Character Design: ChemicalAlia's female TF2 models

Artist and modder ChemicalAlia has been working on some female character models for Team Fortress 2. I'd like to take a look at them and tell you why they're awesome.


First, a little TF2 history. When designing the characters, the TF2 team made each character outline / silhouette unique, so that a player can instantly recognize any of the 9 classes upon seeing them in-game. Even without the colouration, each character is very unique.

This is an old beta image which is slightly out of date.

ChemicalAlia's female character models fit the TF2 art style and timeline, but most importantly, their silhouettes are almost identical to the male characters, meaning that despite the gender swap, you can still instantly recognize the character's class. Here's the concept art for ChemicalAlia's female Heavy alongside the male Heavy:

And here's the finished product:

 Very similar, right?
That's a fantastic design on ChemicalAlia's part, since it doesn't affect gameplay by forcing the player to learn new silhouettes for female character models that are functionally the same as their male counterparts.

Check out all of ChemicalAlia's female models (click for full size):