Putting Together a Fantasy Sword

A comment on the potential historical influences of one of my older paintings for "The One Ring" made me think about how I came up with the objects depicted in it.

Here's an expanded version of my reply:

The helmet is a composite - the lower/face part is somewhat ancient Greek, but could also be late Roman. The bowl is lamellar, which is more of an eastern construction. The intent was something like a mythical eastern Goth style. (there wasn't a set fictional culture for these artifacts in the art brief so I went with a general "dark ages heroic" style made up of various bits and pieces)
In hindsight, I only wish I did the tail crest better, the way it's attached to the top ridge is quite unclear and lazy.

Here's a compilation of some of the inspiration pieces mentioned:

The sword is quite Celtic, yes - the hilt looks mostly LaTene, but the pommel is inspired by bronze age Persian (Luristan) lobed daggers.
La Tene hilts are mostly reconstructed as horn, bone and wood, the bronze/gold and turqoise stone decorations are inspired by early Sarmatian/Yuezhi stuff. (Afghanistan, cca 1st century CE)

Also I think La Tene scabbards had an attached scabbard slide, whereas I used a sepearate piece slide, which is more fitting for migration period spathas. (and was adopted from the East, all the way from China)
If I were to change anything now, I'd make the wrapping around the scabbard slide better, some kind of twine or string rather than cloth. (or whatever that was supposed to be) Also maybe the slide itself is too clearly antropomorphic.

Here's a compilation of the sword bits I used as inspiration:

I really like this approach to design, it's enjoyable if a sword or another object isn't immediately identifiable as from a specific place and era. It's important that it still fits the general level of technology and mood of the project though!

Just reading about swords a lot helps, seeing what was used throughout the ages. The various designs become building blocks in your mental library that you can eventually pick and piece together quite quickly as they make sense functionally and aesthetically.

Got My Sword Nicked by a Shark

Update 2017: After some delays, I finally heard the final word from Fat Shark. They completely deny any inspiration, or even similarity between my design and their 3D asset. Apparently, that asset was inspired by "celtic swords".
Well, good to know. Here I was, thinking they just blatantly copied my drawing. 
Yeah, I'm not gonna go to court for 150-ish USD, which they of course know.
Still, I'll leave the blog up, as a reminder of their shameful display.
Shame! Boo! Thieves! 
Sad.

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(original post follows below:)
In October I got my friends a game on Steam, which I wanted to play with them.
It's called End Times: Vermintide and it's set in the Warhammer universe.
It's developed by Fatshark.

We had a good time, each playing a different character. After one session, I noticed the elven ranger Kerillian (played by my flatmate) used a dagger with a design which was somehow familiar.

///Edit: The post was edited to focus on the one specific sword design, the rest was confusing.

Eventually I realized it reminded me of a drawing I did in 2009: (2nd from the left)
http://merlkir.deviantart.com/art/Elven-Sword-Evolution-128393180

This is what the weapon looks like in the game:

The thing is nearly identical.  

The way the crossguard is composed of two levels of curls (each curling in the opposite direction), the shape of the blade, even the pommel is heart shaped with inward curled edges.

Here's a comparison (thanks to Hessper), so you can see the designs together :

At first I thought it was funny, a big videogame company using designs from bloody DeviantArt.
Then I thought it was a bit lame. This game is a commercial product, they continue to make money on it, as it's still being sold and played by thousands of people every day.
I thought I should say something, because this should not happen.

It's especially baffling to me, since the game is based in the Warhammer universe, and has loads and loads of existing art under that license, any of which they could've easily use for inspiration.

So I decided to contact them, looking for an explanation rather than big bucks. (don't get me wrong though, I still asked them about a licensing fee)
I wrote them an email through their official contact and waited.
This was in October and I'm still waiting for any kind of reply whatsoever.

To sum up - Fatshark, if someone at the company reads this - I would still love to hear from You and find out how this happened. 

