Getting rid of the token female – part 3 -But what can an artist do?

So, as discussed in part 1 and ranted in part 2, token females are not a good thing. So what’s an artist to do? We don’t decide on stories, or hire the cast. But we decide what people look like! If you get a job designing characters, it’s up to you to make sure that they all have a personality! And if the lone female of the gang looks like more than just a generic hot chick, she’s a lot less token. Really. The problem with token characters is more than just how there is just one of them, it’s also that they are there as a generic archetype.

Let’s take the smurfette as an example, what does she do? She gets in trouble and is saved, she waters flowers and tags along with the other smurfs. She doesn’t even get to be vain! They already have another smurf for that job. They also have one to be strong, and one who’s handy and one who’s a dork, and one for every single job or personality aspect. The smurfette only gets to be female. We, as artists, get to draw females who are strong, or vain, or handy, dorks, tough, old, young, spindly, fat.

Too often in mass media, especially games, we see guys old or young, wise or frivolous, slender or muscular, or fat. Girls, well usually they are hot, thin, preferably with big boobs. Hot girls are sometimes evil but ugly one always are. The plain ones are the ones who get squished by cars in open world games or turned into zombies.

But there are also good examples to follow. Belleville triplets come to mind. Given that a bunch of old ladies save the day! And what delightful design on these characters too. Strangers in paradise the comic by Terry Moore.  With the slender but wary Katchoo and the slightly chubby but usually cheerfuland sometimes sexy Francine. And an awesome support cast. Geeze, even Dora the explorer is better than most!

So, what’s an artist to do? Draw females, and make them all fun, and interesting and different! 

Lastly, 3 related articles:

Center for media literacy What makes a good female character. A short but comprehensive list of criteria.

Overthinking it  Why Strong Female Characters Are Bad for Women, using the live action Transformers movie. You know that they can’t really be nice to it.

Lorem Ipsum  More on female characters in fiction or is your story anti-women.

Le Moulin à Images – part 2

This is a small update to post a dev diary/making of of the Ubisoft collaboration to the Moulin à Images. I’m not in there, because having worked on the storyboards, I was long gone and assigned on a new project by the time this vid was filmed. This video is in french.

If you don’t get paid, it’s not a job.

It can be a project, it can be a collaboration, it can be something you do for fun, or to help a friend, but it’s not a job. When you are a freelancer, it can be ok to work for free in some circumstances but you should never mistake that volunteer work for a job. Yes, even if someone promised you royalties or a “bonus” or revenue share. Unless the people involved have a proven track record of successful projects, you won’t see a dime.
/rant

A bit of news & another change of direction

Some of you might remember that when I started this blog, I was a freelancer in the field of videogame art. I was trying to build a regular client base but before I reached a point where my client list was really full, I got offered a job at Ubisoft’s Quebec city studio. Since I am contractually prevented from pursuing freelance work in the videogame industry, I kept busy with moving, painting and discovering my new city and workplace.

I took a while but I have decided on a new artistic goal. I want to build a portfolio of black and white illustration to try and get freelance work in the rpg publishing industry, starting with the spot illustrations found inside books. So while I still have plenty of stuff to say about the videogame industry (it’s my dayjob after all!) I’ll also keep you posted on my progress finding work in the rpg field.

My first goal for my portfolio is to make:

• 2 vampire pieces, White Wolf style
• 2 asian medieval pieces, Exalted style
• 2 D&D type fantasy pieces.

Preferably with lots of action going on, and maybe a few mood pieces for variety.

I think I also figured out how to allow you to suscribe to my RSS feed! Let’s try this.
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Whoever said that pixel art is dead?

Recently, a former client contacted me for a pixel art job. Unfortunately, I am under a non-compete clause so I can’t take videogame gigs outside of my day-job. Then I switched project at work, going to help on a yet unannonced DS title and what do I do? Pixel art animation! Yep. Pixel art is alive and well, it can be seen on DS titles, on mobile, on flash games and on Iphone. Many of these platforms can support 3d or at least full colors and sometimes alpha channels but pixel art is often the most efficient way to take advantage of small screen real estate and super small pixel art usually looks better than super low-res 3d. It’s also more precise and very useful for tiny huds.

And you know what, not too many people can do good pixel art, schools churn out 3d people, not pixel artists. I think I can count competant pixel artists at my day-job on the fingers of one hand.  And while there certainly is less glamour in doing pixel art for the DS than there is doing high res stuff for next gen, it’s still good videogame work. I personally, I like it better than 3d…