of the environment.
There are enough boring gray and brown games - dark and oppressive isn't meant exclusively for the color scheme.

Additional Charakter Information:
I don't really like to give out more information than actually needed, but I think I don't get around to add a few things and a few questions which might make my choices more understandable.

First of all I went with the classical male/female scheme to imply that it's the mentioned timeframe. It's a really conservative 1900 world (woman don't have the right to vote and so on) and I hoped that it's clear that Gregory was kind of a soldier while Creya is a special woman - removing that established male/female view would destroy my whole efforts of the questions which are crucial to the characters relationship. 

Gregory is also really stylized in terms of sexual representation - of course he has a lot of obvious handicaps which happened due to a past event. People will stare at him, children also are frightened by his appeareance.
You all can easily understand that it's not easy for him to overcome the staring and overhear the talking of the common people, since he was always admired for being a soldier and now he got destroyed, but survived - heavily crippled. But he is still a human - a human who needs more love, warmth and help than ever.
For his services to the land he achieved knighthood and wealth, but is this a compensation for his destroyed body?
What happened to him and why did it came to his serious injuries?
Does he want to live on?
Could he just proceed with his life?
Would suicide bring him salvation? Could he do it if there is somebody who would rely on him and miss him?

If there are soldiers, war is omnipresent. During war a lot of women is prostitute themselves or working in dancing clubs - maybe both, especially women who are widows and don't have a man who is usually going to work. They also won't find new man since they are all fighting in wars.
Maybe that's a reason for Creya's outfit, or maybe she just wants to lead a big part of attention to her if she is hanging around with Gregory.
She obviously is pretty, she also would be really pretty with more casual clothes - why does she wear the ones she wears?
Is she just playing with Gregory, is she interested in his wealth or is she a real friend? Is she a whore, a noble lady or somebody completely different?
« Last Edit: September 29, 2013, 09:55:08 am by Cyangmou »
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Offline PypeBros

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Re: Sir Gregory & Creya

Reply #36 on: September 29, 2013, 08:05:19 pm

Then I think you have a clear lack of artistic culture.
This is steampunk / Jules Vernes / art déco / gothic :



This is art-nouveau rather than art déco, afaik.

Offline ptoing

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Re: Sir Gregory & Creya

Reply #37 on: September 29, 2013, 08:23:21 pm
Yeah, Art Deco is a lot less decorative than Art Nouveau, funny enough. It is a lot more streamlined and geometric. Less flowery and flowing.
There are no ugly colours, only ugly combinations of colours.

Offline Jeremy

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Re: Sir Gregory & Creya

Reply #38 on: September 29, 2013, 11:23:56 pm
Creya reads as cyberpunk rather than steampunk to me. Hot pink and grimy metal (and being able to see her legs :V ) make me think of a neon dystopic future. It's a bit of a copout to claim
Quote
pink is appropriate for a girl
AND
Quote
First of all I went with the classical male/female scheme to imply that it's the mentioned timeframe. It's a really conservative 1900 world (woman don't have the right to vote and so on)
given that pink was a colour for boys - "In the United States, there was no established rule in the 19th century. A 1927 survey of ten department stores reported that pink was preferred for boys in six of them and for girls in four.[30] The foremost student of the role of color in children's fashion, Jo Paoletti, found that "By the 1950s, pink was strongly associated with femininity" but to an extent that was "neither rigid nor universal" as it later became."

The clothes she's wearing don't match the period at all - miniskirt and thigh-high socks?
It's not as if (wealthy) Victorians dressed boringly either way; they loved bright colours and fuckoff hats (and showing a bunch of cleavage):

Offline Decroded

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Re: Sir Gregory & Creya

Reply #39 on: September 30, 2013, 01:27:15 am

 :o

Not everyone would follow the trends of high society anyway.
Its highly likely some of the less privileged would rebel against the ideals of what a lady should be.
Cyan's character looks like she's more attracted to trouble-makers and action than tea parties and fancy hats.
Just can't imagine her in a long dress.