Bizarro-Brothers From Another Sword-Mother

(A quick post in between writing more on OaT.)

I ran across an intriguing sword today - a Tibetan infantry sword (amusingly dated to 14-17th century CE. It's funny how either we really can't date something only 300 or 600 years old more narrowly than a 300 year span, or how sword design in Tibet hasn't changed much in all that time)
http://www.forensicfashion.com/1578TibetanInfantrySword.html

edit: The actual museum holding the sword dates it to early 14th century:

http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/ritual-sword-khadya-with-scabbard-23013

Either way, it's a beauty! And I immediately thought of another sword I've always liked - the so called "Hod Hill" sword:

The surprising thing - the Hod Hill sword is Roman with Celtic influence (found in Britain) and dated to the 1st century CE!

As you can see in the above reconstruction, the sword had some kind of organic material inserted in the hilt (wood, horn, bone etc.) and only the metal fittings remain.

Looking at the Tibetan sword again, I'm thinking that's probably not the case there. The scabbard seems original and its leather (and wood?) seem to have survived. So did the original sword have hollow hilt bits? Or did it have some kind of organic insides?

The blade is interesting as well, the profile is very close to late Roman spathas and looks more Chinese than Tibetan. (Tibetan swords from that period tend to be single edged and not diamond shaped in cross-section)

Does it all mean anything? No, but it's still a beautiful and intriguing piece. It's just extremely unlikely these two designs are in any way related - kind of like how bats and birds both fly, but aren't that close on the evolutionary tree.

"Oak and Thunder" part 1 - What is it?

(In this first post I talk a bit about the comic I'm making and how the idea developed over the years.)

TL;DR: I'm making a comicbook about a female Yuezhi warrior living in western China in 1st century AD.

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Some five years ago I wrote down an idea for a short comic. The working title was "Dragonslayer" (later "Its Breath is Fire") and the short story was supposed to "realistically" interpret the archetypal dragonslayer heroic myth. (perhaps in a similar way Mary Renault did with Théseus) 

Its setting was an unspecified part of the Eurasian steppe, some time in prehistory - the age of proto-Scythian heroes and Amazons.

I've been interested in steppe nomadic cultures since I started university in 2005. 

Funny things, memories - I'm pretty sure it all started with the short scene in Conan the Barbarian where Conan and Subotai run. I was quite little, watching the film with my dad and he'd tell me when to cover my eyes, or when I should be paying attention. This particular scene he'd always liked, the image of two guys running to get where they wanted to go in the vast open steppe, stopping only to eat, sleep and chat about theology. The music by Basil Poledouris works perfectly to underscore the scene, its light mood and the feeling of freedom.

Steppe Nomads

Much later, I stumbled upon a book on Scythians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scythians) and from then on I started researching them and other nomadic people of the Eurasian steppe. (at this time it was just for fun and out of curiosity)

The Eurasian steppe is a fascinating piece of the world in history! I had no idea how influential and important it was to me - a modern European. The way we were taught history in grammar school, I had some idea of blocks of history - separated by (artificial) era borders and by geographical distance. "Europe went through history mostly by itself and so did Asia and so did America"..etc. 

When I became interested in Alexander the Great and later in the steppe nations, I had to rethink what I knew, unlearn a lot and set up my idea of history from scratch.

If you look into this, sooner or later you'll end up at the Silk Road and linguistics. The steppe is where the West and East meet, connected by the various trade routes and links of language evolution. 

There are so many controversial topics and unanswered questions! Where did the Indo-Europeans come from? What role have domesticated horses played in human history and for how long? What about the invention of the wheel?

We've learnt quite a bit about Mesopotamia and the agrarian cultures in school, but almost nothing about pastoralic nomads. There's this idea they didn't contribute anything of value to us, that people only become civilized and worth learning about if they settle down and start planting crops next to big rivers.

