Decoding Dragons

World of Warcraft Fanart Profile: Tauren Women

This entry is part 1 of 4 in the series World of Warcraft Fanart Profiles
Two taurens look into the distance

^-^ by Ayatamilin 18/06/08 - with added sideboob

This is part of a new series I’m starting that compiles profiles of certain themes within the Fanart that Blizzard chooses to publish in their Fanart Gallery. I was going to start out with Draenei Women, but that post is going to take a long time to compile. Future themes will feature each race, and some profiles will focus on particular characters. Due to the way Blizzard handle their gallery, I have chosen to only display occasional thumbnails rather than try to create a giant comparison pic. I’ll be listing the pictures in the order they were posted, oldest first. I’ll try to keep commentary to a minimum, and I want to make it clear that I am not accusing anyone of anything or taking offense at anything – artists are not a hivemind trying to oppress women but they do impact on and reveal the way we as a modern society view gender. This isn’t about demanding an equal amount of ‘male characters in male model poses’ in the Fanart Gallery.

The  Published Fan Art

Comments/Conclusions

The obvious thing that strikes me personally is how cute these pictures all seem to be. Only the Tauren in ‘Girl Fight’ seems to come close to looking angry or threatening. Most of the Tauren female fanart is extremely cartoony, and as expected has a high proportion of healer and hunter depictions, as well as a lot of boobtacular art. Facial expressions vary from ‘cute and child like‘ to ‘come hither’.

Blood of Zul’jin by Drake Fenwick 26/09/05

Blood of Zul’jin by Drake Fenwick 26/09/05 - BIG cute eyes

Understandably artists will draw what they want to, and what they find comfortable doing so – I’m certainly not going to argue the right of artistic expression, but it is interesting to see how the most physically powerful women are mostly rendered as non-threatening, passive characters. It’s a big contrast to the majority of the male Tauren, who are anywhere from outright berserking, to comedic, to simply standing and looking proud, although another issue there is that the male spellcasters are also somewhat passive. This is partly a reflection on the feel of the race – calm, nature lovin’ hippies aren’t all nasty and fierce, and yet the male character are presented to be as brutal as their green-skinned cousins.

The only Gnomish and Dwarven women are much less present in the fan art gallery, but I find the ubiquity of the ‘cute’ art very interesting. Tauren have non-standard bodies (both the men and women), so they are likely to be more difficult to get to grips with for an artist.  It’s very hard to separate Tauren from the people they are closely informed by – Native Americans. Female Tauren are generally presented as calm and close to nature, as hunters or druids, and the cartoonish nature of female tauren art echoes the cartoonish appropriation of Native American culture in World of Warcraft. While artists seem very willing to depict male Tauren in a very savage way, the female Tauren tend to embody the ‘noble’ part of the Noble Savage trope in Fan Art.

Beffy and Masti explore Winterspring by Beth Trott 15/12/06

Beffy and Masti explore Winterspring by Beth Trott 15/12/06

Tauren art is also relatively free of the playboy poses and extreme painted-on-clothes that plague Elves and Draenei Art. I find the Beffy and Masti explore Winterspring an interesting piece because it actually does depict a non-typical female body, although it still plays into the plate bikini/boobs trope and the character still has an extremely small waist. Her stance isn’t ‘sexy’, and her expression certainly isn’t inviting. In the background we see a passive, male tauren druid healer who isn’t dressed in a loincloth. This piece, viewed through a feminist lens, is more body positive than the majority of women in the Fanart Gallery, despite continuing to perpetuate annoyances.

So what, Pewter?

Well, I think if there are artists looking to paint something different, the above listing shows us the acceptable fan art of Tauren females that Blizzard has published. Tauren female characters are clearly painted into a certain box, perhaps you as an artist can think about painting them into a different box. Tauren females are capable of just about everything a man is capable of in World of Warcraft – they can be chieftans, spiritual leaders, and while they may not have the power of the men, they certain can match most other races for pure strength. If Blizzard does receive Tauren art that is different, I hope they will publish it to give us some more variety.

World of Warcraft Fanart Profile: Tauren Women was published on August 26th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , under the Analysis, Fandom, Warcraft category. There are currently 23 comments on this article so far.

World of Warcraft Fanart Profile: Gnomish Women

This entry is part 2 of 4 in the series World of Warcraft Fanart Profiles

This is part of an ongoing series that reviews and attempts to deconstruct common tropes in the Blizzard Fanart Gallery. This is not a critique of the choices of individual artists, but a look at the choices Blizzard and those artists have made. For reasons of time/expendiency I am limiting this series to what is currently in the Blizzard Fan Art Gallery, but please feel free to share your favourites from elsewhere in the comments. Just please try to make sure they are credited properly and on the theme of the post.

Braving the Shadows by Jay Darnell 05/02/09

Braving the Shadows by Jay Darnell 05/02/09

This week I have chosen to concentrate on Gnomes. Partly because the thought of tackling Draenei or Elves leaves me in a wibbling pile of moosh. There is lot of Draenei/Elf, much of it very much focusing on the beauty of the female form as opposed to how badass/melancholy/triumphant/cheerful she is. It’s not fun to do, and I also don’t feel as comfortable trawling through them on my lunch break as I do with the smaller themes/tropes.

