^-^ by Ayatamilin 18/06/08 - with added sideboob
This is part of a new series I’m starting that compiles profiles of certain themes within the Fanart that Blizzard chooses to publish in their Fanart Gallery. I was going to start out with Draenei Women, but that post is going to take a long time to compile. Future themes will feature each race, and some profiles will focus on particular characters. Due to the way Blizzard handle their gallery, I have chosen to only display occasional thumbnails rather than try to create a giant comparison pic. I’ll be listing the pictures in the order they were posted, oldest first. I’ll try to keep commentary to a minimum, and I want to make it clear that I am not accusing anyone of anything or taking offense at anything – artists are not a hivemind trying to oppress women but they do impact on and reveal the way we as a modern society view gender. This isn’t about demanding an equal amount of ‘male characters in male model poses’ in the Fanart Gallery.
The Published Fan Art
- Blood of Zul’jin by Drake Fenwick 26/09/05
- Brightbeauty and her Wolf by David Koppenhaver 27/07/06
- Voi and Hex by Caralyn Edwards 10/08/06
- Beffy and Masti explore Winterspring by Beth Trott 15/12/06
- The Adventures of Messy Cow by Chen Weng 22/08/07
- Break in the Shade by Melissa O’Brien 26/09/07
- Druid Touch by Gonzales Reyes 14/11/07
- School of Warcraft by Beth Trott 29/05/08
- ^-^ by Ayatamilin 18/06/08
- Sporeggarrr by Giyoung Han 18/06/08
- Naptime by Bytail 18/06/08
- Female Tauren Druid, Healing by Morten Olgenkaer 17/09/08
- Death Knights’ Caramel Dancin’ by Charlotte Su 25/03/09
- Girl Fight by Dan Miner 13/05/09
- [Warbear by Constantin Bentlewski 19/08/09] – If only the artist hadn’t put a beard in.
Actually a male - Druid in T8 by linxz 16/09/09
- Jera, Tauren Druid by Kate Craig 07/10/09
Comments/Conclusions
The obvious thing that strikes me personally is how cute these pictures all seem to be. Only the Tauren in ‘Girl Fight’ seems to come close to looking angry or threatening. Most of the Tauren female fanart is extremely cartoony, and as expected has a high proportion of healer and hunter depictions, as well as a lot of boobtacular art. Facial expressions vary from ‘cute and child like‘ to ‘come hither’.
Blood of Zul’jin by Drake Fenwick 26/09/05 - BIG cute eyes
Understandably artists will draw what they want to, and what they find comfortable doing so – I’m certainly not going to argue the right of artistic expression, but it is interesting to see how the most physically powerful women are mostly rendered as non-threatening, passive characters. It’s a big contrast to the majority of the male Tauren, who are anywhere from outright berserking, to comedic, to simply standing and looking proud, although another issue there is that the male spellcasters are also somewhat passive. This is partly a reflection on the feel of the race – calm, nature lovin’ hippies aren’t all nasty and fierce, and yet the male character are presented to be as brutal as their green-skinned cousins.
The only Gnomish and Dwarven women are much less present in the fan art gallery, but I find the ubiquity of the ‘cute’ art very interesting. Tauren have non-standard bodies (both the men and women), so they are likely to be more difficult to get to grips with for an artist. It’s very hard to separate Tauren from the people they are closely informed by – Native Americans. Female Tauren are generally presented as calm and close to nature, as hunters or druids, and the cartoonish nature of female tauren art echoes the cartoonish appropriation of Native American culture in World of Warcraft. While artists seem very willing to depict male Tauren in a very savage way, the female Tauren tend to embody the ‘noble’ part of the Noble Savage trope in Fan Art.
Beffy and Masti explore Winterspring by Beth Trott 15/12/06
Tauren art is also relatively free of the playboy poses and extreme painted-on-clothes that plague Elves and Draenei Art. I find the Beffy and Masti explore Winterspring an interesting piece because it actually does depict a non-typical female body, although it still plays into the plate bikini/boobs trope and the character still has an extremely small waist. Her stance isn’t ‘sexy’, and her expression certainly isn’t inviting. In the background we see a passive, male tauren druid healer who isn’t dressed in a loincloth. This piece, viewed through a feminist lens, is more body positive than the majority of women in the Fanart Gallery, despite continuing to perpetuate annoyances.
