How to sexualize a male character?

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A-D.

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SonOfVoorhees said:
Easy a half naked muscled man in speedos - remember the scene in James Bond where Daniel Craig walked out the water? Yeah that was for the girls in the audience. Same with every male actor who shows off his six pack in a movie. Now i know that works in movies, but in a game, i dont think woman would get any kind of thrill from that. I know both genders find a great looking body sexy, but woman also go for character traits as well like bravery etc Maybe woman are better to answer this thread than men. lol
Which is kind of why Fenris from DA2 fits the bill there. He is arguably sexy, he is muscular but not too much so, he is athletic, slim but the maindraw for most females is the character and he's got that in spades. He's brooding, in some ways even broken and essentially he is "a project". You know, "i could fix him right up". Plus there is this whole revenge thing and "dark past".

The difference in what defines sex appeal differs between genders, men essentially judge these things by what they can see, proportions, breast-size, eye color, hair color and so forth, everything visual is judged in the brain as to whether the woman, or man, they are looking at fits their "tastes". Women go for traits, characteristics mostly, they do judge based on appearance but rather the underlying implication of said appearance. A man wearing a suit and tie signals financial success, stability. Muscles signal that he can protect you and isnt adverse to more physically demanding tasks. Basicly men think in terms of "this woman would make a good partner for future children" which comes from the whole genetic programming to reproduce. For women its..less about the sex part but about pretty much everything else.

At the end of the day, both judge who they are attracted to based on appearances, but the criteria are a little different.
 

MetalShadowChaos

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A few basic notes: Men are generally less curvy than woman and cannot quite do the same sexy shapes women can, as demonstrated by the hawkeye initiative. And of course, don't be afraid to mix and match. Character design needs creativity. EG: Jojo'#s Bizzare adventure manages to pull of the bodies of The Jackman with the clothing and faces of The Lelouch, to stunning effect.

Now, depending on the character, you could have:

The Jackman: The chest hair, huge shoulders, abs, you know the drill. This sort of character will often spend their time 100% shirtless in their sexualising scenes. And remember: not just chiselled abs and face, chiselled butt. Remember in Days of Future Past, Jackmans butt? Take reference. Deep, deep reference. Note that when a male character shows their butt like that, they don't need to be wearing some sort of thin underwear. That's because natural female form leaves certain unshowables on display. For male sexualisation, that is not a problem, because for The Jackman, you need that clenched butt. Clench it and show it off. But enough about butts. If this is a combat man, some sort of scars are always good. And veins. You want veins. It's phallic imagry. When going for full on anger mode, your character should look like a gloriuous erect penis. And I am not joking. It portrays all consuming anger excellently as well as handing out boners to the audience like sparklers on bonfire night. And in general, standing up straight. They need to look like a rock. Immovable, and a force of nature. This sort of look is more commonly attributed to older characters, and goes well with facial hair. Clothes will usually be damaged, sometimes even midlife-crisis-y. Jeans, leather, maybe even smoking.

The Lelouch: Your good old fashioned pretty boy. This time, thin. If the chest is ever shown, no chest hair. Maybe not even particularly sporty in general, though it is perfectly viable top have it so(see: Free: Iwatabi Swim Club).Probably minimal facial hair too, though a British moustache can compliment this well for slightly older characters(but not too old, important is a very smooth face for this style). Smart suits and the like do well here, and often something that shows off a bit of the shoulders. Take Straid of Olaphis's coat in Dark Souls 2, where the collar is omitted in favour of showing a bit of the chest and shoulders. Wide shoulders are a staple of male sexualisation, don't be afraid to show them off. Will often stand with their legs together, and have relatively styled hair. This look is usually done with richer and more sopcilly powerful characters, as it exudes power, but as said above, don't be afraid to try it with other characters.

The Dante: The not-new one. A good base way of thinking about this is a less rich Lelouch. And an advantage of this is that it ages well, see how Devil May Cry 3's young, casual Dante becomes the (personally, much sexier) Devil May Cry 4 Dante, experienced and still alive and kicking. Again, no chest hair. This character can show off their chest a lot too, so keep it clean. Six-pack or not is personal choice, here it really doesn't matter. This character will move in a relaxed manner, swaying themselves around, casually fiddling with things during conversation (having a predesigned object for this is good, see Dante's Rebellion and how he casually swings it around during stand offs), and leaning against things. Probably pays little attention to important conversations in order to give this effect, but do as you wish I you can do it well.

