well. kind of.
the idea is that the shield is connected to the arm and the weapon can fit into a slot in the shield to keep it steady and/or allow the user to use both hands for aiming while still keeping the shield up.
how practical is this? probably not very. still looks neat 🙂
even though i really enjoy firearms they probably won’t show up in the comic, at least in forms this close to real-life examples. i have some other ideas instead.
i like these. that is all I have to say.
some armor ideas yall. 🙂 based loosely off of some real life designs (namely the right one which is pretty heavily inspired by hoplites). they would be quite inexpensive to create compared to the more time and resource-intensive resin plates, sort of along the lines of real-life hauberks or brigandine.
GLADIATORS!! more or less.
not sure they’ll actually be called gladiators, but that’s basically what they are. I have some fun ideas and some unique (?) twists I’m looking forward to whenever I show them.
As mentioned previously, I spent a couple weeks before ch3 doodling the characters and trying to streamline them more before I had to draw them in motion. In hindsight I wish I did that more for ch2, but hopefully I learned my lesson.
Silne was based off of a sketch i did a couple years ago, and was originally going to be a specific different character. I ended up splitting Silne and this other character who I will still likely use. It wasn’t the right time yet. Though I don’t mention verbally it in the story, you can tell by the two sets of tattoos that she has that she was once married.
The story itself was one of the earlier ones I came up with and remained mostly unchanged, though of course I tweaked some details as I went. It was originally going to have much less of Arbo, the old man, but previous chapters focused quite heavily on two characters and I wanted to branch out just a little bit. I still think I enjoy working with few characters rather than a gigantic cast, at least in a per-chapter basis.
The armor of the rene took a little bit to get down too, since I wanted to show similarities with the armor in ch1 (for both Allano and Rene) without making them identical. they likely wouldn’t have much standardization between troops if this was real life, but you also want to make it recognizable to the reader. The allanos have armors similar to malwan’s outfit from ch1, but the militia organized halfway through the chapter is more rag-tag since they are not professionals. I ended up with the rene’s “shark tooth” helm because I thought it was cool and unique. All of these designs will likely show up in the future to some capacity.
sharp-eyed viewers of a previous post may be able to infer some interesting tidbits about the rene.
Did some more concepts. looking again at a lot of real life designs, these have elements influenced by a variety of asian and middle-eastern pieces from cultures like the Mughals. It’s difficult to come up with original designs that are practical, because most of the practical designs people came up with in the past were already made. Generally if you can think of a ‘unique’ design there is often a reason it wasn’t used historically. A major issue with a lot of fantasy armors is they are often impractical on or off the battlefield, sometimes both. Designing a bulky suit of armor to provide ultimate protection might work for its intended purpose but would be extremely heavy, hindering its user in combat. Not to mention something oft forgotten – you end up wearing a suit of armor out of battle much more than in battle. I doubt anyone would want to wear an extra 60-100lbs (or theoretically more in the case of many fantasy designs) any more than they had to especially when marching on foot, sitting down for dinner, etc. People in real life sure didn’t.
People tended to wear what they could get away with and what they could afford. Armor was expensive and difficult to manufacture, especially large plates of metal. European knights were often wealthy and could afford plate armor, the lower status footsoldiers and such as far as I know generally wore cheaper materials. Mail and lamellar was cheaper and easier to make than plate armor or more people would have used it. I’ve heard that some cannibalized common tools like scythes into helmets and such in emergencies which wouldn’t surprise me. Thick fabric is also much better at protection than many people think. If something was useless in real life it quickly died out, but even a crummy helmet is better than none at all.
Feudalistic societies don’t really exist in the current Motherland setting and the economics of resin production and crafting is different than that of metal (easier to create large sheets), but the general principle of cost and practicality is still very applicable. People are still people even in alien lizard land.
(click to view larger)
some armor design concepts. on the whole metal is rarely used in Motherland due to a variety of factors, but the majority of regions have access to substitute materials. these alien ‘resin’ compounds are mass-produced from several species of wildlife and have no true real world analogue, though most have properties somewhere in the realm of rubber, chitin, ceramic, and polymer. among a myriad of other uses, they are used to make armor and weapons. it’s a big goal of mine to have some crazy setting weirdness and still try to make designs that make sense. I’m heavily basing armor and weapon designs off of real life ones since they actually work instead of hypothetically work.
pretty much all of the armor shown here would be ‘elite’ models that would be very expensive to create and own. common soldiers and guards would make do with much less. chainmail doesn’t really exist per se due to the tensile properties of resin, the city guards in ch 1 were using scaled or spined hauberks which is much cheaper than plate armor but still fairly effective. many of the (wealthier) renes shown were using plate armor which was inspired by the designs of real life armenian cataphracts, the manicas in particular. i just think they look cool.