I decided to make up for the gaps in my knowledge of steppe history, bought a bunch of books and started reading.

Mummies of the Tarim Basin

I like mummies. It's an odd passion, I know. There's just something really cool about well preserved bodies of ancient people!

In 2011 National Geographic and NOVA made documentaries about a group of mummies found in the Tarim basin, in Xinjiang.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarim_mummies

You can watch the NOVA piece on Youtube:

Mummies of Europoid-looking people in clothing very similar to Celtic style weaving found in western China?! I was immediately hooked!

Of course, many people tried to claim the mummies for various causes. Nationalists, crazy ancient alien theorists, you name it. The thing I found so interesting was the variety - both in physical features and in their DNA, the mummies show a lot of diversity. There's no point in arguing whether they as a whole were European, Chinese, Mongoloid or Caucasoid - these people lived on an important crossroads of the Silk Road. It only made sense so many different places and nations mixed in Tarim.

 

Learning more and more about the Tarim basin and its history, I remembered the short comic idea I wrote, about an Amazon and a dragon. It'd have to be heavily reworked, but it could very well be set a few centuries later, in Xinjiang. 

An overarching story could be woven around the conflict between the Chinese Han dynasty, proto-Hunnic Xiongnu and the Indo-European speaking, Caucasian looking Yuezhi.

The Yuezhi were a good choice for the main protagonist's origin - very little is known about them. So I can fill in gaps and have some room to maneuver in.

And that is what I've been doing this past summer, through weekends and lunch breaks. 

The Comic

I have several outlines for stories written, with the same protagonist, with one main story going through them. I have a mostly finished script for the ending (which is odd, but it was the first story I wrote), so I know how it all ends. Now I just need to figure out how to get there.

There's always more research to be done, I have tons and tons of material to sift through, make more notes and put them to use where needed.

The next blog post will probably be about research, sources, where I draw inspiration from and how I want to approach the story in this very specific setting.

To finish this off, here's one of the early sketches of the main protagonist. I'll keep playing with her facial features more, this drawing was done to have at least something to show. (her costume mostly, based on the few depictions of Yuezhi and Kushans we have)

(I imagine she's in her early teens, around the time she went into battle for the first time)

Designing the Wailing Sword

This is a copy of my post in a fanart thread over at the Project Eternity forums. PE is an RPG being made by Obsidian Entertainment.

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(Background: During the last hours of the Kickstarter video stream, Chris Avellone expressed a certain opinion on swords. To quote (from memory), it was "Swords are boring!". When I protested in the chat, he continued to say that "If you like swords, there's something seriously wrong with you."

I should probably mention that I absolutely love swords. Swords, to me, are super interesting, I could read about their evolution, design, decoration and other aspects for hours and hours. And not only are they very cool as tools with a certain purpose, their role throughout history (other than "you poke people with the pointy end") is fascinating as well.

I decided I would attempt to prove Chris Avellone wrong.

The next day after the stream, I was sitting on an early morning bus, heading to the city where I went to school at the time. It was dark, the engine's humming made me sleepy, but all of a sudden, an idea for a sword struck me. I kept thinking about it the whole time and quickly typed it all in my phone, so that I didn't forget any of the brilliant ideas. (:D)

Then I got really busy with school and illustration work, so the sword didn't get painted until today. I found myself with a free evening and having backed the Torment Kickstarter, it reminded me of the sword design in my desk's drawer.)

Last note: I had NOT yet played Planescape: Torment when I came up with the idea, I was actually bringing my old CD of PT with me on the bus! I played it about a month later and when I got to Dak'kon and read the description of his sword, I thought: "Oh."  

