[___] Skin Background Artwork
Artwork
Author's Note
Creating artwork for a game as a form of analysis posed difficult challenges. Every adjustment that I made to the design of the characters felt like a statement that I was making about the nature of the stories. Sometimes I tweaked the designs in order to avoid an issue that I did not want to delve into for the game. For example, I drew the princesses as older than their fairy tale counterparts, who often were no older than fourteen, to avoid carelessly throwing in themes of pedophilia with the already disturbing plot of incest. At other times, I steered right into bold artistic choices– such as basing the design of the second king off of Donald Drumpf.
Because the game’s objective is to subvert the appropriation of a medium by changing the story to actively aid the princesses, I chose drawing styles for each princess that I thought would best subvert their objectification. For the first princess, Donkeyskin, I looked entirely at figure drawings. I chose to draw her body in the twisting positions of a medium that usually focuses on a woman’s body. However, I specifically chose poses in which she turned away from the viewer or covered herself up. In doing so, I hoped to create a sense that Donkeyskin herself was actively fighting the objectification of her own body through the image.
For Bearskin, I focused on the superhero comic medium. Superhero comics often objectify women to the point that no human body could attain their proportions or positions. I specifically based Bearskin’s poses off of Wolverine in the Marvel comic Old Man Logan, Volume 2 Issue 2 (art by Andrea Sorrentino, colors by Marcelo Maiolo). I wanted to use a male superhero as a reference. Logan was the perfect choice: His body often moved in ways that were borderline-anatomically incorrect, but in a way that caters to heterosexual male readers’ power fantasies moreso than sexual objectification. It was through this comic that I thought of using dramatic shading specifically for Bearskin. I focused the shadows on her face, to mask her potential expressions of fear. I also shaded under her breasts. This draws attention to the breasts, which on one hand is slightly more objectifying, but the shadow itself forms dramatic, jagged shapes like something lodged in the hero’s chest.
Rabbitskin’s design is still in process, but I intend for her design to be more subdued. I have thus far drawn her in sketchy lines, thus blurring the icon and the body through which the player plays. I also found that deciding what race to make each princess posed a challenge to me. I didn’t want to accidentally make flippant commentary on different races or cultures by making certain princesses or other characters clearly designated as a token race. At the same time, I didn’t want to set white as the “default” in an attempt to avoid issues of race. Ultimately, I designed the different princesses to be as racially ambiguous as I could manage. Due to the lack of color and the specific drawing styles, at times I faced issues of potential whitewashing. The most dramatic example of this is with Bearskin’s hair– I had initially drawn her hair as thick, coarse, and wild; however, in giving her the shadowy sheen of the comics that I was emulating, I changed the apparent texture of her hair. Even the smallest details required attention for these complex, racially ambiguous, and multifaceted characters. I also designed the backgrounds, which I tried to keep as simple as possible while still looking like scenes in fairy tales. We occasionally added images that the player could move or interact with, so I wanted to leave plenty of space for additions. I based the castles off of various European castles (such as the Château de Montbrun), and altered them and added towers to make them seem more imposing.