Best Of

sacboi said:

In need of a pick-me-up today ...

These are and always will be so much fun to look at - there are so many clever little things one can learn from these.

In the same vein you might dig the work of Izumo Jyuki, author of the Industrial Divinities artbooks.

NikhilR said:

One aspect to keep in mind with protagonists (women or otherwise) is what a default is and how the audience feels about it.

No, that's exactly the thing you shouldn't keep in mind, because for this you'd have to assume that there is some default "normal" state and everything else is just a modification of that default. That's not true in real life, and it doesn't seem healthy to hold that thought in public minds through art.
If you just continue to conform to - to respect - their prejudice, then you only help the "core audience" to stay close-minded and entitled in their ignorance. Only sustain the state of unconscious fear and hatred before the "unknown" and "exotic".
Games shape us, shape communities, like any other art. It's not just about reaching new audience - it's about imagining the world where we don't treat others as collections of labels and modifiers. If you can imagine it, it can eventually become. If we only look at most efficient way to sell product, than we might as well say goodbye to the industry now - it wouldn't be worth saving. There would be no point to it.
Looking at some gaming communities now, you'd think we're on the fast track to the past, when it was okay to assume that the typical gamer is an ugly teen with zero self-respect or life... and everyone else were not "real" gamers.