Thursday, May 9, 2013

Kris Anka Talks Redesigns

"And just to speak for myself, modesty was never a factor. I never approached Storm's, or Psylocke's, or Spiral's designs with the sole intention of hiding their skin. The amount of real estate that ended up being covered or not was ENTIRELY dictated by my attempt to respect the character. There was no "Psylocke has to be fully covered because it would be indecent for any of her skin to be showing". I wanted to have her covered because I felt that a character who is performing stealth assassinations would want as little would-able flesh showing."  Full Article

6 comments:

FSaker said...

Great article! And that's what I like about Anka's outfit for Psylocke: it fits with her personality and abilities.

It makes perfect sense for her NOT to wear high heels; the black color makes it more stealthy (in Gillen's Psylocke's words, she's a bloody ninja, after all), while the white "X" on her chest gives the outfit more personality and also remins the readers that she's a proud X-Woman (even when she's in black-ops with the X-Force). And the purple sash is a great throwback to her (in?)famous bathing suit.

Humphries's Uncanny X-Force unfortunately has been a letdown so far, but if there's a reason for us to be grateful that it exists (other than the great arts from Ron Garney and Adrian Alphona), it's the new costumes that Psylocke and Storm got. Both women look amazing right now, and I'm very glad to know that they will also wear these uniforms in Wood's X-Men.

FSaker said...

*remins = reminds

Sorry for the typo...

Australian Outback said...

He sounds pretty defensive. I didn't realize there was so much backlash against his costume, I thought I was pretty much the only one, lol. Although I really like the costume, I'm just not feeling that big X on her chest, as was discussed below. In fact, I really think that it is just for looks. Seeing his original drawing, it looks freaking cool. I think I like it better as a black and grey costume, with the little arm cutouts. I can see how black and grey is "stealthy". It looks like these details were changed afterwards by other artists. Really, if we're talking function for a stealthy ninja, a huge white chest emblem serves no purpose. Much better if it were darker.

FSaker said...

From what I saw in CBR, the backlash came mainly from one guy who complained about heroines getting new uniforms that cover more skin in general, not specifically about Psylocke's new outfit (the guy was kinda sexist in his comments, actually). Most readers of that column actually complimented Betsy's new uniform.

Anka seems to be speaking about the general discussion in that article, about what works and what doesn't work to make a heroine looks sexy without becoming cheap fanservice.

Anonymous said...

I love the new look. Sad fanboy is mad because teh boobez are covered? That's not news.

Zebedee said...

I think he did a great job, very Emma Peel.