More scarecrowing? Everyone understands the points being made, but it does little to help the overall argument against the changes. You want her to be beautiful, a real lady/drow? ok got it. But other people have different standards of beauty, or maybe think that beauty is not necessarily the goal here, but perhaps something else like a sense of menace, so now we're at an impasse. But if you just focus on what you don't like rather than wrapping it in those other things, it's possible to have a conversation about the art that doesn't just degenerate into culture politics in like 2 seconds. When you imply that such and such a visual aesthetic is an endorsement of a certain worldview or whatever, you lose traction with half the audience that thinks you are reading into it things which aren't really there. Or maybe they will dismiss you on the grounds that your culture politics don't seem to align with their own, and so they choose the new look just be contrarian in that way. Relying on crib terms like "woke" and then threatening the specter of failed sales or all caps disaster to make your points, substituting your own view for that of product consumers around the world, it just makes many peoples eyes gloss over too. Sorry, but that's what happens. It might actually be possible to change a couple minds on the specific point at issue, but drag in all the rest of that stuff and you lose the argument before it even starts. The reason there are 3 threads now, is because they keep getting derailed by people trying to be social provocateurs, and for some reason choosing this Minthara molehill as the one to die on. I mean everyone here is a visual traditionalist already, at least in the sense that the BG3 art is all figurative and grounded in the traditional. It's not wading into conceptualism or unmoored by abstraction from any way to actually talk about it as art without relying on philosophy. But whatever, I guess some of these divides are just totally intractable now and this stuff is going to be a ubiquitous feature of modern life for anything that involves criticism of any sort. But seriously, we're here talking about the makeup right now. I don't think my preference for black eyeliner over silver eyeliner in this particular instance says anything whatsoever about my views on gender, or women, or normality. Or I don't know, maybe it actually does, but that conversation probably isn't terribly interesting and its unlikely to move anyone in the art department. So why does that need to get inserted into the conversation? It doesn't. It really doesn't.
The main point in favor of the old makeup haircut and outfit (over the new makeup, haircut and outfit), is that the old look produced better cast shadows and made the figure appear more vignetted in shadow. They seemed to hold better both in low light conditions and in full light conditions, as evidence from the many side by sides in this thread. The play off the environment lighting was stronger, whether that light is scattering blue or flickering orange. The animations were stronger too. Everything about her appearance was bolder and more impactful in the previous rendering. Regardless of whether one finds Minthara objectively hot or not, or thinks that's important for whatever reason. They don't need to make the cover of vogue italia here, but I think they should aim for a good villainous aesthetic since this is one of the main villains in act 1. You know, if you're looking for a tradtion, how about long tradition of villainous looks from D&D fantasy art, since that's the only one that should really matter here.
