THE MUSCLE BABY THREAD

[Helm]

Original by Hyrule Swordsman, edit by ilkke. From this thread.

[AlexHW]

as i see it, the nakedness is basically the base for customizing your wardrobe, or lack of one.
its pretty popular in role-playing-esque type games where you're trying to exude personality in your character.
as for the chibi side of it, I think that theres a few reasons for it. the bigger head allows for more detail to be shown in the expressions, which I think is helpful for showing emotion.
also, it allows for more stylistic choices to be made with the facial features, which otherwise may not be possible, and thus you can change the feel to be more cute with exagerated eyes etc. you don't have to go that route though, but it does seem to be the popular choice. maybe it plays subconsciously with the fact that the proportions of the head make it resemble closer to a baby, thus people are inclined to believe its cute.
as for why they have muscles? probably because the ones with muscles are made by mostly guys. I would think a male would feel more manly putting muscles on them than to make them look girly cute.. though it could also be because the intention of the sprite is for a game where there is combat and fighting..
thats my take on it anyways..

the style itself probably originated from attempts to draw children, and then somehow it becoming a trend.

[Darien]

reminds me of the babyheads from John Lethem's Gun, with Occasional Music

[Sabata]

About being chibi... its usually made in that style because of what Alex said but he missed one important piece, normally this is used on games where you customize (add clothes to base) so when animations are involved each piece of cloth need a frame too, so its easier to do smaller chibi look like doll (Yes Helm they are called dolls too...) than making a big realistic base, since it would use more work to animate and that is = to more frames for clothes....

Sooo resuming people who do them usually are lazy guys 
Jk its just that players accept chibi so well, so why bother making realistic???

[Lackey]

I'm sure we understand the idea of needing a naked template character for layering items on and we understand the chibi thing, the reasons to draw a bigger than natural head is straightforward enough, but what's confusing is why the detailed musculature on a character which already demands to be symbolic; we're not literally suggesting a world of people with huge heads (unless the game is Hydrocephalic World: Online) so why be so literal rendering the body?

Plus drawing muscles shows everyone how much you own at drawing.

I think that's probably the gist of it.  Sometimes we pixel artists just don't know when to stop

I agree with Helm about the 4th one there, Atnas, it's quite nice.

My attempt, for this thread:

But he's neither muscly nor babyish enough I think.

I wonder how many pixel artists have an "rpg doll" as their first real attempt at pixel art?  I think that was the case for me.

[Helm]

Here's mine also.



I don't see why people get freaked out by these things, I think they're awesome.

[Jad]

But it is!

Anyways, I also think it's a normal case of overdetailing - you draw a body and then you wanna fill it with something. If it's a man, you can always go for muscles and then musclebabiness happens.

And it looks awful @ __@;;

And awesome but in a very very twisted way.

[Sabata]

I think that's probably the gist of it.  Sometimes we pixel artists just don't know when to stop

Exactly! Usually when I do a template/doll/baby whatever we call it I just cant stop on that simple look... my hand just move and I try making muscles... 

Umm RPG doll was not ym very first pixel art, but it was around there...I still try to do those and still not where I want to reach...

here are some of mine..all iso and many unfinished by simple fact of not being how I would like it....








I am actually freaked out myself 

[AlexHW]

the bigger head allows for more detail, but
part of the reason could be that most people might find it difficult to correctly represent the facial details at a smaller more realistic scale, so they scale up without realizing what they're doing..
so it may not be a, oh i should make a chibi character so i can fit more details, but rather.. oh i can't make these details fit, so ill make it bigger..
it would be a good exercise for some to intentionally draw a realistic proportion sprites in a small scale in order to experiment on how to sacrifice details in order to be more realistic yet still be believable
i dunno.

[HughSpectrum]

I believe it has to do with what a lot of free sprite based MMOs do, Maple Story being the most popular, and are trying to be what is most appealing for their audience or what they like the most.

Personally, I'm more interested in the clothes and armor they make for these things.  I'm sure this forum could give interesting critique for those than yet ANOTHER musclebaby.