I have to wonder, it seems like the only sword there is in that game. Did Avellone write it? That'd make me SO mad. :D

Wailing Sword of Eír Glanfath

Lore: This ancient elven short sword is made of obsidian, inlaid with copper, the copper handle decorated with opal. Powerful yet unknown magic has been used for its making - the obsidian blade does not shatter on impact, if it's wielded by a warrior of strong will. Mages speculate that the copper inlay transfers the impact and vibrations into the handle, where the opal heads with tongues stuck out connect it to the soul of the user. This puts the mind under pressure, similarly to how ciphers use their gift sometimes.

The stronger the warrior's soul and will are, the more powerful the sword becomes. However, one moment of weakness, one break in concentration and the user may end up blank eyed and babbling, wiggling on the floor in a pool of urine. As a reflected wave, this energy flows back into sword and comes out of the opal heads on the pommel, transformed into sound. It's form and intensity range from subtle humming to blood-curdling wailing.

It is rumored that if an especially weak minded person draws the sword, it'll break in the slightest breeze. Or it may even shatter and kill its bearer with an explosion of burning obsidian shards.

Design ideas: As far as I know, the ancient elves of Eír Glanfath are described as quite primitive, technology-wise, yet with impressive knowledge of astronomy and so on. I went with a very simple, yet ellegant bronze age design - a short leaf blade and a cone pommel. The sword is vaguely reminiscent of celtic weapons, but I didn't stick too close to any historical style. It's magical after all, so it's longer than any obsidian weapon we could reasonably imagine. Beside obsidian I chose the most primitive metal I could think of - copper. No idea if the elves actually used metal or not, this one has that ancient look for sure. Opal is just cool, I really liked the idea of it being a magical transformer for soul energy. ;)

Obsidian I chose for obvious reasons, but also because it's supposed to (perhaps as an urban legend) hold an edge one molecule wide and thus able to cut anything. (if only it wasn't fragile! hey, magic solves that problem! ;))

The copper inlay all revolves around sound. The blade decoration looks a bit like a signal, a sine wave and a snake (Ouroboros? I know they got rid of that, it's an old idea). The guard ended up looking a lot like pointy elven ears, but that was NOT intentional. Maybe it was subconscious. The arms holding the "signal" symbolize the user's soul grip on things being the only thing keeping the sword intact.

The opal faces are pretty self explanatory - the handle ones dig into your palm, make it slightly uncomfortable to use, reminding you of the responsibility you have when you draw the sword. 

Possible system uses: 

- obviously more damage or armour piercing if the user's willpower or soul power (uh, whatever stat you choose :D) is higher

- regular roll checks if the sword breaks and hurts you?

- maybe there's a chance the wailing (if you do a critical?) scares some of your opponents and breaks their morale?

- maybe you can do sonic attacks by waving it wildly? Or if you hit the ground?

So, that's that. It'd be kind of cool if I could mod it into the game one day, but who knows how that turns out. (2017 edit: It didn't. Boo! :D Obsidian, we want mods!) 

Let me know what you guys think. ;)

Painting a plate

No, I have not become a potter. As the Kickstarter for Guide to Glorantha races towards its end, it keeps raking the money onto a rather huge pile.

Great!

You can check it here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/224590870/the-guide-to-glorantha

I have been painting full page colour plates for it, very much in the style of Angus McBride's plates for the Osprey books.

Each plate depicts a culture-specific event, cultures being represented by four or five characters doing whatever they do and showing off their clothing, jewelry and tattoos.

Jeff Richard and I agreed it'd be good to show how one of these is made, step by step.

Plate n. 4 - Ralios

It all starts with Jeff sending me a brief in PDF. Like this one:

http://pospabr.sweb.cz/BriefPlate04.pdf

I spent one whole afternoon reading these briefs, googling images and going through my image library, looking for reference for each plate.

Examples of such reference may look like this:

I should note that I don't use these images directly, they're not traced, they're not "Photoshopped" into the painting. I simply want to be sure about how this kind of stuff looks so that I can paint it looking plausibly.
This set of reference is for the barbarian bodyguard of course.

