Saturday, September 14, 2013

Women's Outfits: Maximum mobility or Sex sells?


So when designing a female character the clothing choice is important, among other issues but I'm sticking to outfit designs for now. So with a lot of female leads, action and mobility are a must so what kind of outfits give maximum movement without being designed for pure sexual aspects.

 
 
 
So with these two their outfits do give maximum mobility but they still seem a bit sexualized since little is showing. But on the other hand these are outfits women wear in real life. So it raises the question of whether these outfits are appropriate even if a male most likely designed it.

 These two outfits are skin tight and supposedly meant for movement which would explain gymnastic outfits, but on the other hand they seem overly sexual because they are skin tight.


 These last few ones are movement based but use longer pants versus Tifa's and Lora's short shorts. They seem less sexualized, though still attractive in their own rights. So movement does not require very little clothing. However, in my case the female is an anthropomorphic feline. So having her wear nothing like a normal cat would equal max movement but would be said to be overly sexualized. However adding clothing seems like an attempt to humanize her. While she is intelligent and cunning, she is still a "monster" and "beast."
 Now the issue with using anthropomorphic characters that are females is that even though the males may be left unclothed, the females are more often than not dressed to some extent, usually a dress.
For example in the famous Looney Tunes, who are big on using anthro characters, we see Bugs is nude as usual, but Lola, a female bunny, is dressed in clothing. So even though it is ok for the males to go naked, it isn't for females to. I suppose because even anthro characters are sexualized just as any female character is. It has even become a popular trope to humanize the females over the males: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumanoidFemaleAnimal
So how to design a proper female beast without it becoming a sexualized character, something she is supposed to be the opposite of?





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