Yabberwocky
Member
Great episode all round. Lawd, I forgot how awful that Hitman trailer was.
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Are Women Too Hard To Animate? Tropes vs Women in Video Games
- Thread starter lightskintwin
- Start date
chillybright
Banned
From the first page: (different game, but you get the idea)
That is just an awkward animation period, male or female.
Orochinagis
Member
Her stance is wider than the male and her arms looks like hmmm I dont have the world more open than the male like some sort of posable doll while the male stance is closed and self centered. That stance naturally changes when you go two handed to be the default male model. Outside the stance the rest is the same
Hitboxes are the same I think, females model have not advantage in Souls as far as I know. since the body and the weapon hitboxes are the same
Bloodborne stances are barely different
That kinda sounds like splitting hairs between two variants on mo-cap or modeling, and I don't really see how that equates to being more defenseless.
There's that ring in the game that changes animation styles between male and female protags, and I'm pretty sure nothing happens to the standing stance, or if there is then it's most likely just due to the different model set.
Agreed. Like all her videos, I feel like she didn't go into it deep enough to argue any of her points, they are all like, yup, that's correct. Those things do happen.
I'm sure many people will be upset though.
Orochinagis
Member
if you are playing one hand weapons (I play casters classes) you will notice it more often than going two handed. Dark Souls 3 makes the female model less like a doll and have a proper stance
I do all the time, and it's not really noticeable to me at all, I replay the souls games all the time as well (just finished a DeS run last week).
My first run of DS3 was female sword&board, no two-hand or casting at all, just quality build so I could mess around with most of the weapons. Didn't notice anything really different going to a male character afterwards to imply the female stance was "weaker" by any means.
SixMachine
Member
I'm not an animator but from my experience with digging around and fooling around with game mods, male and female characters usually use different rigs and animation sets, for example like in Skyrim and Fallout. Obviously the 2 genders have differences in body proportions which effect how it would look when animated, in some games like Mass Effect you can see some awkward animations with FemShep especially in the dress, like around her shoulders because it seems to be made for a male first. If you just use an animation on a rig that it wasn't meant for, you can see it get messed up in many cases like stretched parts, clipping, and looking weird in general, which you can see for yourself in some games or trying to fool around with some animation mods.
So even though females aren't harder to animate, it does take work to make sure both genders look just as good, or in general if you add more different kinds of rigs to animate.
Here is something funny though, Sakura and Zangief swapping animations. Even though this is a real extreme example and not necessarily a gendered one (since anyone swapped with Zangief is gonna look funky).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7aTlrDYkso
So even though females aren't harder to animate, it does take work to make sure both genders look just as good, or in general if you add more different kinds of rigs to animate.
Here is something funny though, Sakura and Zangief swapping animations. Even though this is a real extreme example and not necessarily a gendered one (since anyone swapped with Zangief is gonna look funky).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7aTlrDYkso
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
The co-op for AC:Unity didn't have a story featuring Arno, it mostly followed the exploits of Theroigne de Mericourt all four players on their screen saw themselves as Arno, the main character. That doesn't mean the game's story was poorly designed. Before, you played as male and female templars, not assassins, with WAY more limited customization, and before each match only one player could pick a certain character, no duplicates unless you were doing team pvp, where the party leader would pick a character for the whole team. Plus, they absolutely made up for it by writing one of the best female characters in a triple A game this gen. There's nothing more transparent about the fact that you didn't play the game with a statement like "they sidelined the presence of women in active roles."
By contrast, this is how it looks on Arno's rig. It's not meant for anyone else but him and his costume designs.
chillybright
Banned
To be honest I find the walking animation in this video equally unnatural, which proves my previous point. I mean which normal pedestrian walks with arms slightly stretching out and neck leaning forward? I guess this alerting stance makes some sense if you are in an enemy's fortress and trying to engage at any time, but not under broad daylight on the street. The other random NPCs' walking animation are much more natural in contrast.
To add, the later part of video shows that running animation in AC games are quite fluent, I think AC as a parkour game is designed for the player to be constantly running and jumping, which I assume a great deal of effort was spent on. So single out one walking animation does not mean much for the comparison between genders.
Crimson_Echidna
Banned
Almost funny how it happens like clockwork.
Vincent Alexander
Member
I'd never seen the trailer until this episode. Holy cow, I couldn't believe what I was seeing was real.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Here's the thing, you're not playing as a "normal pedestrian." You're wearing a hoody, you're an assassin, you're not trying to hide this fact, "hide in plain sight." As an animation, it, like the costume design, is meant to emphasize that or as the devs call it, "the fantasy of being an assassin."