The Bond, James Bond: Somewhere between Lelouch and Jackman. Chest Hair is an optional for this, but you'll want the six pack and shoulders of a Jackman. This character is cooler, more collected, so no anger veins. But seductions is a key to this character, so suave clothes and smooth voice. As far as facial hair goes, stubble is your limit. No more than that. Sometimes this character will be smileless or have a signature smile. The key to this character is situations. They will often end up slowly leaving the water was they fling their hair free of water droplets, or doing up their collar buttons as they leave a car, implying the naughties that happened within that Ford. Speedos are what I'll tell you here. You don't get the veins, so have a bulge.


That's what comes to mind right now, but of course references, questions and notes of exceptions are always helpful. A good recent example would be Mikisuki Aikuro from Kill la Kill, he's somewhere between Bond and Dante and he's one of the few MALE characters how uses his sexuality in a similar way to how women are often portrayed to do.

Now go give people boners.
 

Fdzzaigl

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Have a look at Thane from Mass Effect, he seemed pretty popular with female gamers.

I think combining the "loving caring & cute" attitude along with the "dangerous and mysterious" thing can lead to success. You'd probably wonna go ahead and make him pretty "manly" then: pretty well trained but not over the top.

You could also go the bishounen route, aka: make a boy who is soft and fragile and a bit womanlike and "cute" in appearance. But still make him dangerous and mysterious. No body hair there, clothes can be a bit more daring.
 

mecegirl

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Vault101 said:
I do wonder if given our social (and dare I say biological) traits if its possible to sexulise a guy in the SAME way as a female
It depends on the pose and the intended audience. Material made for gay men tend to have the models posed in similar ways that women are posed for straight men. But there is some crossover appeal.

And I never realized until now how hard it is to find pictures of guys in poses that might be considered feminine but are also not naked. All the good examples that I'm finding the guys have no clothes on or have massive bulges (not that I'm complaining but it just means that I can't post the pictures here. LOL)

Oh wait. Found one.
 

BloodSquirrel

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Mave said:
so.... I'm designing/writing something for a personal project , and I wanted to give this a try, to make sexualized characters, eye candy for the females. ... why you ask !??

NO I'm not trying to make a statement o anything like that, I just want to give this a try... really, I want to be able to make any kind of characters if I need to.

But ! ._. I'm having a hard time coming up with this with "sexy eye candy make characters for females", so I thought maybe asking for an opinion/helping hand here, now now I appreciate help from my fellow man , but I'm more interested in female opinion, or a honest gay man opinion ( I'm not sure if a female and a gay man have could consider attractive the same stuff.. so help me out)?

Before someone brings this up (because I'm almost sure someone will come up with this...) I don't the hawkeye initiative is a good source/help/example/whatever, why? ... well i don't want my male character to pose in a sexualized female way, I want them to be attractive to females..... I'm not sure but I think that the hawkeye initiative isn't eye candy for females..... is it?

In case you don't know the hawkeye initiative

http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/

anyway thanks for reading and hope to see some advices.

( yeah I kind of realized that this topic would be better on the advice forum ? if so can someone move it please? sorry -_-)
Here's my advice: If you want to know what it looks like when women sexualize men, look at existing media that's being aimed at women. The problem with asking this question on the internet is that you're going to get responses from people with a political agenda, and that agenda is often wrapped up in not wanting to admit that eye candy for women *does* exist.

The Hawkeye Initiative is mostly an exercise in demonstrating that drawing a male character dressed and posed in a feminine manner looks ridiculous. I wouldn't pay much serious attention to it.

Go watch something like the Vampire Diaries (Bonus: The Vampire Diaries is batshit insane enough to be entertaining for entirely different reasons than intended). Or anything on the CW, really. Their stuff has a lot of female-oriented fanservice, even the relatively male-oriented shows like Supernatural. Look at romance novels and the like. Look at shipping communities and the kind of fanart that comes out of them if you're brave.
 

FootloosePhoenix

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Two words for you: Cute face. And personality. Honestly, that's all you need in my opinion. Maybe I'm an odd duck, but if I don't like the character's personality, I just won't be attracted to him no matter how great the butt. I mean, if you're just drawing yaoi that's going to be a moot point, but within a larger work of fiction such as a video game or film or graphic novel, that's very important. My advice would be to focus on the character himself first, then work on making him pleasing to look at.

