[Rokkan]

So, in this uni class, one of our works is to design & print a catalog of anything we'd like. I decided to do a short catalog of Cool Women Characters In Games. I devised my list with certain priorities in mind: Variety - which means representing different kids of women and minorities, but also characters from different ages of gaming and developers, and different characters with different roles as well, as long as they're important to the game. Non-Grossness, being that this industry is mostly dominated by men, both with the devs and the consumers (though the consumer base is arguable seeing as how in different games, genres and platforms we might have a majority of women) it's only natural that we see a lot of gross shit. I'm trying to keep that to a minimum and try to mostly represent the good, non-problematic eggs. And finally, Importance, the character needs to have at least a little bit of popularity and positive or neutral importance, and some choices are here mostly because they are overwhelmingly popular.


Here's the problem though, it's really hard finding official art of a lot of these characters, I was wondering if selectbutton would help me out, linking me to good websites of hi-res artworks and scans of games and stuff. Some of these characters definitely do NOT have good high-res stuff online and i will have to completely redraw their illustrations or do a completely new illustration for them, and since I'll probably only have a short time to do this catalog, I wanna keep the illustration work to a minimum (especially because I'd love to have a lot of time to draw a kickass cover and back to the book!), so help finding good artwork is crucial! (i'd be ETERNALLY THANKFUL if cool artists would also help with illustration, that'd be super rad but i really don't wanna ask for that/rely on it)


Here's the list of characters and how the image search is coming along so far:

http://pastebin.com/hDxKvpCr
(don't mind the order, that's not going to be the final order of the catalog)

I'm pretty set on this list but if you strongly feel I left a cool character out or not considered something important, please feel free to tell me so.

Also, if anyone also wants to help me with this, I'll probably need help writing short descriptions for a lot of those, a lot of these are from games I admittedly never played but only heard a lot & researched online about, I could write all of them myself, as I'm researching a lot about these characters, but it's likely to have some errors.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

I think it might help clarify what you're looking for a bit if you gave a few examples of how you feel about different images you've already found, ie, what you think is good quality, what is possible to work with and what is right out.

[GcDiaz]

Be careful with Vanessa Lewis, they whitewashed her worse than Beyonce.
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Steam/PSN/Xbawks: GcDiaz

Let's bring sexy back!

[Talbain]

http://library.servare.org

Has most of the characters you're looking for in high-resolution. PM me if you're missing stuff, I can probably help--the library hasn't been updated in months now.
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[BenoitRen]

Now that Talbain's resource has been linked (didn't know that it had moved, though), you should be set for most characters.

[Talbain]

I generally try to avoid scans due to them being terrible. Thus it's difficult to find quality images of old games.
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[BenoitRen]

I prefer digital versions over scans, too, but I wouldn't say scans are terrible.
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Get Xenoblade Chronicles!

[Jigsaw]

Maybe this'll help

[Gorblax]

As long as Princess Peach is Super Mario Bros. 2 Princess Peach it's cool. Maybe from that soccer game. The art in that was pretty cool.
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[Takashi]

Suitably (spoilers) SMB2 is a dream.
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low-end.net | Whimsy (soon) | Serfdom 2.0

[Talbain]

[GrimmSweeper]

I'd almost push you into looking at Heather Mason, the protagonist from Silent Hill 3, as an addition. The horror genre is kind of missing an entry although SH3 came out in 2003 which you already have Jade, another competent protagonist with a relate-able personality and Lyndis from Fire Emblem.

[Sly Buccelli]

Try http://www.creativeuncut.com/
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[Rokkan]

thank you so much Talbain, that site helped me a lot!!

the only ones missing really are Um Jammer Lammy, Kumatora, GlaDOS, Agatha from Pokémon, General Beatrix and Mae from Shining Force

there are some that I have but aren't very good/could do with one or two more good pictures, which are Vanessa from Virtua Fighter, Elaine from Monkey Island, Alyx from Half-Life, Yelena from Deus Ex (got good pictures of her but they're either low-res or with a lot of jpeg artifacts), Medusa from Kid Icarus (there's only one artwork of her i think) and Isabelle from Animal Crossing

[CubaLibre]

[Talbain]

Rokkan, I'll try and find some better versions for you, but if you don't mind, can you link what you have for the characters you want so I can get an idea of what to look for?

Also, glad you like my site. Hoping it will be a visual resource people want to use in the future. Let me know if there are characters on white backgrounds that you would prefer with transparency, as I may be able to provide them if I have the original.
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[schroeder]

[Jigsaw]

I happen to have a scan of the UmJammer Lammy box as well, if that helps.

[Talbain]

You might also try http://thecoverproject.net
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[Rokkan]

My Vanessa (Virtua Fighter) pictures are her only high-res render from Virtua Fighter 5 and a sorta low-res render of her from Virtua Fighter 4, I think these are the only pictures that are available of her online.

My Alyx pictures are the ones from your website, which are pretty high-res but she's always "cut" or overshadowed by Gordon Freeman, and this one which is pretty good and I don't think your website has it https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/20235127/ALYX1.jpg

My Yelena pictures are basically the ones found in the Deus Ex wiki http://deusex.wikia.com/wiki/Yelena_Fedorova but as you can see, if you zoom in you'll quickly notice they're upscaled and full of jpeg artifacts and stuff, but it's no biggie, i can paint over it and enhance them manually

My Elaine pictures are these two https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/20235127/ELAINE1.jpg https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/20235127/ELAINE2.jpg and the amazingly high-res cover that you have of the first Monkey Island game, the problems are that, as you can see, the first one not only is just a sketch but is also hideously upscaled & full of jpeg artifacts. The second one is a really good picture but I really wish I had a full body one, and in the lucasarts cover art, there's that monkey in front of her. I'm thinking of maybe painting that sketch to make it look like the second picture, maybe. I really wish there was artwork available of her from the first games that weren't in-game pixel-art and her appearance in the first game's cover art.

