Jaded Youth

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the big, red nose is associated with alcoholism/being drunk (heavy alcohol usage can lead to severe rosacea and swelling of the nose), because drunkards in ye olde times were seen as fun for the whole family. the overlined lips create an exaggerated smile). curly or big hair was seen as whimsical and fun, as was a lack of hair (if you look up ‘vintage clowns’, you’ll see their hair is puffed out to the sides or upwards. nowadays, people probably wear afros because they’re cheap, and don’t involve lots of styling. 

WHY? WHO THE FUCK KNOWS. 

So I was on fuck-no-greg-land or eschergirls, probs fngl. I don’t know and I’m not going to try and look b/c fngl has endless scroll and fuck that shit up the ass. I saw this picture.

I immediately started weeping for my precious Emma. Either she is dead or her tertiary mutation is that her body is made of fucking putty or something. 

So I decided to redraw this. Because clearly I hate myself.

So the first thing I did was trace them to see wtf was even happening here.

 at this point I remember going “oh god, this is worse than I thought,”

Jeans shoulders are ridiculous and her arms are scary long. for better stranglage her front arm should be up higher but we’re aiming for some boob so I’ll let that slide. My big question is where is her other leg. it’s gone. where?

I started to sob silently.

then i did emma

I don’t even know what the fuck is happening here. It is a hot mess. her lower body is in profile, her boobs are coming at us like this shit is in 3D. Her head is on her shoulder and I’m pretty sure her shoulders are too big for some shit like that. Also THIS BITCH IS GETTING STRANGLED. WHY ARE HER ARMS ALL UP AND DOING NOTHING IN FRONT OF HER? IS SHE TRYING TO TICKLE JEAN’S ARMPIT? WTF. AND WHY IS SHE SMILING? SHE IS BEING STRANGLED.

I guess you could make an argument for like, a crazy smile or a “imma cut you” smile but still. being strangled.

So I decided to fix jean and completely redo emma. The background is a hot mess as well but fuck that. I am only human.

so I do some skeletons.

Go “yeah sure whatever" 

I decided to stay true to the feeling of this piece which is "sexy strangling time” so asses and boobs out. I know some might disagree with that but w/e. I like the occasional sexy chokefest. so sue me.

I am the worst at skeletons. they are always wrong. I just do all my real fixing when I’m drawing all the flesh and shit. These are only marginally helpful. 

So I go in and do my final redraw.

Not the best but I DON’T CARE. I DID WHAT I COULD WITH THE KNOWLEDGE I HAD.

the faces are gross and jean’s hair is just a vomiting of squiggles. i forgot to draw wrinkles for jean’s fetish suit. but w/e not worse then land or any of them. Emma’s hair and cape are dumb but I didn’t want to block her body because I am aiming for sexy and capes covering the entire torso aren’t sexy. 

SO THERE. I DID IT.

My first ever Escher Girls redraw! Been following the blog for years, big fan, and for a long while I’ve wanted to redraw something from this blog, but couldn’t decide on what drawing to start with. There’s just so much to choose from. While looking through it a few times I came across this pic. At first I had another drawing in mind, and wasn’t sure about this one since it was kinda small, but I thought since it was small that it’d make for a good start and be simple enough.

I was wrong.

(FYI, I enlarged the original to see it better) You can see in the first two steps that all the awfulness of it and everything that was wrong just bombarded me. I wasn’t even sure where to start with it at first. I knew it was bad, but after outlining it, it slowly came to me just what a complete fucking enigma the whole thing is! I mean, you just look at her back and how her body’s twisted and you think “Ow!”. There were just so many questions going through my head while looking at it. Why is she flying around in her underwear? Is that even underwear? It barely even covers her ass! Why’s her cape 15 feet long? How is it even attached to her? By that flimsy little choker? Which we can’t see clearly, since her hair blends into that part of her cape. And the one that just bothered me the most, what the fuck are those oval things on her gloves?!

The more I analyzed this cover, the more I kept asking about it, along with it pissing me off! It’s such a lazy ass cover that tells you nothing about the title or anything! It just makes you ask questions. “Oh look, there’s this big chested woman I don’t know flying over a city in her underwear wearing a cape and high heels for some reason, that makes me wanna buy this book!” And I know know this is for an anthology comic book, but it still doesn’t explain this cover, or excuse it, other than the artist wanting to draw ass and tits. A good cover, whether it’s for a single issue or anthology, should be able to tell a story, or at least give the audience an idea of what it’s about. And speaking of lazy, just look at that cape. It’s just three lines going off the page! Three! It’s like something an amateur would do. Or maybe her cape really is 20 feet long (which means it’ll end up getting caught on something easily or if she ever walked she’ll trip over it).