I will also say that very muscular dudes are a turn-off. Not for every woman, of course, and I probably feel stronger than most about it, but for me it looks unnatural. I would draw a comparison between it and when a lady gets loaded with implants and botox. Most men have a little natural muscle without pumping iron and it can be emphasized by just having decent fitness. That said, I don't mind scrawny dudes either, so long as they have a cute face, taking me back to my original point. I think the Japanese generally get attractive male characters right, moreso than a lot of stuff that gets made in the West. Again, it could just be my preference, but I get the impression that women who dig heavily muscled hunks are more in the minority.

Now I'll share some characters that I think are pretty attractive, because that's just good fun:

Take note of the exposed arms and form-fitting shirt here, as well as Riku's hair. If you're not familiar with the Kingdom Hearts games, this may not help much, but I always found him to be the most attractive at this particular point in the series; the end of KHII (and there are some slight SPOILERS here), when Sora has finally reunited with him and he reverts from Ansem-Riku to, uh...Riku-Riku (what can I say, the KH games are weird). He's been through a great struggle prior to this point and his physical appearance is rough as a result.


Cute. Face. I am very fond of Junpei because of his character arc; as a matter of fact, I didn't like him when I first started playing Persona 3, but as he grows and changes over the course of the game, he just becomes better and better. I wanted to share the second image as well because of the expression. Kawaii desu ne?! -cough- I mean, displays of vulnerability and complex emotions are very attractive within males, partially because it goes against masculine stereotypes.

Now I'm not nearly as fond of Yosuke as I am of Junpei, but he's another good example of the cute face.
Huh, whaddya know...I picked all Japanese characters. Oh crap, I almost forgot!



That ass. Honestly I had a hard time keeping my eyes off of Isaac's butt the whole time I played Dead Space. I don't think Isaac himself is super attractive personally (face doesn't contain enough cute for my tastes), but in that suit...


And no, the Hawkeye Initiative is not attractive to females. Well again, I'm sure there's someone out there who likes it, but in general, definitely not. I would argue that such over-the-top poses are not very complimentary to either sex, but it's especially clear with the guys how ridiculous women in comic books are made to pose...which was, y'know, the whole point of the Hawkeye Initiative. And that is what makes it hilarious sometimes.
 

Padwolf

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This thread makes me happy.

But on to discussion. Well, really the right pose, the right exposure to arms and toned chests work really well. It's all about the lighting and the camera work! Also another thing that works is form fitting shirts. They work really well. Or make them like Dante from Devil May Cry. As for Fenris from Dragon Age 2, it's really his voice that gets me. It's the same voice of Balthier from Final Fantasy 12. And he is quite a sexy man himself:


I think in the case of Balthier, it's more his voice, his manner, that charming rogueishness about him that I just love.
 

Pieturli

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I think it's always a bit odd when people try to nail down some kind of universal ideal man or woman. Peoples tastes vary by quite a lot, and most people think that there are a lot of different kinds of good looking. For example, my tastes tend to run to the curvy side (NOT FAT), but I can think of plenty of women who are absolutely not curvy but are still staggeringly beautiful. I'd be willing to bet money that the same applies to a lot of women.


I get what the OP is going for though, and just for shits and giggles I'm going to give you my suggestion as a heterosexual male. In other words, completely pointless data, but who gives a shit, amirite?

Ladies and gentlemen, ladies in particular, I give you: Justin Lascek.

The proprietor of 70's Big



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqKhLR1zRaU
 

go-10

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have you seen the CW series Arrow?

yeah that's what you need to do to sexualize dudes
 

Mave

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Wow ! thanks for the answers! I didn't expect to see that many "kinds" of sexualized males ........

I'll try to fit them more into archetypes before I start working designing so I can have a good idea of what I have to work on, but I would love to see more examples if someone can come up with more I would appreciate it a lot.

Maybe i can get some idea about personalities too? that would be grat, again thanks for taking your time to read and answer.
 

mecegirl

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GZGoten said:
have you seen the CW series Arrow?

yeah that's what you need to do to sexualize dudes
I swear there was a shirtless workout scene every episode that I watched. I have no problem with the concept, even enjoyed it in the beginning, but it got ridiculous after a while.Like we get it...he's ripped, but that doesn't distract from the fact that this version of Oliver Queen is a Batman rip off. (though i'm not sure how women who don't read comics felt about that last part)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43FMVVTx8-I
 

Silvanus

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Often, sexualised depictions of women simply involve as little clothing as possible. A little cloth to cover a section of the chest, but mostly, exposed cleavage, abdomen, legs, etc. The poses are also pretty notable (as others have mentioned), and often quite absurd.

