nanabobo567: As I have a bit of spare
nanabobo567 submitted:
As I have a bit of spare time this holiday break, I thought I’d play an MMORPG. The one I settled on was DC Universe Online, where you play as a new superhero being trained by a classic DC character.
As you can see, while creating your character you have three different body types for each gender. You can have a small, speedy character; a medium-sized, classic character; or a taller, larger character. I find it interesting that the muscles on the three male body types are smaller, more average, or larger depending on which height you choose. Meanwhile, the female body types… Well, the smallest one has a thinner waist, the average one has slightly larger hips, and the largest one has more gravity-defying breasts.
The body type itself doesn’t affect how your character plays, of course. Compared to most video games, I should be grateful for the customization that’s there! It’s still kind of bothersome that, size notwithstanding, the difference between the three female models is near impossible to see without switching back and forth between them.
This reminds me of playing City of Heroes, and being frustrated that I couldn’t make a female hulking monster character, a big beef larger shouldered & armed warrior woman, a small girl hero with no breasts, or a woman in a suit that would look like Iron Man. Even the robot suits were clingy and that wasn’t what I was going for. Meanwhile, I saw giant hulking male heroes, and male characters that looked thin and slight like boys.
The chest slider for men allowed for larger upper bodies that look built, while for women it just makes the breasts stick out more or less, and I could never make a bulky heroine, she just ends up looking kinda curvy.
The men had a lot more variety on what you could do with their bodies than the DC online creator though, even tho there’s still definitely a discrepancy between the men and women.
Sadly this is just being true to the source material since comics mostly abide by this too, and we have “how to draw” books that teach artists that male characters can come in a variety of shapes (though, apparently fat characters should be evil) while female characters come in a variety of the same shape.