Female Hrothgar as a playable race. Show your support!

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

[Nestama]

Characters in Beastars are pretty expressive... I think? Its been a hot minute since I watched the anime.

[Rezael]

The development of Viera & Hrothgar was never given the development time it really needed. The issues with head gear for both races, and the lack of genders are clear examples of this. FFXIV has the subscription base to easily have had teams dedicated to fully developing these characters alongside development of Shadowbringers expansion. Instead we got a,"didn't meet our crowdfunding goals," attempt. This is not acceptable from such large development studios.

[RyuDragnier]

I keep saying expressive because human brains are designed to read human faces. This is the reason Hrothgar have ALL THE DRAMA in their emotes, to make up for the fact that much of their facial reactions to things is "shocked Pikachu face". We're not wired to read animal faces well and animals don't rely as much on facial expressions as we do so the more animal a face is the more you have to do with the body language to show what that character is thinking.

Counter argument to this would be pulling up zoo footage dealing with a lion. Watching the facial reactions, they can be pretty animated, just as much as people. Like with people, it's mostly in reaction to things, such as being surprised, yawning, smelling something bad, etc. It's fairly easy to read the emotions on the faces of lions in such circumstances, and it's most likely what they've based Hrothgar facial reactions on.

[Vahlnir]

Counter argument to this would be pulling up zoo footage dealing with a lion. Watching the facial reactions, they can be pretty animated, just as much as people. Like with people, it's mostly in reaction to things, such as being surprised, yawning, smelling something bad, etc. It's fairly easy to read the emotions on the faces of lions in such circumstances, and it's most likely what they've based Hrothgar facial reactions on.

Felines in general can be pretty expressive. Personally, I think that Hrothgar are pretty animated when it comes to their poses, emotes and facial expressions.

...And now I'm feeling the itch to switch back to my white lion.

[reivaxe]

Characters in Beastars are pretty expressive... I think? Its been a hot minute since I watched the anime.

I covered this in that post.

"Other way around that is to stylize the face to have more exaggerated, cartoony proportions/ features like the furry art I've been posting and in stuff like Western animation"

This is a Beastars Gray Wolf ... notice the huge eyes and the eyebrows plus general facial proportions that allow this character to portray human like expressions of emotions.




This is a real gray wolf.




That's the exaggeration cartoonist/ artist/ 3D modelers-riggers-animators use to get clear, complex human facial expressions out of animals.


I'm not saying that they can not be expressive in the face with more reserved animations, I am saying that in-order for them to do that they would have to give them either larger eyes and eyebrows than we see on the males ...




or give them plainly more human faces so that they can emote better with them.
Giving them bigger, more expressive eyes than the dudes is fine in my book, either's fine with me tbh. I expect expressive animations also because "emote energy" seems to stay consistent between the genders in a race even if they're not the same themes.

As an animator I can tell they put a ton of love and care into the Hrothgar's emotes and tbh they had to ... cause the race would be a complete let down if they had the tiny emotional range of Viera emotes and their faces as is. It would be a struggle to show much of what they're feeling.

[Iscah]

Going back to some older posts...

[Feminine emotes are] only a conundrum for Femroe, thighlanders are human and have explicitly goofy/ expressive/ "extra" and flat out troll emotes unique to them that build their identity. So yeah, seeing them do any number of girly emotes shared by other females isn't jarring in the least for me. They're made in a way where that type of stuff works, prob one of if not the most flexible females when it comes to looking either tough as f or traditionally goofy or feminine.

When I potioned to Thighlander the girlish giggle at the end of the Toast emote or the Sch scribble didn't hit me in any off-putting way cause their /pose hits just the same. Lots of their personal emotes have that energy. But when I was Femroe? It was jarring AF and highly disappointing like many of their shared emotes/ stances since everything about them is pretty much "BIG and strong".

To borrow your own quote, "That's just like, your opinion, man".

I deliberately aim for my Roegadyn alt to be girlish, and really their emotes feel like a weird half-and-half mix of tough and girlish emotes. Things like their bow and default sitting pose are quite dainty.

This new body type is a good indication, in my opinion, that this might be the blueprint for female hrothgar's body.
The same way I believe Urianger's new muscular Shadowbringers' body is the blueprint for male Viera.

