Opinions on nudity please. NSFW 18+ Topic and imagery

[bmacbride]

Didn't read 100% of the comments, but I'm gonna side mostly with @KaiLynx and say that if you're going for a design which combines the ancient and the futuristic, bare-chested is a completely valid way to go. Women and men walked around bare-chested in tons of ancient societies. However, I would also make sure the men in this society go around as uncovered as the women (unless maybe this is a society which flips the tradition of chaste/submissive women and brazen/athletic men, that might be pretty cool!)

I'd also like to add that while the anatomy here is good, and it's awesome that you're working from a live reference, in societies where women do not wear supportive garments or bind their breasts, breasts are not this perky. The women of the Himba tribe are a really good reference for completely unsupported breasts. Keep up the awesome work!

My personal opinion on nudity is: I like it. I like it in almost any context, as long as the artist strives for a naturalistic figure (hey Rob Liefeld, women DO have organs, you know!) which you totally seem to be doing, and you're doing a beautiful job. The human body is beautiful, and my favorite thing to draw is nudes. As an adult comic artist, I feel your pain lol. I've been advised before by the administrators to slap a NSFW filter on bare breasts and exposed genitalia. Even in a non-sexual context.

[GlanceReviver]

The concept of NSFW is funny to me, because the topic doesn't mean "porn" it means "Not Safe For Work." There's a lot of stuff I could get in trouble at work for looking at, or that at the least would be difficult for me to explain (haha) without it being sexual or even nude.

[Banditt]

Thank you @Savannah Dont worry, the gun will be finished also

Yes totally @bmacbride thats why I was saying about a barbarian society, like the whole Conan thing: where everyone is displaying physical vitality. I get the tribal reference thing, but the instance of this character has a purpose It will totally make sense in the end

lol @GlanceReviver even stuff I look at that has nothing to do with nudity makes people look at me like Im totally weird! So I totally understand that!

[bmacbride]

I do personally believe that the term "NSFW" should be reserved for things like graphic nudity, heavy gore, and other visually sensitive subject matter. Reason being, if every creator on Tapastic slaps a NSFW filter over anything ranging from a curse word to a graphic sex scene, the warning loses its potency, and eventually people will become desensitized to the warning, assume it's not that bad (cursing, a little blood, an alcohol reference, etc.), open it, and actually get in trouble for viewing much more sensitive content at work. NSFW means visually sensitive content that could endanger your job, not get you a few weird looks at work. In my opinion, if the worst a comic contains is cursing and some violence, that should just go in a small warning text in your comic description, not under a NSFW filter.

[GlanceReviver]

I would rather have specific tags and/or age restrictions in lieu of the use of NSFW all together, since it's only you who knows what's safe for your work environment. That ranges in different job environments and cultures.

[bmacbride]

True, or maybe something like what DA does, where you can list the content of the piece right on the filter.

[futureboundentertain]

Nudity is boring and overdone... its literally the only outfit that literally every human being on the planet owns.

It has no purpose.

[chipmalinowski]

Banditt, I think I'm the perfect person to answer because I'm a gay male nudist who appreciates Frazetta and Heavy Metal and used to study martial arts. Keep foremost in mind that you control the world in which this character lives, both it's current state and its past history; therefore, the outfit she is wearing now is vital to her survival and is "normal" for her society or at least for her. You just have to get across to the readers how she learned that this outfit is the most functional in her particular world.

The simplest explanation is that it is a stone-age civilization where women typically go topless and space-age hardware is literally falling out of the sky on rare occasions, (UFO's crash landing) and this character will grab a Kevlar shirt the instant she finds one, unless she finds a freakin' Dune force field belt first. But it lacks elegance to say that random luck chooses people's gear in this world.

This woman is clearly not concerned about snipers, gunslingers, nor archers, because chest armor is primary against those foes. So the weaponry typically used against her either easily pierces armor or bypasses armor by, perhaps, attacking the nervous system.

Also she doesn't have any social/political/religious reasons to cover up, nor is there cold weather. On the other hand, maybe her society is female dominant and males are taught to cover up lest they get molested by females. Turnabout is fair play.

