An Essay on the Size of Cartoon Boobs
Dec. 30th, 2010 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redneckgaijinFirst, look at this sketchbook page from El Goonish Shive.
This is hardly the first time I've encountered the theme of "why are cartoon/superhero breasts so goddamn big?" Usually I encounter it firsthand; there's always one pair or group of people at a convention who will pass the White Lightning Productions booth and snark to each other about how horribly large the racks of certain characters are. Usually my reaction is to remain silent, pretend I can't hear the conversation they're having six feet from me (which is actually true sometimes- some dealer rooms are NOISY), and let it go.
Not always- and not when those remarks are directed straight at me. For those times when I can't ignore the comments, I have a pat response, and here it is.
There are practical and aesthetic reasons for enhancing the female anatomy in comics, and particularly in heroic comic stories (superheroes, anime, etc.). First the practical: the artist is trying to portray three-dimensional bodies, with shade and depth, in a two-dimensional medium where the little visual clues that let us see three-dimensional objects as such don't always function. Among other things, this means that some exaggeration is required to convey the same concept on a flat art page compared to real life.
Don't believe me? Take, if you will, two people of roughly equal height and build- one male, one female. Take full-length body photos of each. Print the photos out. Then reduce the photos so that these full-length photos are one inch tall. Then take a trace of the outline of both forms- ONLY the outline- and get someone else to pick out which outline is male and which is female.
Unless you've got a female with a spectacularly exaggerated figure already, your test subject is going to have a bit of difficulty doing it.
The flat fact of the matter is, in real life the differences between a male and female figure generally aren't that great. It gets worse if you take away cultural hints to sexuality- fashion, hair style, patterns of body movement. When the reality of parallax vision is replaced with the illusion of perspective drawing, and the whole is shrunk down to a much smaller (and variable) scale, it gets worse yet. The only answer is to give a little exaggeration to that outline- enhance the feminine curve enough that it's quite distinct from the male.
Thus the practical; now for the aesthetic. Heroic figures, as a general rule, are idealized. The reader (and indeed the creators) want to imagine themselves as the hero, as the central figure, to fantasize about being able to do things they can't in real life. A very significant component of this idealization is sexual; heroes are more beautiful, more handsome, better built than what the reader sees in everyday life. In a male figure (since in our culture the "package" is taboo) that usually means a reasonably fit figure, with a tendency to muscularity and height. (And before you begin picking anime or manga characters as counterexamples: what percentage of male anime leads are fat? Ugly? Incapable of any prolonged physical exertion? Yeah.)
With females (since the crotch is not only taboo but pretty much invisible from any distance) the points of exaggeration are, to be blunt, T & A.
So, let's say you want a superheroine with D-cups and a firm, round rear. Let's say, furthermore, that a real life woman meeting these criteria is willing to pose in the costume you've designed for this superheroine. You take her photo, print it out, shrink it down, and take the outline as described in the experiment above...
... and you'll find it very little different from the ordinary-people outcome. As like as not your real-life shapely superheroine will actually compare unfavorably to the touched-up normal female you had to take liberties with to make her identifiable as female in a drawing.
That means, for a sexually idealized female cartoon character, the artist has to go to a SECOND level of exaggeration. The balloon-boobs begin to appear, as does the wasp-waist. The result will send anyone looking at the image with a literalist mind straight into "that's impossible, her back must hurt" griping. For the rest of us, the illusion works- we see, in this distorted figure, the equivalent of a more normal shapely real woman.
Of course, the vast majority of what I do with White Lightning Productions involves a third level of exaggeration- fetishism. Some of us have fantasies of figures that do not exist, cannot exist, or at least would not be attractive at all in real life. The comic and animation mediums allow such as we to indulge these fantasies, going well beyond what is necessary to convey depth, shape and difference of figure.
Now, going back to the character that inspired this- April O'Neil, the She-Who-Must-Be-Rescued from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and specifically from the first animated series- she doesn't look all that exaggerated to me. Granted, I remember a couple of episodes when that jump suit zipper was pulled down a little to show cleavage- possibly the animation studio trying to slip something past the censors. On the whole, though, the exaggeration appears to me to only be first-order, this-is-not-male exaggeration. If you want second-order or even third-order examples, you have to turn to the mountains of fan and fantasy art of the character.
So, when Dan Shive comments on influence, it's not necessary to require exaggerating the female figure... but if he claims it as a reason, then I suspect there are... well... other results of that influence which might be producing a feedback loop, with the results in, well, an evenly divisible number of places. }:-{D
Me? I make no excuses. I like big boobs, especially if/when they're destroying clothing from the inside out. It's far from my only interest in either storytelling or artwork... but it does take up a large portion of my creative time...
