That deserves to be watched probably at least once a day.
Ok! So instead of doing homework while I had free time I spent this evening drawing Wonder Woman. I think we can all agree that this was a good life decision. And, in keeping with the other Project Rooftop entries-except-not-really-entries I've done, I'll provide a short character summary (although it's worth mentioning that I didn't really do this research until afterwards).
Wonder Woman's backstory is vague and confused (like most comic book backstories, especially those that started in the Golden Age), but the basic points are these: Princess Diana lives on the island of Themyscira with a tribe of Amazons. An American fighter pilot, Steve Trevor, crashes on the island during WWII, and Diana returns him to "Man's World" (read: anywhere but Themyscira), staying there as an emissary. In this world, she hides her superwoman abilities as Diana Prince, an air force secretary, but can transform at will into Wonder Woman. She is the daughter of Queen Hippolyta usually, sometimes formed from clay by the Queen and blessed by the gods to be "beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, swifter than Hermes, and stronger than Hercules," sometimes an ordinary Amazon gifted by the gods with godlike powers. She has invulnerable bracelets and a magic lasso that compels people to tell the truth (Wonder Woman was famously created by the inventor of the polygraph (and his two live-in girlfriends)). She also has an invisible airplane. The feminist arguments about Wonder Woman are infinite, varied, and fun, but I think I'm going to avoid most of them. I could do it, but it's been done.
On to the arguments about the costume! The Linda Carter WW costume is in my opinion the best, and that costume really isn't changed too much from WW's introduction (originally, she had a star-spangled skirt instead of shorts). She's been through some wacky things in the comics... namely, the time when she gave up her powers in order to stay in the Man's World and traveled the world as a white-jumpsuited spy (the end of this era and the return of superheroine Wonder Woman was prompted by feminist writers, and Wonder Woman was then the first solo cover of Ms.)... but it mostly comes back to the satin tights.
This might seem odd under any amount of scrutiny--why does an Amazon happen to be wearing the American flag? This was addressed in the comic, where the Amazons made Wonder Woman's costume incorporating the symbols of pilot Steve Trevor's USAF uniform, so that she could blend into their society. But one does doubt that a bunch of Amazons would be wearing spandex onesies to begin with. So for redesigning I went back to try to incorporate more of a classical influence. (I also, as usual, stole this idea from Project Rooftop.)
Diana (duh) owes a lot to Artemis, goddess of the hunt. I was kind of already thinking about putting in a Statue of Liberty motif (as a way of incorporating American symbols without going full-flag) when I found this:
So that's pretty much my source material. I didn't make Wonder Woman a redhead, although man was it tempting. For some reason, Amazon means Greek to us, even though Amazon meant Definitely Not Greek to the Greeks. That seems a little too late to change... it'd be like deciding Superman was blonde. I did make it just really dark red-black, but hopefully that's not too distracting as it was meant as a moral victory only.Anyway, here we go. They're fast sketches and inks and they're colored in Pixen, which is not meant for this kind of work, so they're kind of funky that way. But I'm surprised with how happy I am with them. (ugh, they're not enlarging right...click for full size.)
The bare feet are from Artemis. Those stars on the bracelets look that crappy because I added them in Pixen, not on paper, at the last second. I'm still not sure I like them but something needs to denote that the bracelets are special. Likewise, the tiara is crappy below because I forgot to add it and had to improvise it in Pixen.
I hope I go down in history as the first person to give Wonder Woman a bra.Wait, no. No I don't. But I did. The one thing that I never liked about the standard WW costume is that it left her whole chest exposed to attack and...movement. It's just not comfortable to fight Hitler in that fashion. And a well-aimed spear would kill you. I worked pretty hard with the breastplate molding to make something that wouldn't direct a blade straight up to the throat--the eagle moulding is my solution to that, whether it works or not I don't know. Ugh, I ended up working a lot of lines together in Pixen on the back of the breastplate as well so it's pretty much bad back there. My crappy lines have made it kind of hard to tell, but the lower part of the breastplate stretching around to the back is supposed to be like the Wonder Woman stacked W's,
except I have 3 instead of 2. That actually might be worth fixing, as the current W's look pretty screwy (just bad inking as usual).Oh, and the skirt in back is just as peplos-y in the front, I just didn't put in the folds because I couldn't get them to look right and I thought they were distracting.
Anyway. I like this one alright. Next up:
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