If you have a suggestion for a future Fanart Profile, please drop me a line via comments, email or twitter. I may not get around to it straight away, but I shall tuck it away and maybe start working on it.

The Fan Art

Comments

Overall, especially for 2005/2006, this was very fun to compile. The art presents Gnomish women in a variety of situation, casting them as melee fighters, casters, scholars and engineers. With the Kimmi and Realmwalker images I really thought of the gnomes as characters rather than something created to ‘look sexy’, which was refreshing.

Gnomish women are generally covered up, and about 50% of the clothing will emphasise a womanly figure (see the Comics by Daniel Lueke) but I wonder how much of that is due to the association of gnomes with hyperactive children.  This is not, mind you, time to start linking the gnomish porn to me. The gnomish women seem to be calmer and more sensible in appearance than the ‘crazy professor’ trope that gnomish men inhabit, and my impression is that you’ll rarely see a ‘sexualised’ male gnome either.

[Interlude: Another problematic thing there, my 'anecdata' suggests that male gnomes are often viewed as downright creepy, which jives with 'crazy professor'. y/n/other experience? Tell me in the comments!]

Gnomes have large heads, proportionately, and most players pick faces that could be described as cute. So a couple of pictures present gnomish women pretty much as children (Summer by xia jie and Check you head by Yang Yang) but it is arguable that the gnome here is acting within manga/anime tropes. In more recent postings, the two female gnomes posted in 2010, both gnomish women are background to an active male front man. However they are not sexualised, which suggests being ‘part of the team’.

Colin Walbridge

Realm Walkers by Colin Walbridge 26/08/05

Realm Walkers by Colin Walbridge 26/08/05

So when I started compiling this Fan Art Profile, I was really happy to come across the art by Colin Walbridge. The little ‘Kimmi’ series was wonderful and awesome. And then I innocently thought I’d find his hope page and link it up as a thank you for the refreshing art. I was really jazzed about this, I really enjoyed the art that really cast the subjects as ‘characters’ instead of ‘pretty babe to look at #8379487′ and ‘angry moody warrior #988387′. Much of the gnomish art seems to be more about storytelling than ‘pretty’.

When I finally got to his site I did find a whole slew of ‘gnomish’ art, but it feels more ‘halfling’ inclined, to be honest, and then there were a couple of images that made me facepalm. 99% of the ‘human size’ characters are nude, and google actually brings up ‘Elfin Porn’ when his name is put in. The rest of his site is extremely NSFW. The realmwalker’s gallery is just about okay, but browse the rest of the site at your peril. Yeah. I did a sad fase.

Conclusion

Gnomish Fan Art on the official gallery is fun, and quirky and desexualised while still clearly feminine. However they are easily infantalized and seen as comedic value, and there are less representations of Gnomish women in the gallery than the Tauren, which surprised me. As a species Blizzard has designed them to be comedic and ‘fun’, and the art continues this theme. Gnomes in WoW are the geeks and the nerds, without the edge of Goblins, and aren’t supposed to be what is considered conventionally attractive (tall, leggy, hourglass).

Any thoughts? I must admit I’m struggling to read in more than the infantilisation and geekery of gnomes, both factors which desexualised them as characters by mainstream society. Is it possible to have little characters that don’t have to be over sexualised to be percieved as adult agents by viewers? I think this is a little more difficult for female depictions, but I note that there are no ‘old female gnomes’, which beards and signifiers of age are more common for male gnomes.

I will also say that I only have a gnome warrior as my alt. She’s called Vlasta and she is awesome. I kind of wish there was some art of female gnomes on the end of a whirling giant axe, but we can’t have everything – however what do more consistent gnome players think?

And for my next trick: Illidan art!

World of Warcraft Fanart Profile: Gnomish Women was published on August 26th, 2010, with the tags , , , , under the Analysis, Fandom, Warcraft category. There are currently 18 comments on this article so far.

World of Warcraft Fanart Profiles: Sylvanas Windrunner

This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series World of Warcraft Fanart Profiles

This is part of an ongoing series that reviews and attempts to deconstruct common tropes in the Blizzard Fanart Gallery. This is not a critique of the choices of individual artists, but a look at the choices Blizzard and those artists have made. For reasons of time/expendiency I am limiting this series to what is currently in the Blizzard Fan Art Gallery, but please feel free to share your favourites from elsewhere in the comments. Just please try to make sure they are credited properly and on the theme of the post.

Cataclysm by chang yawei 14/10/09

Sylvanas runs. In the background there is a red sky, and she looks at the crow landing on her right hand.