This is hardly the first time I've encountered the theme of "why are cartoon/superhero breasts so goddamn big?" Usually I encounter it firsthand; there's always one pair or group of people at a convention who will pass the White Lightning Productions booth and snark to each other about how horribly large the racks of certain characters are. Usually my reaction is to remain silent, pretend I can't hear the conversation they're having six feet from me (which is actually true sometimes- some dealer rooms are NOISY), and let it go.
Not always- and not when those remarks are directed straight at me. For those times when I can't ignore the comments, I have a pat response, and here it is.
There are practical and aesthetic reasons for enhancing the female anatomy in comics, and particularly in heroic comic stories (superheroes, anime, etc.). First the practical: the artist is trying to portray three-dimensional bodies, with shade and depth, in a two-dimensional medium where the little visual clues that let us see three-dimensional objects as such don't always function. Among other things, this means that some exaggeration is required to convey the same concept on a flat art page compared to real life.
Don't believe me? Take, if you will, two people of roughly equal height and build- one male, one female. Take full-length body photos of each. Print the photos out. Then reduce the photos so that these full-length photos are one inch tall. Then take a trace of the outline of both forms- ONLY the outline- and get someone else to pick out which outline is male and which is female.
Unless you've got a female with a spectacularly exaggerated figure already, your test subject is going to have a bit of difficulty doing it.
The flat fact of the matter is, in real life the differences between a male and female figure generally aren't that great. It gets worse if you take away cultural hints to sexuality- fashion, hair style, patterns of body movement. When the reality of parallax vision is replaced with the illusion of perspective drawing, and the whole is shrunk down to a much smaller (and variable) scale, it gets worse yet. The only answer is to give a little exaggeration to that outline- enhance the feminine curve enough that it's quite distinct from the male.
Thus the practical; now for the aesthetic. Heroic figures, as a general rule, are idealized. The reader (and indeed the creators) want to imagine themselves as the hero, as the central figure, to fantasize about being able to do things they can't in real life. A very significant component of this idealization is sexual; heroes are more beautiful, more handsome, better built than what the reader sees in everyday life. In a male figure (since in our culture the "package" is taboo) that usually means a reasonably fit figure, with a tendency to muscularity and height. (And before you begin picking anime or manga characters as counterexamples: what percentage of male anime leads are fat? Ugly? Incapable of any prolonged physical exertion? Yeah.)
With females (since the crotch is not only taboo but pretty much invisible from any distance) the points of exaggeration are, to be blunt, T & A.
So, let's say you want a superheroine with D-cups and a firm, round rear. Let's say, furthermore, that a real life woman meeting these criteria is willing to pose in the costume you've designed for this superheroine. You take her photo, print it out, shrink it down, and take the outline as described in the experiment above...
... and you'll find it very little different from the ordinary-people outcome. As like as not your real-life shapely superheroine will actually compare unfavorably to the touched-up normal female you had to take liberties with to make her identifiable as female in a drawing.
That means, for a sexually idealized female cartoon character, the artist has to go to a SECOND level of exaggeration. The balloon-boobs begin to appear, as does the wasp-waist. The result will send anyone looking at the image with a literalist mind straight into "that's impossible, her back must hurt" griping. For the rest of us, the illusion works- we see, in this distorted figure, the equivalent of a more normal shapely real woman.
Of course, the vast majority of what I do with White Lightning Productions involves a third level of exaggeration- fetishism. Some of us have fantasies of figures that do not exist, cannot exist, or at least would not be attractive at all in real life. The comic and animation mediums allow such as we to indulge these fantasies, going well beyond what is necessary to convey depth, shape and difference of figure.
Now, going back to the character that inspired this- April O'Neil, the She-Who-Must-Be-Rescued from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and specifically from the first animated series- she doesn't look all that exaggerated to me. Granted, I remember a couple of episodes when that jump suit zipper was pulled down a little to show cleavage- possibly the animation studio trying to slip something past the censors. On the whole, though, the exaggeration appears to me to only be first-order, this-is-not-male exaggeration. If you want second-order or even third-order examples, you have to turn to the mountains of fan and fantasy art of the character.
So, when Dan Shive comments on influence, it's not necessary to require exaggerating the female figure... but if he claims it as a reason, then I suspect there are... well... other results of that influence which might be producing a feedback loop, with the results in, well, an evenly divisible number of places. }:-{D
Me? I make no excuses. I like big boobs, especially if/when they're destroying clothing from the inside out. It's far from my only interest in either storytelling or artwork... but it does take up a large portion of my creative time...
