Not their fault they watched too much Beavis and Butthead prior to creating those bases.

Sonnet Raven wrote:

Playing around a bit I've noticed that most games use the same "Male" Icon as they do the "Female". It almost seems as though people don't put any effort into making good player icons. The only real differences people make is the underwear >.> Why that's relevant when you're player is going to have overlays anyways is beyond me. The only things we have to distinguish ourselves from male players is hair, and even that only goes so far. I guess what I mean is that people should start creating distinctly different Male and Female icons. I would be much more willing to play a game if my character can look "Cute"...

Some people prefer their women to look masculine.

That one is funny, as the person who made it was to my understanding the only female player at the time, and basically just drew a bust-line on the new pink jumpsuit. Then of course the mid-riff section was covered appropriately.

That was about the extent of the effort that went into it, and at the time, most icon-work in that particular game.

Exploshun wrote:

Some people prefer their women to look masculine.

I think the word you're looking for is sexy. Mmmmmmmm, so sexxyyyyy.

there's a problem there o3o
Even masculine STILL have curves...I mean... go look one up. They're broad shouldered BUT their mid-drift is tiny...

This is given you don't look up the freaky over-muscular women x.x
in which case, they still have curves...it's just...too tiny for their muscles to be able to show well because their steroids have made them manly...which would be technically against this topic :)

It's an interesting question, but one that's actually more complex than you might think.

See, you might as well ask what's masculine about most of the 32x32 default icons out there.

Or what's masculine about the "guy" characters in a stick figure strip like xkcd, or the "male" emblems on a bathroom door.

A male and female body are basically the same shape, except for primary and secondary sexual characteristics and social markers.

We have to put a bow and lipstick on Ms. Pac-Man to make people see a woman... why doesn't "Mr." Pac-Man need a bowtie or a mustache? Why doesn't the guy stick figure need stubble or even short hair or an indication of baldness (not just that no hair at all is drawn) when the girl stick figure has to have long hair? Why is a figure that lacks obvious breasts not able to stand in for a woman, when a figure that lacks the muscle development patterns associated with a male phenotype can be intuitively seen as male?

The answer to these questions is social programming of a sort that we might call "male default". Outside of very specific contexts (ask someone to picture a nurse or a flight attendant, or a preschool teacher), male is the assumed default case because it usually is the default case.

It's not just a visual phenomenon, the treatment of male as "default" and female as "different" applies in basically every walk of life.

This is the same reason that in so many cartoons and video games, there will be a team that consists of boys who have an obvious archetype ("The Strong One", "The Smart One", "The Obnoxious One") and the girl, whose special unique identifying characteristic is that she's... not a boy. The boys need adjectives to stand apart from each other. The girl just has to be a girl.

A great example of this phenomenon in action - Is the PC sprite in Terraria supposed to indicate a guy? If so, what makes it so? Answer: the fact that nothing indicates it's a girl.

This is on my mind in particular because I'm developing a game where every PC is represented by a not terribly detailed green stick-figure-esque icon which can only be individuated by the equipment you add to it (which does include items that "mark" as feminine socially, like a valkyrie helmet or a bow on the head or a skirt)... I know I'm going to be bombarded with questions about why every character is a guy, or why there's no female icon, but I'm making a conscious decision to promote the neutral figure as neutral.

Clothing helps, but take my two Icons for example.


As you can see, these aren't the standard 32x32 Icons most people use in their projects. In my opinion, 32x64 looks a hell of a lot better than any sprite half that size would. It wouldn't be difficult at all to tell the gender of these sprites. I first made the female icon, getting the correct curves and lines drawn. I also adjusted the angle if the hands to be more feminine. I added the shading that really helped bring it to life. Finally I touched on it with a slight blush under the eyes, giving it a more "Cute" look. This makes it easy to tell that this is a girl, even if it were without underwear. The male sprite I drew much like a box in the sense that the lines are mostly straight and few curves. Although this is not anatomically correct, It gives the illusion of muscle, especially with the shading done to the pectoral regions.

As for the time it takes to create more icons, I just suck it up and not pout because it's taking so long. Spriting sucks, it's the worst part of any project, it's why people draw placeholders for the code, so they don't have to worry about the tedious crap until later. It's also why so many games flop. No one wants to Icon all of the stuff so they skimp and cheat with shortcuts, terrible icon work, awful recolors, and worst of all, Ripping. This is just because they want to get their project out asap. The project I'm working on uses a lot of spriting, none of it am I looking forward too. I hate it, but I'll take my time to make sure each sprite is excellent so my games presentation will be perfect.

The sprites pictured above were created from scratch by myself, no template, no guide. They are also currently being used in a Current Project, therefore using, editing, or otherwise claiming the icons for your own use is considered ripping.

Thank you,

Danbriggs

Pinnacle wrote:

Strangely enough, I love the spriting aspect of the game. I love seeing how things will look in the game. In fact, I do most of the sprites before I even think about coding (I'm still learning). Sorry if that was going a bit off topic.

Honestly if you continue in that direction of worrying more about the graphics than the actual code you may end up never finishing the game.

Well um, mostly guys play those lame ass anime rips. And us guys don't care too much for detail,.so thats basically it. People who make rips are too damn lazy to make their own damn icons.