If you wanna see what an incredibly awkward walk cycle looks like, (that actually doesn't allow to walk based on the logic you're using), I would reference Infamous SS's walk cycle. Which doesn't look terrible but looks really strange for the type of character Delsin is supposed to be.
AstroNut325
Member
Agreed with everything in the video. But...a part of me still wants the sexualized characters. There does need to be more balance and I hope devs are learning.
BadAss2961
Member
Well, MGS4 has a bit of everything... The sexualized B&B unit and Naomi's who's pretty tropey. But then there's the frogs as normal female enemies, a strong female character in Meryl, and Sunny who was a brilliant little girl.
None of the male bosses had the photoshoot sequence, but there were no male bosses outside of Liquid Ocelot at the end. It was all B&B unit before that.
meltingparappa
Member
You can have your cake and eat it to, by not demonizing depictions of sexuality but also hoping for more diverse and inclusive stories and portrayals in the industry.
Thankfully it's not a zero sum game!
Anita is a little more second wave than third wave and may disagree, but it's not like her opinion should be taken as sacrosanct rather than a conversation starter.
Yeah I miss sexualized dudes too =/
AstroNut325
Member
Agreed. I just enjoy the craziness of video games including completely weird or sexualized characters. It's that craziness that draws me to games and offers me the escape from reality I desire. There does seem to be too much scaled towards women being sexualized so I definitely appreciate what Anita is doing here. And again, I hope developers take meaningful strides to make women combatants look like male combatants.
LordBaztion
Member
In my case is the contrary, anime designs can turn me off a game, especially those o kid like and cringe-cute characters. On the other hand, I can stand simplistic games with good art/music direction, but not if are to difficult, frustrating or boring.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
It would be better to have depictions of actual sexuality instead of sexualization.
Often times the former is confused with the latter because of how much game media is steeped in sexualization while ignoring the former.
joey_bone_bomb
Member
Completely agree with most of her points, but that Hitman Absolution trailer is still one of the best CG video game trailers, in my opinion. Extremely well directed, and I always appreciated its design aspects, particularly the thought their character designers put into each of the individual nun outfits when less meticulous creative folk would have just put them all in the same old oversexed conventual garb. The whole concept was so out there. Felt like a scene from a Tarantino movie. Time to rewatch.
HueyFreeman
Banned
Excellent as usual.
The contents great but I really just like hearing someone academically dissect a topic in games. Would be great to see this kind of video evolve in different directions.
The contents great but I really just like hearing someone academically dissect a topic in games. Would be great to see this kind of video evolve in different directions.
depths20XX
Member
Yes, great as usual just like her "strategic butt covering" video where she calls out the original Tomb Raider for having a third person perspective. She continues to assume that most gamers are slobbering morons who are influenced by games to the point they bring it into their overall world view.
Sounds like you're projecting a bit here.
depths20XX
Member
Could you explain more? This is kind of a drive by term.
I know a few slobbering morons..
depths20XX
Member
I mean who doesn't know a few?
That video isn't even what this thread is about. Why are you talking about it here? Other than passive aggressively replying to a comment (your first post in this thread) as an excuse to air your opinions about it, it doesn't seem relevant.
But if you want me to you seriously, please point me to the quote in the video you're discussing that where the assumption that gamers are "slobbering morons" comes from.
Astral Dog
Member
at least there is no excuse now unlike last gen when consoles lacked the proper amount of RAM to have girl baddies
Many people have this view without the help of videogames and this stuff only reinforces their mentality.
I always thought the butt thing was kinda obvious. When I was younger playing third person females my dad would always walk by and be like wtf are you playing it looks like your just starting at that woman's ass.
Which I couldn't really blame him for thinking that..
depths20XX
Member
I was referring to the posters point of "great as usual" which I disagree with as many of her past videos have shown to be clearly misinformed or just straight up misrepresentation to enforce her viewpoints.
When you're out and about without the opportunity to actually watch it, yes.
Damn the more I learn about those stupid sexualization in MGS games the more I losing respect for Kojima. He is nothing but a pervert at the end right? Makes me almost angry. I played MGS4 and found it amazing but never thought you could do such "extra" mode with a female boss. Fuck this shit.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
It's even creepier when you remember these bosses are brainwashed female soldiers who are completely traumatized by their horrifyingly violent past and suffer from extreme PTSD. And here you are, taking pics of them in sexy poses, because reasons.
Fuck Kojima.
Since the begining.