Sylvanas is an amazing character. She is both a protagonist for the Undead, and sly antagonist for the living. In Cataclysm she will make some unpopular decisions, and she is one of the few major lore characters to undergo multiple redesigns in World of Warcraft (as well as between games.) She is a heroine and villainess, depending on your faction, and is characterised as a military genius, in contrast to Tyrande’s spiritual (and practical) leadership, and Jaina’s arcane power. She was both the first of the Banshees, and the originator of the Dark Rangers, a class that meshes necromatic and hunter powers.

There are a lot of ‘night elf hunters‘ that share some of her costuming as well, but I am trying to be somewhat selective as Sylvanas wasn’t a Kaldorei. Also there is some amazing Sylvanas art out there that isn’t in the US Gallery, as ever PLEASE share those links in the comments.

The Fanart

Barely Rotting

The Banshee Queen by Ann Siri Skrolsvik 04/12/08

Sylvanas holds the necklace in her right hand.

Now, the artists get a bit of a pass on this, as Sylvanas isn’t an ordinary undead. When she was initially ‘raised’ she was a non-corporeal Banshee. Plus, Blizzard themselves have depicted her in-game as a rather smooth and sinuous elf, so I can’t blame the artists for continuing that theme. It does annoy me somewhat, as Sylvanas was brutally murdered and tortured even before her soul was subjugated. There are a few pieces that pick up on her status as a former corpse – Sylvanas Sings (Carlos) and Champion of the Undercity (Forlenza), but many many more that focus on her smooth skin and her strangely perky boobs. I wasn’t aware that being interred in a tomb maintained the integrity of the water within one’s boobs. Or resulted in one walking around with a vacant (dead, hah) stare and lips slightly parted all the time. Silly me.

Passive

Sylvanas is surrounded by a chorus of 4 Banshee.

Sylvanas is mainly presented as a figure to be looked at, rather than a character actively emoting or acting. In some ways this makes the Eduardo Caria Mosena piece all the more stunning. She is wearing the modern Sylvanas costume, and while the womanly curves are ‘there’, they aren’t the focus of this action shot. For all that her face is impassive, my eye is drawn to it by the actions of the rest of her body. Stunning piece of work. However most of the Sylvanas art has her passively standing and staring at the audience, or sticking her bum and boobs out. For example, Dark Lady has her supposedly marching at the head of an army, but her clothing is skimpier than usual and the pose she is in emphasises her hips. In Battle for the Undercity, her whole spose is just plain weird.

Many poses seem to centre around one urm being held up, either to present the iconic necklace, or just…erm…just because.

I will note, however, that ‘passive poses’ are a mainstay of Fanart in general, perhaps because static bodies are easier to draw well than active ones. There are a great many passive male characters as well, but the proportions of passive/active are less telling than that of the women.

The Makeover

As you can see, the amount of Sylvanas art increased exponentially after she was madeover in game, with both a more curvacious body, and a more revealing outfit. Previously she had been depicted in the full coverage of a black robe. Unsurprisingly, artists like to draw pretty things, and they also like to have a firm idea of what Blizzard wants the character to look like. (Although oddly enough there is more Abomination art than there is art of Jaina Proudmoore.) The change in the makeover also changes the colour scheme of Sylvanas art, from blues and blacks to reds, purples and even pinks.

Popularity

‘Character’ art is less popular in the Fanart Gallery in general, and an observation I had was that generally Arthas, Illidan and Kael’thas lead the way in general character art, with Sylvanas the only woman receiving a significant number of  published submissions. I’ve even found some art that may be of her before she was killed (showing the ranger gear and the crow). The makeover cannot be the only factor in this significant difference – Sylvanas is the only prominent woman leadership with no real male ‘rival. Tyrande is opposite Fandrel and Malfurion, and Jaina Proudmoore is overshadowed somewhat by Varian. Sylvanas is also the only significant woman in the Horde leadership at this time, and her character is now divorced from ideas of sex and romantic relationships. Where Jaina and Tyrande are associated romantically with a number of men (both in lore and in fandom), Sylvanas is pretty much ‘free’ from all that by virtue of being dead AND a military genius.

Below is a sketch by Metzen, which is very telling when you consider the evolution of Sylvanas’ appearance in the game. Below we see her with a Kaldorei facial tattoo, even though I believe she was highborn. Her face shows marks of obvious repairs in the original conception of her character. In the name of expediency they use an un-scarred model for her now, which they are able to ‘port’ to other major female lore characters that they can get away with showing in a bikini. She goes from physically damaged to physically on show.

Sylvanas by Metzen

Sylvanas looks at the viewer. Her face is covered in stitches where her corpse was repaired.

Conclusion

She’s a warrior, a leader, and above all she is World of Warcraft’s survivor. I won’t reveal any Cataclysm stuff, but her story continues in that theme. I don’t see much of the power of her character or her past in much of the fan art, which is what makes Sylvanas Sings and and the Mosena piece so damn powerful. If you want to do something different with her, show her as a leader, as woman of violence and drive. Show her in action, either with her magic or her abilities as a Dark Ranger.

World of Warcraft Fanart Profiles: Sylvanas Windrunner was published on August 31st, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , , , under the Analysis, Fandom, Warcraft category. There are currently 10 comments on this article so far.