Street Fighter 6 [SF6] is coming out next year 2023. And they've got a new character called Kimberly... the trailer was dropped yesterday on Youtube. I just had to comment on this and give the artists & 3D modelers at
Capcom a shout-out, for creating a beautiful African American / black young lady. As a young kunoichi / ninja gal, Kimberly seems to be a role replacement for Ibuki [who may still get released in a DLC package. We'll see how that goes].
Kimberly has high cheek bones, a compact egg-shaped face, and long black hair... yet she is beautiful to gaze upon, while yielding a warm energetic vibe. And I applaud that design choice.
And you can never compare her aesthetics as a black gal to the female character called Sarah Sharpe, who was a new leading character shown in the Netflix movie called The Sea Beast, released this year [June 2022]... And... Lord have mercy... Sarah also had high cheek bones, but she was one of the Ugliest black female characters I've ever seen in a big budget 3D cartoon, who was presented as a leading character. Her overall appearance as a tough one-legged pirate was just a very poor design choice by the character designers, and the animators had no choice but to roll with it.
That's Sarah's face shown below, with her equivocally stamped expression for happy, sad, unimpressed, and nonchalant, all rolled into one.
I'm in my 40s. and I've noticed that some young fans have called Sarah Sharpe "the Best Character" in the movie, despite the fact that she's shown in total for less than 20 minutes, out of the 119 minutes running time. I will not debate or endorse that claim... I'm just stating that the design of that one-legged black pirate chick who just too ugly AF. The character designers Could Have done better. There was no law that said she has to be ugly, since she is a tough and battle-tested pirate / monster huntress. Honestly, the director should never have green-lit this design, which is shown below on the right.
Over the past 18 years, I've drawn and designed over 800 characters for the DSNG Sci Fi Series, while presenting my works as 26 Mature ebooks available online, HERE. And I've made over 100 custom toys, in the 6-inch scale. But I don't post every single work online, because I'm too busy.
And from a toy creator's perspective, I can tell you that the toys of a character like Sarah Sharpe will have a huge problem standing up on its own... with one wooden leg, especially when you try to set it in some dynamic poses. And per her appearance, SHE WILL NOT SELL WELL AS AN ARTICULATED TOY.
The thing is, these characters in leading roles, most of the time, are supposed to be role models that the viewing kids can aspire to, especially in a flick that is tagged as a family movie. Little girls look up to the leading heroic ladies that they see on the screen, whether it's a Wonder Woman, or even a Sarah Sharpe. So it's wise to makes sure that the character looks good... and she can even be designed to look good with a wooden leg - which was clearly designed to be the frontal spike of a swordfish, so that she can have killer karate kicks, and kick the sea monsters in their eyeballs, I presume. Look, if I have time, in the future, I'll do a redesign of Sarah, in my style. But not today or tomorrow.... just Google "dsng blog art" to see a small sample of my artwork & custom toys, mostly fished out of this DSNG blog, which has been around since like 2010.
And as as parent, can you imagine the struggles of your young daughter having to dress up as a character with one leg, while other kids will criticize her if she shows up with "two boots" on her legs? You know that kids talk a lot and they say tons of random shit like that! They are brutally honest and they don't care if they hurt someone else's feelings!
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