If this woman gets into a lot of knife fights, she would want good thick gloves, comfortable shoes, and nothing else to slow her down. But in that case the helmet better be strapped on tight and keeping her own hair from blocking her vision. Although in our world men go bare-chested while doing intense athletics, I think women with her figure prefer a sports bra for support. The helmet and heavy weapon don't give the look of a knife-fight kind of athlete.

So I gather that she is more of a calculating distance fighter. The helmet may conduct gigawatts of cosmic rays to power the heavy rifle to generate intense X-rays and other nasty radiation to cook armies in her path, whether they wear armor or not. And a helmet with that technology might have an invisible force field to replace armor and might get sweltering hot when conducting that much raw power.

I'd love to toss around more ideas with you.
Chip

[Zanreo]

I would rather have specific tags and/or age restrictions in lieu of the use of NSFW all together, since it's only you who knows what's safe for your work environment. That ranges in different job environments and cultures.

Agree - "NSFW" in itself tells you nothing if it can refer to a lot of different things. A better idea would be flags/warnings for different categories (sex, nudity, language, violence, ect) possibly with different "levels", say "violence 1" meant a bit of blood and "violence 3" means gore.

[chipmalinowski]

Authors could adopt the TV/Movie content descriptors. The comic media isn't that different.
Here's one summary: http://www.thetvboss.org/know-the-ratings/
Here's one for multiple countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_content_rating_systems#United_States
I'm sure we could add more details if we needed.

[chipmalinowski]

Here's another example of high-tech barbarian-chic and classy.
Heroes for Ghosts Chapter 2: http://tapastic.com/episode/122997

[Banditt]

Oh! sorry I have been away. I had the final of my invasive surgeries on my spine. I did get a couple things done on the comic in between everything, but not enough to post a good sequence of story.... yet.

@bmacbride, @GlanceReviver: yeah, totally.A rating system explaining what lies ahead is a good idea. I can totally do that each posting once I start putting it up.

@futureboundentertain haha right?

@chipmalinowski awesome yeah! I love creative collaboration You have good ideas and a new perspective! IVe got like 5 pages mapped out and in different stages of being done. You will see whats going on in my head more with those being posted later.

Im moving to a different state in a couple of weeks so I might not get to posting the first sequence for a good month or so.

[apocryphagraphics]

Thanks for the nod @chipmalinowski! I try very, VERY hard not to turn the female characters in my comic into sex objects and overtly sexualize them. That kind of thing is rampant in comics today. If the women are warriors I try to draw them so that they look both beautiful and truly strong and powerful without looking like they're starring in a scifi themed porno. The female character in the scene you linked lives an aboriginal existence in a tropical rainforest so she wears very little clothes, but in a true rarity in modern comics, the guy in the scene is actually wearing less than her! The characters from the advanced civilization wear a hi-tech body armor that bonds to their skin so I get to draw beautiful human bodies all day long and no one's running around naked until there's a good reason in the story for them to be! For me it's not about being puritanical about nudity, it's about not wanting to contribute to the idea that a woman's worth lies in her usefulness a sex object--even if she's a superhero!

[CWCHASE]

Very good perspective and erm... Body parts. Anyway now that I have my head straight again, I think it would actually be a hit. I would read something funny and would contain nudity and random sexcapades. A steampunk or outerspace sci-fi, or fantasy would be cool. Whatever your heart desires, just go with it, there's always an audience no matter how big or small to anything. Best of luck!

[Banditt]

Thank you very kindly. I will enjoy presenting the full project to you in time!

[doktormostro]

I believe that your idea and overall reasoning for the nudes doesn´t mean a problem, at least for me.

What others have already commented are ok, but in the end, we haven´t see the final comic and because of that i can´t give a final answer neither. All the concept of the nudes must be placed into context of your comic, taking care of story, design, reference, and meaning/purpose.

About NSFW, i think the same as GlanceReviver. And maybe i´m really new at Tapastic and didn´t read or found all the backstage info regarding content but i feel that we need something better than just a "NSFW" tag because is very generic.. I would go for something like an ESRB to tag specific content as: nude, strong language, violence, angry kitties, +teen, +adult, etc.