Isabelle, I can't seem to find anything from her other than these two artworks: http://library.servare.org/picture.php?/3719/category/652 and http://library.servare.org/picture.php?/3703/category/650 there's lots of fanart of her though, I might just ask someone's fanart or draw it myself.

And finally, Medusa from Kid Icarus, I think this is the only available artwork of her online http://library.servare.org/picture.php?/55698/category/3983
Maybe there's some artwork of her in the instruction manual for the Famicom game? I don't know, can't find any.

[Talbain]

I've only got the Virtua Fighter 5 renders, I wasn't able to find any good Yelena renders, though I will have to wait for a friend to get back to me about those. I've some low-res concept art for Elaine, but not much else. Alyx is kinda the same. I might have some different poses for Medusa and Isabelle, as well as some renders of them, but I don't have any art of their older incarnations.

I'll do some more asking around and see what I can dig up.
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[Rokkan]

Different poses for Medusa and Isabelle are awesome, if you can find those I'd love them!

[luvcraft]

this is a really good list! I hope you can do a run of a physical book for this, because I'd REALLY like to replace my daughter's "Disney Princess Encyclopedia" with it. :)
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[BenoitRen]

I haven't played much of Sega's Nightshade yet, but in someone else's list of strong female characters Hibana (the main character) from that game was present.
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Get Xenoblade Chronicles!

[Rokkan]

I can't find artwork of Hibana that's not gross. Her outfit is also super sexualized, so I decided to not put her in. Ibuki was going to replace her as the kunoichi representative, but then I also replaced Ibuki with Makoto because Makoto is so awesome & it's so rare we find a female character like that in fightmans.

luvcraft, that makes me super happy! This book in particular will probably just be for my class but I'm definitely keeping what you said in mind, and will try my best at it!! :)

Oh yeah, also, I forgot to put there, I can't find good hi-res artworks of Akira from Rival Schools. I just found a ton of artworks but they're all very low-res and also very cropped.

[BenoitRen]

Are you serious? I found some tasteful images of Hibana without even trying. This is definitely not gross, though I can see how the see-through parts of the outfit sexualise her.
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Get Xenoblade Chronicles!

[Rud31]

It's doing the ass-boobs shot.
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My Hawt Blog Vita Games

THERE ARE DEFINITELY WORSE VIDEO GAME PODCASTS

[Rei]

[Toptube]

I noticed you have Faith from Mirror's Edge in the "Redraw" section. I'm a bit confused on that, because there's good, high-res stuff on her easily found:

http://www.bing.com/images/search?pq=faith+mirror%27s+edge&sc=5-19&sp=-1&sk=&q=faith+mirror%27s+edge&qft=+filterui:imagesize-wallpaper&FORM=R5IR4


Make sure you turn on the "Safesearch" unless you don't mind seeing some poorly done nude cosplay.

[BenoitRen]

[Jigsaw]

Or you could go with an actual illustration by Makoto Tsuchibayashi, who designed her

As for Akira, here's a scan from Capcom Design Works. It's not perfect but maybe better than what you've been able to find.


If you find any of my links useful, but would like help with any form of image editing or whatever, just let me know.

[Rokkan]

Toptube: No it's not! It says 4 pictures in perfect condition! I got a bunch of high-quality images of her! Thanks a lot though!

Jigsaw: THANK YOU, that is very high-res and it's also full-body, thank you so much! I can do image editing myself, but I'll let you know in case I need some help!


I might reconsider Hibana and Jill Valentine in, and also consider Heather Mason, Lucia and Joanna Dark, I'll let you folks know!

[winkerwatson]

Dino Crisis?
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tim?

[Rokkan]

Added Heather Mason, Hibana from Nightshade/Kunoichi, Regina from Dino Crisis and Ellie from Borderlands 2 into the list! Got good high-res pictures of all of them!

[Glam Grimfire]

nilin in remember me
sticking to just the official game art, stay away from the advertisements (that whitewash her)
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##SKELETON PARTY (new article as of 04/26/14)Grim

[Jigsaw]

Oh um if you're taking suggestions you might want to look into D'arci Stern from Urban Chaos and Aveline de Grandpré from Assassin's Creed III Liberation, both rare examples of (mostly non-sexualized?) black female protagonists.

[CubaLibre]

I am of the serious and very real opinion that the best female character in videogames is the Terran dropship pilot in Starcraft. All business.



Of course she is basically just a character from Aliens but still.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Ronnoc]

[CubaLibre]

Oh man, good call. Space Marine didn't get the love it should have.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Talbain]

Here's an alternate concept art for Kazama Akira that was used for Onimusha Soul:
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[Rokkan]

hey!! sorry for not keeping you guys posted about it, I'm hard at work on it, currently finished 13 pages out of 28 (not counting index, introduction, cover and whatnot, just the character pages), but here's something I finished just now:



wasn't really happy with the few high-res artworks of Alis available, so I decided to redraw the title screen pixel-art of her!

will post more previews soon!