2D Project - Research and Practice

Although i have a love of armoured characters, i would say i lack a lot of proper knowledge of shapes and how they are incorporated together in traditional armour designs, which i think hampers me when trying to create my own feel for an armour design. While i believe at this stage that i will not necessarily be going for 100% realism in my design, i do want their to be strong fundamentals and a sense of "oh that works" so to start my design i spent a while compositing other armour styles and getting the hang of drawing them, even coming up with some designs based on these mashups.

Especially at the start so far this is a daunting task, looking through tons of reference images and pulling bits from both real life and fantasy based armours to find pieces that looked good and meshed together, i found myself drawing endless sketches for bits and pieces of various armour sections trying to capture the right sort of presence for my character. Additionally there was the matter of materials to consider, when looking at some gauntlet designs, i found some really nice references in terms of shape but they were more leather based in design, which meant i had to apply their shape through metallic designs. 

A big trouble i had was trying to make things look like they worked, like the armour i was drawing could be worn, over time my principles started shifting, while wearing it was important it had to look well designed first, then adjusted for practicality. (also its not a complete realistic design so it was never going to be 100% realistic).

My troubles also started with the solidifying of my pauldron design on her severed arm, since its meant to establish her as the knight representing a demon, i wanted it to look like a sculture piece in the shape of a demon face, additionally it had to be able to open like a jaw so that the demons arm could come out to supplement the character. getting a design piece like that is hard to mesh with the rest of the design and i might reconsider it as time goes on.

For continuing my development i believe the best course is to continue working through desgins, perhaps using the mashup here as a base and then working on top of it, so that i get a better feel for armour as a complete set. On the whole i think i've made some good progress, all the reference images and pieces i've mashed together have given me some good practice and experience in drawing armour and i feel im coming to terms more with how armour gets designed.