With men, I'd say the arms and the abdominals are your best bet. Show off musculature, but don't go overboard. Steer clear of hugely-defined muscles and mountainous biceps. I'd keep the legs covered, too, but that's personal preference.

For poses, "carefree" is the best, albeit hard to pull off. "Carefree" is what most of those models Blow_Pop posted are trying to pull off (and not all of them are managing).
 

Dragonbums

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Make all your characters hot male turians. Bioware had no clue that the wiry bird alien was to be their de facto man hunk of the series.
 

Lilani

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There's an artist who's done a lot of fanart for Final Fantasy XI and FFXIV who does both beefcake and cheesecake, but here are some samples of the beefcake.







 

Rebel_Raven

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Fdzzaigl said:
Have a look at Thane from Mass Effect, he seemed pretty popular with female gamers.

I think combining the "loving caring & cute" attitude along with the "dangerous and mysterious" thing can lead to success. You'd probably wonna go ahead and make him pretty "manly" then: pretty well trained but not over the top.

You could also go the bishounen route, aka: make a boy who is soft and fragile and a bit womanlike and "cute" in appearance. But still make him dangerous and mysterious. No body hair there, clothes can be a bit more daring.
Thane was made for that goal of attracting women, but I think Garrus is the better example, I.E. 4:17-ish:
<youtube=S3oypQkMsFE>
They even tried to keep Garrus "handsome." His given power was armor piercing ammo, too, and I like that.

Honestly, I like Zaeed more than Thane. The scar, the accented, throaty voice, the interesting stories, the mentality, etc.
Thane was just a little too blatant, IMO. Yeah, they explained why he dresses like a Klingon woman, but he just came off as a bit too rebound/clingy. I dunno, he seemed really eager to latch on to Shepard, and hell if I know why, really.

Loki of the Avengers/Thor movies works, apparently.
<youtube=pl30aEahlIU>

I think personality has a good bit to do with it, though it seems like it's just physical being talked about, here.

I'm pretty weird, I guess, but for me, Patrick Stewart, Alton Brown, and Terry Crews look physically nice, which are really some far ends of the spectrum away from one another, but I guess the whole personality thing kicks in with them, too.
 

Something Amyss

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Vault101 said:
I do wonder if given our social (and dare I say biological) traits if its possible to sexulise a guy in the SAME way as a female
Depends on what you mean. You can sexualise males the way women are sexualised by reducing them to sexual utility. Is that meaningful? Probably not. Outside of butthurt MRAs who claim men are the wronged party in all things, there seems to be a very small minority of men who wouldn't like to get treated as a sex object by women.

I've seen this argued before in the sense of "turnabout is fair play," and the underlying problem is that it only really works if the tables were even to begin with.

mecegirl said:
I swear there was a shirtless workout scene every episode that I watched. I have no problem with the concept, even enjoyed it in the beginning, but it got ridiculous after a while.Like we get it...he's ripped, but that doesn't distract from the fact that this version of Oliver Queen is a Batman rip off. (though i'm not sure how women who don't read comics felt about that last part)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43FMVVTx8-I
I'm not sure that this is sexualisation, though. I mean, this is America, where men work out topless or in very tight, revealing attire even if they don't look like Oliver Queen. Where guys will go shirtless even if they have a beer belly and man-boobs. Hell, when I have to call maintenance in the summer, I cringe, because that's how our maintenance guy works.

The only reason I even think it might be intended as sexualisation is that it's CW. They seem to love their boy candy. But even then, I don't think were talking about it in parity with the kind of sexualisation we see in women. For one thing, Arrow's still Batman-Lite.
 

Phasmal

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DMC 3 Dante.
Fenris from DA2.
Alistair from DA:O.
Vaguely androgynous guys from Final Fantasy. (Most of them I guess).
Oh, Chrom and Lon'qu and Gaius from Fire Emblem: Awakening.

These are the game guys who get a yes from me.

Guys with a little bit of muscle, usually on the lean side. Make 'em shirtless. Ta-Dah!

I don't think it would be hard, I think most game devs just don't bother.