linkfire12
Noob
Hi all! Lurker who wanted to express some thoughts. If this needs to be relocated into a separate thread, or is somehow inappropriate let me know, I didn't really find anything discussing this.
Caricatures and larger than life characters have been a huge stable of almost every fighting game since its conception, serving both artistic and mechanical purpose. Oftentimes aspects of a characters design or personality are expressed through their body shape, and their design is built to emphasize their mechanical hitbox's and priorities, to make each fighter unique and distinct from one another.
Mortal Kombat would be closer to the "realistic" spectrum, but the larger than life designs for characters has been a significant part of the fighter's personality and gameplay style since the games conception. The male characters obviously have exceptionally unrealistic builds, looking like anything even closely resembling them in real life would take steroids or other incredibly unhealthy drugs, or a dedicated body building obsession with heavy eating and very specific tasks every single day (and arguably quite unhealthy). It would be impossible for a martial artist to look anything close to what these characters do. But that is absolutely okay, great even, fictional mediums allow artists to create and show the world things that we only imagine. Unique body frames are a small part of the creative imaginings designers can utilize in games, art and animation.
Something you actually very rarely see in games is muscular female characters, and I greatly enjoyed that Mortal Kombat (in particular MK9) had badass, iconic fighters with powerful frames and strong figures. It really emphasized their representation as the worlds best fighters, in a tournament only the best of the best from all the realms could hope to enter. Their unique designs and strong muscular aesthetic brought power and weight to their attacks, and showed they were a serious threat on the battlefield, that worked hard to get where they were now.
I find is very odd (and slightly disappointing), that for both MKX and now 11, aspects of strength and muscularity are heavily de-emphasized for the women of Mortal Kombat. Men have utterly insane tree trunk frames (debatably even more so now) and huge bulky figures that are all but impossible to achieve healthily, especially for professional fighters. But women's frames have been severely minimized in definition, frame, height and stature. Making them look small even as they stand tall as the worlds best.
This is obviously subjective, but I really enjoy these larger than life designs as a part of MK's identity as a world and game, so I'm personally a little sad that iconic characters like Sheeva, Sonya and Jade, have been severely reduced in their artistic presence.
Sheeva is especially odd, (irrelevant of discussions on faces or outfit designs) her new design looks bizarre to me, considering her iconic powerful frame has been severely reduced, and it looks especially unusual when she stands next to the ridiculous frame of characters like Kotal Kahn.
It looks unusual when throwback art to MK9, visibly minimizes the definition of female characters, but keeps the men's hulking stature.
Even with Injustice 2, concept models for characters like Cheetah I feel would have looked fantastic, and I genuinely wonder why it wasn't present in the final game.
I'm sure what I'm saying is personal bias as well, but I genuinely loved those body/art designs, and I'm quite sad to see them gone, I'm genuinely curious as to why that was made the case.
TLDR: Gimme Bricc Abs Waifu.
Caricatures and larger than life characters have been a huge stable of almost every fighting game since its conception, serving both artistic and mechanical purpose. Oftentimes aspects of a characters design or personality are expressed through their body shape, and their design is built to emphasize their mechanical hitbox's and priorities, to make each fighter unique and distinct from one another.
Mortal Kombat would be closer to the "realistic" spectrum, but the larger than life designs for characters has been a significant part of the fighter's personality and gameplay style since the games conception. The male characters obviously have exceptionally unrealistic builds, looking like anything even closely resembling them in real life would take steroids or other incredibly unhealthy drugs, or a dedicated body building obsession with heavy eating and very specific tasks every single day (and arguably quite unhealthy). It would be impossible for a martial artist to look anything close to what these characters do. But that is absolutely okay, great even, fictional mediums allow artists to create and show the world things that we only imagine. Unique body frames are a small part of the creative imaginings designers can utilize in games, art and animation.
Something you actually very rarely see in games is muscular female characters, and I greatly enjoyed that Mortal Kombat (in particular MK9) had badass, iconic fighters with powerful frames and strong figures. It really emphasized their representation as the worlds best fighters, in a tournament only the best of the best from all the realms could hope to enter. Their unique designs and strong muscular aesthetic brought power and weight to their attacks, and showed they were a serious threat on the battlefield, that worked hard to get where they were now.
I find is very odd (and slightly disappointing), that for both MKX and now 11, aspects of strength and muscularity are heavily de-emphasized for the women of Mortal Kombat. Men have utterly insane tree trunk frames (debatably even more so now) and huge bulky figures that are all but impossible to achieve healthily, especially for professional fighters. But women's frames have been severely minimized in definition, frame, height and stature. Making them look small even as they stand tall as the worlds best.
This is obviously subjective, but I really enjoy these larger than life designs as a part of MK's identity as a world and game, so I'm personally a little sad that iconic characters like Sheeva, Sonya and Jade, have been severely reduced in their artistic presence.
Sheeva is especially odd, (irrelevant of discussions on faces or outfit designs) her new design looks bizarre to me, considering her iconic powerful frame has been severely reduced, and it looks especially unusual when she stands next to the ridiculous frame of characters like Kotal Kahn.
It looks unusual when throwback art to MK9, visibly minimizes the definition of female characters, but keeps the men's hulking stature.
Even with Injustice 2, concept models for characters like Cheetah I feel would have looked fantastic, and I genuinely wonder why it wasn't present in the final game.
I'm sure what I'm saying is personal bias as well, but I genuinely loved those body/art designs, and I'm quite sad to see them gone, I'm genuinely curious as to why that was made the case.
TLDR: Gimme Bricc Abs Waifu.