After gathering reference I attempt to sketch a composition of the piece. It's important to decide where characters stand, kneel or do whatever they're supposed to be doing. The have to be placed to make sense in the "story" and also to be well visible. That can sometimes be a problem, but here it was quite simple. A tight group of conspirators standing in a dark alley! Very easy.

I draw and paint directly in a program called ArtRage. It produces a nice traditional look and it feels like using real paint too. (ie it's a struggle all the way through :D)

I actually drew this in two layers - one for the architecture (to keep it in perspective) and one for the characters. So if I needed to erase bits of the characters, I could do so without damaging the scene itself.

You can see I've done a bit of the character design in the sketch already. This plate didn't see many changes from sketch to paint, which is a bit unusual for me.

The scene as described in the brief sounds very dark. Dark alley, in the night, no street lights...I was a bit worried about that. I have to get light in there somehow! I suggested we give the sorcerer some kind of magical lantern and it was okayed by Jeff. I quite liked the idea of a night scene with a purplish tint to the dark city (which is pretty common in big modern cities due to air pollution. Not sure how that happened here, but hey. Artistic license, right? ;)) with a contrasting green light illuminating the characters.

You may notice the vertical and upper facing bits of buildings are coloured more towards cold grays, being "lit" by the sky, while the down facing bits are more purply. This would happen on a bright day more likely, where sunlight is bouncing off the ground upwards onto horizontal surfaces. So it's not very realistic to do this at night, but it serves as a nice compositional tool, to get some of the warm colours into shadows. That balances the use of warm hues through the image somewhat.
The bodyguard's face is also the first one I painted. I tend to start with getting faces "right", because they're the most difficult and fun to do.

I did some work on the right side of the painting and noticed the bouncing light issue. I opted for a slightly more realistic depiction and darkened the shadowed area considerably. A lot of work has been put into the stones of the building and the barbarian's costume is mostly done.

I finished the barbarian by detailing the sword, armour and adding runes to his face and arms. I decided the background could use some work, so I painted the buildings in the back. I've done some work on the noblewoman, but almost exclusively her upper half. Somehow the lower bits weren't so appealing to me in this image. I also started on the sorcerer and it was really fun and easy for some reason. The green light was a joy to use too.

This part was a mix of fun - painting the face of the priestess and less fun - painting the lower halves of the sorcerer and the noblewoman. Lots of ornaments everywhere. I also realized the lighting wasn't quite right on the left wall, so I added cast shadows and half shadows, which framed the figures better.

The last step was to paint the priestess, her frilly skirt, tattooed legs and tighten everything else that needed fixing or detailing. I decided to add ornaments to the stonework to the right, including the Harmony rune inside an Earth rune. I thought those two would be a good choice for masons wishing for their building to last. (that wasn't in the brief, just my own initiative after learning the runes by heart :D)

That's it!

My biggest fear:  The architecture. I'm not very confident about buildings, but it ended up being surprisingly alright. Darkness did help for sure though.
My favourite bits: The whole barbarian bodyguard was my favourite from the moment I got the brief. His pipe, his scratched and notched sword, the lamellar vest and (my invention for no reason) the detachable sleeve of his tunic. I also quite enjoyed designing the tall headgear of the high priestess and the mitre helmet of the sorcerer. That one especially! I really enjoy how it shows his painted forehead and how it's using his own hair to attach itself to the head. (look closely, there's a knot of dreadlocks at the top, going through the tiara)

Now what are those heavily embroidered flappy flaps going through the ring belt on the noblewoman? No idea. :) Any suggestions?

Thanks a lot for reading! I hope you'll enjoy the plates when they're all printed in the Guide. I know I will spend a lot of time gazing at them lovingly. ;P

Fabulous hats and feathers

A short post today. I hope I'm allowed to show this (Jeff will let me know if not, I'm sure) - it's a page from my sketchbook, which I drew during the Splash conference last weekend.

