New sketches

[varelishawt]

So after a really long dry spell (the last time I did a sketch was a couple years ago), I got fired up again, mostly by a) being pissed at this guy who made a mod for Dragon Age to make the already-too-thin female models even thinner, b) Peter Morwood’s discussions about proper armor for women, and c) my hatred for the open-from-neck-to-chest leather armor in the game.


Redesign of my Warden. The torso looks kinda crappy, but I’m happy with the gorget and helmet. Lamellar armor is a bitch; my hand wanted to fall off after I was done. I went to a simpler design (see below) to save my sanity (and hand).



A concept sketch for something along the lines of the Tapisserie de Bayeux and this Flemeth wallpaper. I want to do something stylized like that. The background is going to be a doozy, and part of me is gibbering in terror at having to color all of this…



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Comments

[cumuluscastle]

I really like these. I am with you on foolish armour for girl heroes.

[varelishawt]

Thank you. :) I might not have been so pissed off (who am I kidding, of course I would be pissed off) if the leather armor, when put on a male character, hadn't covered up all the essential bits. So subtle, Bioware.

[braigwen]

You want rage? Try the bare breast armors all over nexus... ick.

[varelishawt]

Part of the reason I started doing fan art again was because a guy made a mod to Barbie-fy the women in the game. NOPE NOPE NOPE. Effective armor is a bit bulky, because you have to wear something underneath even something as light as leather, because that stuff chafes like a mother, and without some padding, there's nothing to absorb blows.

[shiegra]

Holy cow, these are stunning! The attention to detail, symmetry, practicality and aesthetic is wildly delightful, and I love your grasp on anatomy and motion as well. It is SO GOOD to see an armour for female warriors that looks like the artists actually thought 'I want my audience to look at this and go BADASS, FUCK YEAH' instead of 'I want my audience to look at this and go, oh good, sexually available regardless of their thoughts and inclinations.' (Since very rarely are a woman's thoughts and inclinations going to be 'die in two seconds from a blow to thigh and/or sternum.')

[varelishawt]

Thank you. :)

Actually, there's armor that looks badass but would be a bad idea (big spiky shoulder pads - pauldrons - that will stab you in the eye if you raise your arms, assuming you could), so I went the practical route rather than just pure badassery.

[shiegra]

Haha, good point. Since I have a preference for rogues and mages I tend to look at the really big armour as something that would weigh me down and the overly spiky armour as more hilarious than badass, so that coloured my opinion.