“Rrrgh… …great.”
“Hm?”
“Messed up. Didn’t get it straight.”
“It happens. Just try again. It’s not a big deal.”
It was a big deal. Rokur was just being nice. We were on a pretty tight schedule. The client was coming in less than a week to pick it up.
“How can someone be so big and have such skinny arms? Is he a dusa?”
“Hehhh… heh.”
“I can’t even seam it. Look how much space there is.”
“Lemme take a look at it. …can barely read these measurements. Heh. Too bad they’re mine. Twenty-eight four?”
“Yeah. …Hopefully.”
“Heh. And his bicep is a fourteen… oddly shaped guy. Yeah, this happens sometimes where the pauldron has too much overlap to move properly and it won’t give you enough room to meld it. This is my fault, we shoulda sp- er.. cut a half or so off these. We’re gonna have to recast both. mm.”
It really wasn’t his fault. I didn’t catch it either.
“Ugh. Do we- hh- need to recast the entire s-”
“Nah. No. I think we can keep the rest. Just melt the two halves and cut the template down that much.”
I went ahead and melted down the two plates into the blend. Was still pretty pissed but I was also glad we didn’t have to redo even more work. Powdered up the mold and poured the hot onto the template. Made extra sure to cut down the excess this time. It doesn’t take that long but there’s so many pieces on the entire pauldron assembly that it adds up under a deadline.
“Good.”
“Thanks.”
Needed to hurry. Don’t get sloppy though. Made sure to paint the trim the exact blue he wanted (the highs are usually picky about that sort of thing) before gluing and seaming. You need to paint before you glue or else you can’t get between the seams and it looks bad. Handed it off to Doa so she could paint and cut in the coat of arms. I can do basic designs in a pinch but animals and stuff give me trouble. She was way better at it than Rokur or I were. Sat in her corner, working silently and diligently as always. I’m glad he was with her, it’s always nice to see a couple compliment each other so well, especially with their work. My wife’s talents aren’t really in the workshop but she cooks well, so can I really complain? Anyway.
The sun sets as we (finally) connect the pauldrons and barely finish the whole manica. I try both on to see if the articulation works well. We’re good to go thankfully even if it’s way bigger than my size. Was going to pull my ridge out if we had to redo it again.
Rokur is mostly done with the main cuirass. He finishes another layer on the haidate and calls it a night. I still love the smell of the newly hardened resin even after these years. Probably an acquired taste.
“Geez. Finally.”
“Hehh. Well. Glad that’s out of the way. …Wait.”
“What”
“Are you sure that was supposed to be a fourteen?”
“I-”
“Kidding. Kidding. Sorry. Everything’s good. ”
“…Geez… almost hadda heart attack…”
“Hehh. .. Come by for dinner? Just eggs but we need to make them so you can show up aft-”
“-Ah- sorry, Iona is waiting for me.”
“Right.”
“-Actually. Why don’t you come over to us? I know she’s made enough. Stew’s ready too. She’ll be glad to have you.”
“Oh. We would love to. Thank you.”
“See you there.”
“I’ll lock up and get my coat.”
this is close enough to a character concept in my opinion.
it can be pretty tough sometimes but it’s always fun to have to design clothes and armor and such with non-human parameters. Of course the motherlanders aren’t that different from humans but it’s enough. One of my mains goals with this story and setting is to create things that are realistically exotic but could still conceivably exist within the setting. it’s not high fantasy, so I’m really trying to make designs and such that would believably be created by the people there with their resources and technology.
For instance, very little wood or metal is used in the Motherland world. it’s too rare or hard to shape with their resources. Much of the armor used by soldiers and such is a type of molded resin, along with kevlar-like hauberks made out of durable fibers from the local ecosystem. A wide variety of construction methods and designs exist in this era, influenced by cost and efficiency, and of course, looks. Rich people can afford more expensive and efficient protection than your average town guard. armor evolved in real life to counter the weapons of the day and vice versa, and here is no different. That said, the evolution of their technology can be anachronistic at times compared to our own history.
I really want to try to make things that are realistic-looking while still looking cool or at least interesting. A helmet in real life is designed to protect your face first and foremost above looks (with some less than “cool” results for the sake of efficiency), and boy do these characters have a lot of face to protect. a mask that totally covered their entire snout and ears would be very protective and practical, but looks real goofy as a result. It’s a challenge to find designs that do enough of both practicality and aesthetics, but that’s the fun in it.