(You can see me draw it a couple of times! :))

The sketches are of the Feathered Queen, a character I'll be painting for the upcoming "Guide to Glorantha" book. This character has been drawn and painted before, most recently by none other than Jon Hodgson:

http://jonhodgson.deviantart.com/art/Sartar-Kingdom-of-Heroes-Cover-318113350

I wanted to do my own take though. I didn't have any reference on me at the time, so there aren't that many Scythian/American Indian elements present. And the design will be different in the final painting, but I'm glad I explored the idea of fabulous feathered headgear and what shapes it could have.

3 points on pauldrons in fantasy illustration

I'm sorry about the unimaginative title!

My armour posts seem to be among the most popular ones and I just got an idea for another one today.

Pauldrons are difficult, I won't lie. Armour in general is very hard to understand and to draw. And an illustrator usually needs to come up with acceptable yet innovative designs on a regular basis.

I won't even talk about massive Warhammer marine/Warcraft pauldrons, or pauldrons with giant spikes, those are a bit obvious and I'll leave them for an even less inspired post in the future.

There are three things I want to address. Let's look at the amazing drawing I put together five minutes ago:

(click to enlarge if you wish)

1) Single pauldrons held by body straps

This is all for the sake of coolness and asymetrical design. Single pieces of pair equipment probably were used here and there, but more because of the lack of the other piece rather than any deliberate purpose. It's also much easier to strap and set up a pair of pauldrons. As we've no doubt seen many times, these pauldrons are magically held on the body by (often really crazy) webs of straps and belts. Often they'd make it very difficult for the person to move.

Everytime I see this, I have to question the sanity of people who'd choose to wear only pauldrons and no other armour, for whatever reason. Is it ideology or bravery like with the berserks? Well then a pauldron is just as armour as any other piece.
Is he supposed to be a "light" build? Some kind of a rogue? Why on earth a pauldron then? It's not like the shoulder is the first place anyone would attack, or a bodypart one needs to protect above all others. I'd wear a cuirass, or a padded jack in that case.

To me this is the equivalent of a chainmail bikini - a dinosaur of fantasy illustration we should forget.

2) Pauldrons on hinges

I wonder who came up with the idea. Some unfortunately placed rivets on an original armour might have deceived him. Or maybe he just thought this was how it worked.

Pauldrons are not riveted to the cuirass. No.

Still, fantasy armours repeat this design over and over.
You even see it in movies (and boy oh boy, does it show how uncomfortable and awkward it is!)
 - I'm looking at you, Dungeon Siege!

also games like Dragon Age:

And man, does it NOT work when you make it into a costume!

(that poor actor had to pretend he could lift his arms comfortably)

So how were these things attached to the person? They were usually tied onto the cuirass/gorget/padded jack at the shoulder/neck. No, it doesn't flop around wildly, you can always put a strap going under the arm to hold it in place.
Putting the weight on the shoulder is a good for mass distribution and it doesn't get in the way of any movement.

3) Pauldrons wide enough to make you stuck in the door

Pauldrons are not just any massive bowls you stick on your shoulders. There are many different types and shapes, all very specifically shaped to fit the body very tightly and closely. You want to be a small target, not a huge one. You don't want it to change your balance.

I get it, wide shoulders make the silhouette seem powerful. I beg you, do it with the actual shoulders and then put pauldrons on those, don't put massively wide protruding pauldrons on narrow shoulders.

Illustrations like that remind me of American "football" players stuck in that harness of theirs. They have padded shoulders, because they want to tackle people.

There's no shortage of large "shoulder pads" in historical armours, but they're designed in a way that makes them cover a large area while remaining fairly close fitting:

I've posted mainly medieval plate armour as examples of how it "should" look. For a good reason - most fantasy is still based on our limited view and understanding of medieval Europe. Sure, it's changing, we're adding Asian and other influences. But the majority of knights, paladins and other armoured characters still wear "knight armor".

