Drawing weapons and armour

[zookeeper]

Often one sees that someone draws these things looking all silly. Slight exaggeration of weaponry and such is of course fine in a fantasy setting, but it's not uncommon at all to go over the board and draw something that couldn't function in reality at all. This mostly applies to portraits and other realistic imagery, not really unit graphics as such.

Now, my point is simply: you can make weapons and armour be flashy and cool while keeping them very realistic, and a real-world reference also helps you to get things functional without having to think what kind of sword handle would work and what wouldn't, for example (and, no offense to artists drawing fantasy stuff, but that usually goes a bit awry), and that there are plenty of references available. So even if you don't feel the need for the weapons you draw to look realistic, having some references still helps to actually make it look good (in the same way as having a reference when drawing a person makes it much easier to get it look right and good).

For this purpose, I thought I'd go through some related sites I know of and post some links here. These are armouries, general information/review sites, etc, which contain good pictures of historical arms and armour. Mostly (if not all) are only european stuff though (which sort of fits with at least the mainline Wesnoth setting), but that's all I had available right now.

• http://www.armouronline.com - the full body armour section is good, weapons are generally crappy here.
• http://www.myarmoury.com - hard to navigate, but contains a lot of good pictures, if you take the time to find them. The "reviews" page is a good place to start from.
• http://www.volny.cz/grex/vyrobky/vyrob_e.htm - some odd czech site, but has some nice armour.
• http://www.lutel.cz/index_.php?en=1 - quite a number of all sorts of weapons in the catalog (especially the polearms and such look nice).

I thought of stickyfying this, but I guess adding a similar section to the art tutorial pages in the wiki would make more sense, but let's first see how this is received.

Oh, and feel free to post your additions (especially to the type of items not covered on these sites), too, since I don't have much here yet.

[Jetrel]

This was one of the things I appreciated about the LotR movies - the weapons in those movies (especially things like Anduril) were built by "sword geeks", and were built to be within the realm of realistic function. I remember seeing a documentary (probably somewhere in those monolithic appendices to the movies) that talked about all this.

I shudder to think of the shadow lords that are doing the design work for Eragon.


I'll personally second the above that zookeeper complains about; the crimes that Warcraft commits against realism really cheapen the experience, since the main characters look less like "Knights in Shining Armor", and more like "KISS stunt doubles".

That said, it's okay for us to make a few breaches of realism; Orc Warlords, Troll Warriors, and Elven Champions look better with somewhat oversized weapony. But I think that, in portraiture, I'm going to shrink the relative thickness of some of these, in the same way that I shrink the relative size of the head, etc, away from its exaggerated sprite version. (Trolls, of course, need no shrinking).

[Ryorin]

Or just avoid showing the weaponry at all. It's harder to convey a sense of action without weaponry, but it's still definately possible. In fact I'd personally enjoy seeing some things weaponless. However, the final designs are up to you guys.

[wayfarer]

This was one of the things I appreciated about the LotR movies - the weapons in those movies (especially things like Anduril) were built by "sword geeks", and were built to be within the realm of realistic function. I remember seeing a documentary (probably somewhere in those monolithic appendices to the movies) that talked about all this.

I shudder to think of the shadow lords that are doing the design work for Eragon.


I'll personally second the above that zookeeper complains about; the crimes that Warcraft commits against realism really cheapen the experience, since the main characters look less like "Knights in Shining Armor", and more like "KISS stunt doubles".

That said, it's okay for us to make a few breaches of realism; Orc Warlords, Troll Warriors, and Elven Champions look better with somewhat oversized weapony. But I think that, in portraiture, I'm going to shrink the relative thickness of some of these, in the same way that I shrink the relative size of the head, etc, away from its exaggerated sprite version. (Trolls, of course, need no shrinking).

I blame Samwise for this stuff. He did all icons and most concept art fore Warcraft 3, and also those Pandarens (which are actual quite good I want the Wesnoth faction.) He likes this exaggerated style where everything looks like it is chiseled out of a rock. In the past Metzen did most of the concepts but he is now art director. His style was similar to John Blanche's.