When I started sketching the first pose, I had trouble sketching over the original since it was just so beyond saving, I’d basically have to throw it out and start over from scratch. Thankfully after thinking of a clearer pose, I was able to fix it up and get something that looked better than that giant, box chested, twisted up fuckery. Really, the only good thing I could say about it, aside from the background, was that her face looked decent (though even that was messed up). It looked like it was going for some kind of stylization, so I decided to take it in a Bruce Timm-esque style. So I have her body at the side, with a flying pose, extending her hand to the viewer, for some perspective. And of course I had to change her outfit to something practical, that someone flying around might actually wear. While working on this, I didn’t know anything about this comic the cover was from, so I had no idea who this woman was (I did end up looking up the title on Wikipedia, and it sorta was what I expected from the title, though didn’t explain why this lady was flying around a purple city in her underwear). Basically I didn’t have much to go on for recreating her outfit, aside from keeping the red and black color scheme. Eventually decided to go for something more superhero-y, having it be practical while also keeping some sexiness (with the boots and pantyhose), and gave her a better cape. I kept in her gloves having red on the fingers, since it was okay in the original.

I also did a sketch for a second pose, after I nearly rage quitted in frustration during the first sketch, on paper then scanned it in. After taking so long inking the first pose, I just inked it faster and more looser. Changed the coloration in her outfit there, also, since I wanted to see if a different variation would look nice. And it did.

In the original her pose was really awkward and, like everything else, just had me asking more than I should’ve. Mostly with her arms. I see this a lot in a lot of bad or land cheesecake art, where the artist cares only for TnA and has no idea for a pose, namely what the woman they’re drawing should be doing. Someone else talked about this in a vid before, and I’ve seen it done by amateur artists, where they’ll draw someone who just has their arms hanging limply by their sides, or in an awkward way that they don’t have to interact with their own body (and because hands are hard). I’d know it since I’ve been guilty of it in past artwork, but even I was able to put effort into the hands and arms, and hands are something I still have trouble with as an artist.

What makes a male pose dynamic? What makes a female pose dynamic?

As I mentioned in this post, “A B&B [boobs and butt] pose for the sake of consumption means that it’s okay to portray women as objects for sexual satisfaction in the public sphere. It’s to the point where I’ve read that redrawing a B&B pose into something more sensible makes the pose less ‘dynamic’.”

I received a comment in response to that post wherein a reader said: “all of your redraws are far less dramatic than the previous drawings. They lack the energy and dynamism and are far more static.” (And I’m sure they are, since I meant only to critique the unnecessary prevalence of B&B poses. I’m hardly a professional and my intent was never to undermine or belittle true professionals, only to make a point.)

After a while, I started wondering what exactly is expected out of a “dynamic” pose between genders – because it’s clear to me that they’re vastly different.

I started with this cover image:

(source: Escher Girls)

Obvious anatomical problems aside, I’ve seen this staple over and over again. I can’t seem to get away from it. Essentially, the most common pose for women is the ‘S’ curve, which will generally be some sort of variation of this:

No guts

Always arched back/Broken spine

Accentuation of the curves

small feet

Pointed toes

This is a basic battle stance for a woman. (And as demonstrated in my previous post, now it’s taken even further.) The ‘S’ shape is very clearly defined in the above cover image.

(By the way, this was really hard to do, as I kept having to cinch her waist more and more, and I don’t think I could muster the will to do it again.)

So, what would said cover image look like with male bodies?

Well.

I see no problem with this. What’s wrong with this? Yes, it’s not realistic to jump down and attack with the legs folded in like that, but the pose IS possible, and, well…yes, it’s going to be very problematic when they land and actually try to attack from that position, but…

It looks good, right? Got them ‘S’ curves, and comic books are for entertainment purposes anyway, so who cares if it’s not realistic? It just has to be sexy. The male readership will just have to get over their whiney selves and deal with this. It’s not my problem if their male superheroes are sexualized or portrayed ridiculously.

…

Does that sound familiar?

You might have read at least one comment lashing out against women (and men too, of course) who complain that their female superheroes are simply serving as sex objects for the male readership.

Let’s be honest. What would that cover really look like with two men? Based on the formula given, something like:

(hahaha what is composition. what is anatomy. what do you mean I got lazy. this is why I’m not a professional artist)

How dynamic is it to face the camera front-on and flat? For a man, very interesting. Powerful. Cover shot. For a woman, it’s lacking energy, isn’t dynamic at all, and is static.

It’s as if “dynamic” for male superheroes translates to “bold, strong, confrontational, dominant,” and for female superheroes “dynamic” translates to, “sexy, curvy, suggestive”. Sexualized media has altered how we inherently view the roles of males and females in society.

That’s why a huge fanbase takes issue with the guys who say, “So what? I want to look at sexy women, and it’s a comic book, it doesn’t have to be realistic.”

Well, we want our female superheroes to be on the same bad-assery level as our male superheroes, even if the B&B/’S’ shape pose in question is possible or explainable.

There needs to be less of this:

(source: Escher Girls)

And more of this:

There needs to be fewer breasts and butt cheeks to the camera:

(source: Escher Girls)

And more, uh…

Well, we could stand to see a little more of that.

But if that’s the case, we might just see more of everything.

(source: Barnes and Noble)

There is a time for sexy, but it doesn’t have to be all the time. Society generally refers to that as porn, and our favorite female superheroes deserve to be treated just as responsibly as their male counterparts.

jijikero submitted to thehawkeyeinitiative: