Overview - 'Jeanne'

The primary inspiration for this project was that I had just completed the Digital Figure Sculpting course at the University of Utah and had a usable base mesh for a female character sitting around, just asking to be turned into something more final.

There are a number of issues with the mesh, most noticeably in the resolution of the ears and feet which make the model unsuitable for game art (the feet make up more than a quarter of the mesh's 12k tri count), but these will be dealt with as the project moves forward.

The portrayal of women in 'fantasy' art has never sat well with me. I used to think that the answer to that problem was simple: Stop putting boobs on plate mail and just put women in the same stuff men would wear because adding secondary sexual characteristics to armor is silly and probably bad for the wearer's health. Then promotional material for Snow White and the Huntsman started coming out, where they do just that. Turns out that I don't know Jack (what a surprise!) and that the aforementioned approach is problematic in that it winds up removing all feminine characteristics of the character so that the character may as well actually be male. I'm not doing service to the argument, but the Something Awful thread where I came across it has been archived and I no longer have access to it.

So there's my goal. Try to design a suit of armor that is A: Practical, B: Feminine, C: Visually Interesting, and D: Not Sexist As All Get Out. I'm completely screwed, but hey, I get to learn some hard surface modeling even if I fail.

 Here is where I'm at currently. I like how the lower front plate on the torso is working, as well as the gauntlets and the knee. I'm unsure of the shoes and they're missing some pieces. The legs and upper chest feel a bit plain at the moment, and I'm unsure what to do about it. There are a few different approaches I'm considering taking with the upper thighs, but this post is long enough so I'll outline those in another one.