Know your heroes

[wnsk]

Hey, good links! I'm not sure if all of these were historical replicas though, or were just designed to look good (one of the images depicted an eagle-shaped helmet, and it was "adjusted for female figure" -- looks really, really cool nevertheless).

Since you mention this, and I hesitate to say this...but I thought the helmets of the Swordsman and Halberdier units look a little weird/non-practical.

[Jetrel]

Zookeeper - make a wiki page that copies this, and link it as a tutorial from the "Create Art" wiki page:

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/Create_Art

Make the title "Designing weapons and armour".


That saves us an unnecessary sticky, but gives this some permanence.

[zookeeper]

Hey, good links! I'm not sure if all of these were historical replicas though, or were just designed to look good (one of the images depicted an eagle-shaped helmet, and it was "adjusted for female figure" -- looks really, really cool nevertheless).

They're all replicas (AFAICT, of course I haven't looked through every image and link on those sites...) or otherwise "realistic enough", with some fantasy-style stuff here and there (I don't see why such an eagle-shaped helmet couldn't be used, by someone in a very high position, I just have no idea whether something like that has really been used). Fortunately, the fantasy stuff is usually labeled as such ("Conan Sword" or whatever), or otherwise sticks out from the rest.

Zookeeper - make a wiki page that copies this, and link it as a tutorial from the "Create Art" wiki page:

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/Create_Art

Make the title "Designing weapons and armour".

Ok.

[Jetrel]

Zookeeper - make a wiki page that copies this, and link it as a tutorial from the "Create Art" wiki page:

http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/Create_Art

Make the title "Designing weapons and armour".

Ok.

*nudge*

I was going to ask you to fill in this wiki page:
http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/Designing_w ... and_armour

But then that little faerie on my should said: "come on jet, don't be a [censored], doing it yourself takes, what ... ten minutes?" So, it's set up, please double-check it, and possibly add a link to this forum thread in it.

[Rev. V!]

This is a nice depiction of everything associated with a late 1400's kit....along with several cool photos of it in use.

http://www.volny.cz/luciusj/rod1.html


Rev. V!

[Stilgar]

I use Google image search usually, but then you do have to sift through the results for what you're actually looking for. (A search on "Gauntlet" for example, would turn up a bunch of stuff pertaining to the video game by that name.)

http://www.darksword-armory.com/ appears to be pretty good.
http://www.by-the-sword.com/ a large selection of stuff here, some of which may be useful.

[Changeling]

I was just looking through the Dark Sword Armory when I saw this:

1805 Stilleto
17th C. – Italian
Metropolitain Museum of Arts

TheStylet or stiletto is the smallest of daggers, easily concealed, lightest in weight, with a strong triangular sectional blade. The dimensions of the stilettos made these daggers a favorite among assassins. The dagger was easy to conceal, enabling assassins to follow their would be victims at close rage without being spotted.

I am suggesting that someone add this dagger to the Assassins line.

P.S. Yes, I know it's been two months since someone last posted.

[Jetrel]

Couple of things I ran into while looking for inspiration on breastplate designs:

http://www.valhallaleathercraft.com/chest.html
http://elads.biz/leatherarmorbreastplate.html

http://mysite.verizon.net/tulkaz/index.html
http://www.freewebs.com/norstar1/armorstands.htm
http://www.mycoolcollectibles.com/

[thespaceinvader]

Something which i meant to link last time this thread was hovering around.

http://angelsword.com/

[TrashMan]

Good topic. I agree.... I've seen so many AWFULL weapons that look like they'd do more damage to the wielder than the target!

Speaking of which, regarding anything medieval, weapons, armors and history...the best source there is... ARMA:
http://www.thearma.org/

[Cuyo Quiz]

I need one of these threads for facial features. Unless i study medical physiognomy i won't be able to recognize eye sockets, cheekbones, cheeks, hairlines, etc.