So what, Pewter?
Well, I think if there are artists looking to paint something different, the above listing shows us the acceptable fan art of Tauren females that Blizzard has published. Tauren female characters are clearly painted into a certain box, perhaps you as an artist can think about painting them into a different box. Tauren females are capable of just about everything a man is capable of in World of Warcraft – they can be chieftans, spiritual leaders, and while they may not have the power of the men, they certain can match most other races for pure strength. If Blizzard does receive Tauren art that is different, I hope they will publish it to give us some more variety.
I’m nowhere near as good of an artist as the people who get submitted to fanart – I just doodle a bit sometimes for fun. I have to admit that when I do draw WoW characters they end up scantily clad – it has two reasons, the WoW armour with intricate details is friggin difficult to draw; and the armour I do draw.. well for women the WoW armour generally is rather revealing.
I can see what you’re saying though, and it would be great to see some fanart where they might be outside of the box. Like a fierce, female warrior would be awesome. I don’t really care if she wears a plate bikini as long as she looks like she can take care of herself. (I still can’t believe my warrior is running around with a bare tummy tanking bosses.. really, they should be able to chop her in half.) If you want to use WoW armour in drawings, it will look like plate bikinis, but if we could at least have them not look all docile and sweet and cute.. that’d be a start.
Saga´s last [type] ..Comments & Replies
Personally it would be nice to see some non-bikini plate as well, but at this stage just a greater variety of activities and facial expressions (and art styles) would be a bonus
. None of these pictures is bad alone. There’s nothing wrong with expressing sexuality or drawing something that is attractive. I think Blizzard can do more, although I understand they have to work with what they’ve got, I’d love to see a bigger range of Tauren Women in the Fan art Gallery.
Some of the Death Knight drawings for other races are actually pretty damn amazing.
Watching the fan-art in general just makes me go “omg I wish I could draw like that!”
I can agree that seeing something other than plate-bikinis would be good. That gives me an idea for a drawing I’m working on though *lol* I like old-fashioned pin-ups.. you know, back in the day when the women still had curves and wore something resembling clothing? (Marilin Monroe comes to mind) I have a series of drawings I’m working on of my three “main” characters in a pin-up setting – maybe the one with my warrior should be her removing an *actual* plate bikini
Saga´s last [type] ..Comments & Replies
Forgot to type; to show how absolutely ludicrous it is. (Plate bikinis that is)
Saga´s last [type] ..Comments & Replies
That could be interesting
You know how OW MY NIPPLES and CHAFING are cries we normally make when chainmail bikinis are brought up? How would that impact on the Tauren? bare patches in uncomfortable places?
I attempt to sketch Tauren women often (since I play one!), but they’re pretty hard to draw! Getting the face right is hard (the muzzle, mostly), so I can understand why people try to ‘cutify’ it – then you don’t have to worry so much about the proportions and instead draw ‘in your own style’. Not that I wouldn’t appreciate more serious lady-Tauren art, because we are awesome.
What annoys me (unrelated to fanart) is that female Tauren, while looking stronger than just about everyone else in game, have to use TWO HANDS while using the mining pick, while all of the men only use one hand! I know we could do it one handed, too!
I find it interesting there is plenty of very non-cute male tauren art out there though
I completely understand though – artistic process and ability isn’t a simple thing.
The thought of female tauren using two hands for the mining pick reminds me of the first time I saw dwarf women mine. I made a sad face.
Pewter, what about Warbear? I thought she looked menacing, well maybe not actually menacing, but certainly stern and tough. I sure wouldn’t want to mess with her. Also, I think she’s the only druid represented in the tank role.
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She looks stern and calm to me. If it wasn’t for ‘warbear’ I wouldn’t know to think of her as a representative of the tanks at all
But you are right, her image is the exception, but it still doesn’t represent equivalency to the range of male Tauren representations (which have their own problematic tropes.)
Okay, note to self: Draw very fierce Tauren woman at first opportunity! This is going to be a really interesting series, Pewter. I look forward to reading your observations!