Urianger's model isn't new at all - it's just what all male Elezen look like in that robe.

There's a disconnect between what he probably should look like if he had a fully unique model (and therefore what you would assume he looks like when he's wearing long, covering robes), and what the single Elezen body model looks like whether the character is a mage or a warrior.

In any case please make female Hrothgar pretty as in not like [unattractive human race].

(Quote altered to summarise intent, not for my personal take on the races.)

This seems like a weird request, because that's a difficult comparison to judge the attractiveness of an essentially human face what will probably be a feline face, so the criteria for what looks pretty will be very different.

Roe females, I'd probably play them (on my alt) if I had some heavy armor ideas in mind, and had access to a ton of options. By that I mean, I'd play them as if they were males. Feminine glams just don't work on them, in my opinion.

Feminine glamours can definitely be made to work, but it takes a lot more searching around for the right things to make them look nice. Simpler styles seem to work better than frilly ones.

That's the exaggeration cartoonist/ artist/ 3D modelers-riggers-animators use to get clear, complex human facial expressions out of animals.

I'm not really seeing how that translates into "Hrothgar need body-language emotes more than other races because their faces can't do it", unless it's specifically about how the game models work compared to full-detailed 3D animation with more fine control.

I'm fairly sure they can do the "eyes wide, shocked snarl" expression just as well as the human races can do it compared to a screenshot of a human anime character.

This is not to say that the body language doesn't add to their expressiveness, but that holds true for all races.

[reivaxe]

To borrow your own quote, "That's just like, your opinion, man".

I deliberately aim for my Roegadyn alt to be girlish, and really their emotes feel like a weird half-and-half mix of tough and girlish emotes. Things like their bow and default sitting pose are quite dainty.

...
Person says it's a problem for both Thighlanders and Femroe to have animations shared with other races females.
I say thighlanders having "emotes shared by other females isn't jarring in the least for me".

I never said my opinion was fact and I've many times pointed out that Femroe have a strange mix of feminine/ stud/ imposing emotes and poses if you're looking at my old post on OF.

I'm not really seeing how that translates into "Hrothgar need body-language emotes more than other races because their faces can't do it", unless it's specifically about how the game models work compared to full-detailed 3D animation with more fine control.

I'm fairly sure they can do the "eyes wide, shocked snarl" expression just as well as the human races can do it compared to a screenshot of a human anime character.

This is not to say that the body language doesn't add to their expressiveness, but that holds true for all races.

If you want to talk on a tech side they did a GREAT job with the Hrothgar, for what they are they have a good range of facial emotes. But given the diversity of their heads and the style they're going for they can only do so much.
Fact of the matter is that they lack eyebrows, proportionally large sclera/ eyes and their mouths do not have the shape range of human lips.

This ... isn't a bad thing. It's how animals are. It just means that it's harder to read emotions and expression on their faces at a distance cause that's what humans use to read other human's faces.
Tis why they have such big animations, it's what body language is used for. It's how we read emotion in actual animals for the most part.

Occam's razor is obviously, "sex sells". However, a simple look into how a culture looks and consumes media they grew up in or were taught could unconsciously sway the minds in one way or the other. And right now we're at the peak of changing that mindset of females needing to be more human in facial structure to appeal an anthropomorphic character

The "sex sells" ticket was purchased when they made Hrothgar Males hot western bara-furrys, the question is more along the lines of which style of "sexy female furry" they would go with.

Eastern style is very much the flat mostly human/ anime face like this and tbh they could feel it would fit the style of this game's playerbase easiest.



Western style is more animal featured faces.




To me the males are clearly made to appeal more to the western audiences and as such I'd expect the females to also be based on attractive western furrys. But who knows, Draggos show they are willing to go every which way in opposition between genders if the key feature is covered.

[Allegor]

The closest there is to a female hrothgar - based on how the males look - would be a female khajiit, with maybe one of the faces being more humanoid (aka conventionally waifu)

[zeylos]

The closest there is to a female hrothgar - based on how the males look - would be a female khajiit, with maybe one of the faces being more humanoid (aka conventionally waifu)

I think a kajit with a higlander build is likely what we will get