Because people seem to really want it.
Lots of people are reblogging that armour gif again saying they’re happy to know the names of the various parts, so here’s a few more diagrams. Naturally, some styles of armour have extra or different parts and there are specially made suits for jousting and such.
A really important thing to note is that not every soldier/warrior of the time had plate armour. Chainmail was much more common. For as cheap and available as it was, it did a great job against most bladed weapons. It was only when swords made for stabbing and advancements in arrows came about that could break through the links that plate armour started to really get going. But it’s expensive and has to be custom made for each warrior, unlike the one-size-fits-all chainmail tunics.
The main thing to keep in mind when designing armour is what purpose you want it to serve. Does your character need maximum mobility? How do they fight? Do they come from a background where they could get their hands on a fitting suit? And if they are wearing a full suit of armour, make bloody well sure they can move in it! Fantasy armour is more often than not, impractical and does not “meld” together. Ever play a video game and your character’s armour will clip through their own body? Yeah, don’t do that. You’ll feel like a master if you come up with armour that fits well.
LUCID DREAMING PRO-TIP!
Drawing yourself in a certain outfit or with certain qualities will help you dream that way.
That’s me in a suit of armour. Ain’t I awesome looking? No? Well fuck you I like to pretend I’m a knight! Anyways, this is a cool little trick that was unintentional and very effective leading to me have 5 or so dreams where I was wearing this, all in medieval or fantasy settings. I was watching Game of Thrones at the time and LOVING it, so with fantasy on the mind, I thought “What would I look like as a knight?” and started looking over my reference folders of historical armour (because I tend to hate impractical, gaudy fantasy armour), taking in how it moves, what shape it tends to be and how I could apply that to my own designs. I was also listening to medieval music and epic scores while playing fantasy video games. What I’m saying is that I had it on my mind.
And with all that on my mind, I tried to visualise and draw a suit of armour that would really make sense, that I could see myself being able to wear. And lo and behold, when I slept, it appeared on me in my dream in the most realistic of ways I could imagine. The whole “inspiration from dreams” thing works both ways when you start to keep a journal. It’s a fun little trick to try but you really need have a good sense of how what you’re drawing works. Say you want to dream yourself with wings; really break down how those wings work. What bones are in them, how do they connect to your back, what colour and shape are your feathers, how big are they, etc, and the quickest way to do that (if you like to make art) is to draw it.
The things I tend to draw are like concept or comic art so I try to get a good understanding of what they would look like in real life before drawing them in my comicy kind of way, but when I dream of them, I see them in an amount of detail I don’t draw them in. So, say I draw some sort of creature and only give him flat, cel-shaded colours, in my dream I see the texture of it’s skin, the light reflecting off it more realistically, how it’s weight is distributed on the ground and so on. This means that how good you draw it, doesn’t restrict how well you can dream/imagine it. But I think drawing yourself, the first thing you have a good sense of, in a certain outfit is the easiest/most effective way to get something into your dream. Give it a go!
I’m finding myself increasingly adoring of plate armour. The amount of skill it takes to make something that both protects you from weapons while being flexible and mobile enough to move comfortably is something to be appreciated. Personally, if I was a warrior, I doubt I’d wear anything beyond grieves and gauntlets for the sake of maximum mobility and quietness but I still want a suit.
