by Evil Eye » Thu Feb 25, 2016 2:07 pm
- Motto: "Don't be a goddamn coward."
- Weapon: Acid Spray Gun
(I was going to post this in the Victorion thread, but I decided instead to give this its own topic when I realized that A: it could drive the thread off-topic, and B: it merited its own thread.)
So. Female Transformers, and the the plastic representations thereof. There haven't been as many as we would have liked, and not all the ones we have had have been all that great. There is of course a great deal of debate as to how to do them. You have the traditionalists, who believe that fembots should follow the Arcee pattern of character design (so basically an attractive metal woman with a few bits of car kibble) and then at the other end of the spectrum you have the people who think that any figure can be a female Transformer, regardless of whether or not it actually looks even remotely feminine. I tend to fall somewhere in the middle of the road myself, but I can understand both sides to some degree.
One particularly egregious example of female Transformers being done perhaps not as well as some people hoped is the Torchbearers. Now a lot of people like them, but I have to say I don't think they really look all that feminine. However, the problem with them isn't so much that they aren't just "sexy robot women with a car backpack". I think more the problem is that, simply put, they don't look female at the base level mainly due to their basic proportions.
If you compare female and male proportions, you'll notice that women have wider hips and slightly narrower shoulders than men- their shoulders and hips are almost the same width. Obviously there will be some variation (as obviously everybody has different body types) but generally speaking, women's hip and shoulder widths tend to be about the same, whereas men's shoulders are generally wider than their hips.
The big problem with the Torchbearers is that, being straight-up retools of existing male characters- more specifically male characters with very masculine body shapes- their shoulders are MUCH wider than their hips. And I'm not just talking about shoulder pads or kibble either- the actual shoulder joints are quite widely spaced apart. The helicopter sisters are fairly effective, actually, as their shoulders aren't too wide. Likewise, Pyra Magna works OK due to the majority of her shoulder width being kibble, making it look like she's just heavily armoured as opposed to having, well, big manly shoulders. The two cars, however, suffer quite a bit from "obvious male retool syndrome", especially Dustup, as their shoulders are comically wide compared to their hips. The result is that they just don't look natural next to other fembots. Now admittedly there isn't much that could be done about this given the basic mold, but it's still worth noting.
Now some people have said that it's impossible to get a feminine-looking Transformer out of certain bulky alt modes (bulldozers, tanks etc) but I don't think that's quite true. Fembots can still look bulky and armoured and remain recognizably female, provided the basic proportions are down. Want to make a huge tank fembot with bulky armour? That's perfectly doable! Want to make a muscular, strong looking fembot? Easily achievable! Really, there's two golden rules that need to be followed when making a female figure:
1: The shoulders and hips should be similar widths.
2: If the shoulders are going to be much wider than the hips, make sure it's because of kibble/shoulder pads/armour, and that the actual shoulder joints are still fairly in line with the hips.
TLDR: Proportions are far more important than having high-heels or being pink.
Anyway, that's my thoughts on the matter. What do you guys think?
Ha ha Transformers go brrrrr
" on AMAZON](/images/products/tmb/76ce8e24b09a30c8158cbde7d36bb274.jpg)