We could speak about more "primitive" shapes and designs like the tube-and-yoke armour, or the lorica segmentata. But we won't, not today. :)

I'd like to stress this is not a hate post, meant to tell all illustrators how dumb they are. Far from it!
The portrayal of fantasy armour IS getting better and better all the time.

These are just my personal pet peeves with pauldrons, that's all. Now you know how to do it LESS WRONG! ;P

A BONUS POINT! - Redundant besagues

Have you seen stuff like this before? I'm sure you have.

Those funny looking discs around the shoulders, or the armpits. Preferably painted on amazon warriors clad in mail bikini.

How? How do those make ANY sense at all? These things are called "besagues" and they're meant to protect the wearer from blows or blades slipping between the pauldrons and the cuirass - into the armpits where dem arteries are.

I only wish the artists hadn't forgotten to pain the cuirass and the pauldrons on in most cases.

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As always, if you have anything to say - SAY IT in the comments! :) I want to hear it.

Candy From a Stranger

Here are the last two black and white illustrations I did for Picks and Hoes. The more I've done of these, the more I started to enjoy myself. 

And here's a cover for a book soon coming out by Moon Design - a wonderful tome about the city of Pavis.
It's been done for quite some time now. It's not at all how I meant to do it, still I'm quite content with it.

This image was a challenge - a first real piece in colour (and a cover at that) I did after a long time of doing greyscale quarter-pagers.
I had a 3D model of the city, which was of huge help to me. Thank you, awesome Glorantha fans, who make 3D models like that. ;)
It was much easier to pick an interesting point of view while keeping the architecture and layout completely accurate this way.

As soon as we started talking about it with Jeff, I knew I wanted to have the sun play a major role - the first sketches were done in normal yellow midday sunlight, but a scene of worship atop a zikkurat just begged to be happening at sunset/sunrise.

And dragon worship used to be a big thing in Pavis, apparently, so I put in dragon banners waving in the wind, hints of dragon shapes in the smoke of the scensor and the scensor itself is shaped like a dragon too.

Then it was just getting the lighting and mood right, painting all those people in the square and keeping the perspective right on the priests.

Some random guy at Dragonmeet last year told me it had "good lighting", so I see it as a success. ;P

Nicking swords

It seems my swords and armour posts are somewhat popular, so here's another one. ;) (sorry it's shortish, I has a busy.)

How do you know your design is good? A hint may be seeing it used by other designers. :P
I've mentioned the LOTR movies as examples of very successful fantasy/historical swords and armour designs.

We should all be grateful for their influence, though I'd hope we'd learn the lesson we're being offered - always study what you're designing, know your history, know your competition, know what works, why and how.

So, remember Narsil and the reforged Andúril, Flame of the West?

 

 John Howe talks about the design a lot on the LOTR DVDs and he's quite pleased about the fact the pommel is hollow. (A unique feature for a movie sword according to him. I'm sure he's right.) Notice that the ends of the crossguard mimic this design) Also note the specific way only the upper half of the handle is wrapped in leather.

 

Notice anything similar about the iron sword from the first Witcher game? :)

By the way, I'm super excited about the Witcher sequel - the armour, clothes and weapons look super nice!

(notice the very historical looking longsword here!)

Michael Komarck's Dragnipúr has a curved guard, but the shape of the pommel and the guard ends also suggests an Andúril inspiration.

Here's his previous take on the subject:
 (I'd say the new one is definitely an improvement sword-wise. He's a great painter btw, be sure to check out his Game of Thrones stuff and also the paintings he did for Steven Erikson's books.)

http://www.komarckart.com/

EDIT: This image seems to be an earlier version, maybe a WIP. Here's the final image and the sword is much much much better!

I'm sure we've all seen the rather numerous spinoffs of the curved elven swords, right? Do you have any favourite ones?
Or just favourite sword designs you really like (and/or take inspiration from)? 


Please, do share them in the comments!