(that is USA version, the japanese one might be NSFW : http://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=958309 )
-BLITZ-
Member
"Double the animation, double voices, and double visual assets."
Head explodes by how could they possible come up with such excuse. Between man and woman both are determined through definition as human beings. Now tell me how this would aggravate time developing of AC:Unity when they had to work four times more for each four individuals in CO-OP animation, voices and visuals and the entire woman's NPC. Now how's that not part of time consuming ? They are slight different shape bodies in terms of anatomy not something out of this planet with alien forms impossible to animate. As the animator said, would had take only two days today's technology.
Tell them, Mona Sax of Max Payne 2 how R* & Remedy manage to it so easy more than 10 years ago technology. Same goes for Fallout Series.
Head explodes by how could they possible come up with such excuse. Between man and woman both are determined through definition as human beings. Now tell me how this would aggravate time developing of AC:Unity when they had to work four times more for each four individuals in CO-OP animation, voices and visuals and the entire woman's NPC. Now how's that not part of time consuming ? They are slight different shape bodies in terms of anatomy not something out of this planet with alien forms impossible to animate. As the animator said, would had take only two days today's technology.
Tell them, Mona Sax of Max Payne 2 how R* & Remedy manage to it so easy more than 10 years ago technology. Same goes for Fallout Series.
Mexen
Member
I know close to nothing about animation (technical details, how to do it myself etc) but I think we have talented people out there and animating women should not be a problem.
Maybe the problem is what it always has been- how women are represented.
Look at the engines we have today such as Fox and the talent behind it. Are you telling me that they can fail to animate a woman? No. Can they fail to represent a woman in a respectable manner? abso-fucking-lutely.
Maybe the problem is what it always has been- how women are represented.
Look at the engines we have today such as Fox and the talent behind it. Are you telling me that they can fail to animate a woman? No. Can they fail to represent a woman in a respectable manner? abso-fucking-lutely.
Even when you fight them normally it's still fucked up. You get a cutscene of them that's actually pretty similar to the infamous Quiet rain scene in MGSV, then they start walking towards you while moaning. Like, what the fuck Kojima.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
ITT:You can really tell who hasn't played the game....during co-op, everyone plays as the same character. The only difference being everyone on their screen seems themselves as Arno while the game randomly generates a different face, (solely a face but you see what customization options another player chose). In fact i'm pretty sure they aren't voiced aside from grunts. Having such extensive customization, (not character customization like fallout, COSTUME), and having to make female variants for something the player would never see, would be a waste of resources compared to what they did in the sequel, seperately mocapping animations for Evie and Lydia Frye, and making extensive efforts to make sure they work on both characters. Even more so since they were all designed with Arno in mind and no one else.
^ Not even half the outfits choices available and they can all be mix and matched. It would definitely take a good while to rescale all those permutations. I think another issue is that many are applying the logic of an RPG and thus are comparing very very different games that have nowhere near the amount of animation behind the player character compared to a typical AC game. I mean Max Payne 2 and and Fallout? Come on man.
The actual process of animating women was never the issue in the first place. It was a time and resource issue.
Policenauts is way worse. In addition to all the sleaziness you'd expect from Kojima, it has a feature that lets the player grope any female character and make their breasts bounce, which usually "comically" pisses them off, but if the player beats Meryl's high score at the shooting range, she'll let them grope her as a reward.
Since the begining.
(that is USA version, the japanese one might be NSFW : http://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=958309 )
NipplesAndToes23
Member
I knew when I first heard Ubisoft say that creating a female assassin in Unity would require too much additional animation was some ole bullshit.
Seems more like a cultural difference than anything else, right?
Not that it should excuse it but the treatment and the view of different types of people varies heavily across the world, unfortunately.
I feel like that example needs to be let go of, though. That was YEARS ago now and Ubi has continued to improve on that front (and were already ahead of many companies). Constantly raising that example stated by one or two people within the company is highly unfair to Ubi as a whole, I feel.
Especially when you consider how MP actually WORKED in that game and how little a difference it would have made anyways. Would have been a waste in that case.
You should play (or maybe not) Policenauts. That is peak Creep Kojima. Your character can actually molest most (or every, I don't remember) female characters you run into. Yeah he's a perv.
Finaika
Member
WTF?! How is this allowed?
Patrick Young
Member
I agree with everything she said, but I think there should've been some Mythbusters-style breakdown on just what it takes to get female players in Assassin's Creed Unity. I don't like how she cited some tweets about it and accepted them as fact.
They suck at animating almost everything though.
Or more accurately reflecting the problem: an issue of allocation and priorization of time and resources.
