maplepoutine: This is not really an

This is not really an Escher Girl, but the LoL cinematic trailer submission on this page made me think of this screencap of an FF XV trailer.  Notice how every male character have textured, realist skin while the two female characters have perfect pale skin with makeup on.

This is referring to a previous post where somebody brought up the lack of wrinkles or facial creases of any kind on a woman character in a League of Legends trailer, and I also posted a picture of the male and female faces in Batman: Arkham City as another example where female faces must be devoid of any lines (even expression lines) while male faces can have all sorts of interesting features and details, and can be exaggerated to give more character to the faces.

This isn’t just about women having to be portrayed as eternally young, or how women’s standards for beauty are so tied with having no lines on our faces, but it’s also incredibly limiting when designing and portraying female characters.  If all your female characters always have to have smooth round faces, no wrinkles, etc (and often big eyes and pouty lips too), then it’s going to be that much harder to try to make them look different than each other.  And if they also aren’t allowed to show lines on their faces for expressions, then it’s going to limit the range of their expression too, or they’re going to end up with a weird doll look when you do have them emote.  The point is, it can end up creating a very limited box for female character visuals, and creating characters that all look very similarly, even if you really don’t mean to. And that in turn limits how much information you can convey about those characters, visually.