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Thank you! I’ve also had suggestions for topics on fanart commissions, but I feel like that would require more academic method knowledge (of the study of art as well as gender) than I currently possess (as well as being much more intensive search wise.) I look forward to seeing your fierce tauren woman, so please keep me updated on that
The dwarf in “Girl Fight” made me cry.
It’s hard to really evaluate art to some degree, because what we may perceive as one thing could be seen as entirely different based on the style. For instance, I’m curious if the “big cute eyes” issue you mentioned is often more a function of anime artists? Anime always struck me as having oversized eyes on both male and female characters.
Tauren are also interesting because honestly, it can be tricky to tell the men apart from the women for the untrained eye in-game. For instance, I’m almost solely an alliance player, and when I had to find a female tauren for an achievement, I was lost. I’m sure the folks looking for female dwarves felt the same way, heh. I wonder if in order to mimnimize that, the artowrk overemphasizes certain “characteristic” female traits?
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I actually play horde, and only just realized recently that our Tank/Tree druid has a female avatar (he’s a male player). He spends so much time shapeshifted, and even his druid is in her caster form, the gear is really shrouding. Since we have no male Tauren that regularly attend, it’s easy to assume the largest shape in the room is a male. So I can see how that might lead to some exaggeration in fanart: “People can’t tell that my avatar is female in-game, so I’ll make it really obvious in my image.”
But when it comes to alliance races, it’s actually gnomes with visible helms that I can’t tell apart. There’s not always enough body there to have a recognizable silhouette.
Rhii´s last [type] ..In which the grouchy old lady caves… to the pressures of needing a cool new toy to play with on her cool new phone
Possibly, although I had very little difficulty figuring out from the art if something was male or female – they have rather distinct postures. I do agree that a lot of it is art style function – but that’s an argument that is also used for the high ratios of boobs/waist/hip stuff. I can understand the confusion in game a bit, but not all that much because tauren males are so broad-shouldered.
One of the common ‘jokes’ about tauren and orcs tend to be based around gender-confusion or poking fun at trans*. Despite very clearly possessing breasts and veering towards an hourglass sillouette, they still hit points associated with masculinity, so the idea that artists are overemphasising breasts, eyelashes, and using passive poses as a reaction to this is interesting.
I have the same problem with gnomes – helms just take over! I shall save my comments for the next profile though
I’m currently working on next week profile which is on the gnomish women, and it makes me giggle that leia buns and bunches are pretty much the only hairstyles picked 
The gnome compilation process is a lot of fun, because they have some great art in the gallery.
Are you sure Warbear is a female? Not that I wouldn’t like it to be, but the character has a nose ring and a beard, both attributes that are only possessed by male tauren in the game…
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@ Shintar, I noticed that as well, I think that one is a male Tauren.
Also, the title of the picture is ‘Warbearer’, not Warbear. I believe it might be a male Tauren warrior and not a druid or a bear at all.
So it is. I didn’t even see the beard the first time I saw it. *sadfase* edited out.
I play a female Tauren hunter, and it is kind of a downer to see so few depictions of us in official art. When was was added to the Kalimdor loading screen, it made me disproportionally happy. Even in the cardgame it seems there are few Tauren females, and there has yet to be a figurine of one made (I’d buy it in a heartbeat if they did!)
I scribbled a sketch of a Tauren female ages ago, back during open beta: http://www27.brinkster.com/taisetsu/MyTaurenFem.gif
It makes me cringe when I see them drawn with hourglass waists and large boobs — they are as far from ‘pinup’ type women as can be!
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@Pai – It won’t let me view that image, Pai
I must say that seeing female tauren bodies depicted with MUSCLES makes me pretty happy too.
@Pewter – http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/Pietoro/webjunk/MyTaurenFem.gif =)
I like them because you can tell, just by looking at them, that they’re strong and could really smash things up if they wanted to, yet they’re not all ‘roided out like most Horde males.
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@Pai – Definitely! I’m doing an Illidan one of these next, I think, but I may need to pull in a collaborator to finish it.
I just recently found this piece of Tauren art, which is pretty awesome imo: http://cghub.com/images/view/385/