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.

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.

Armour (nit)picks

A critical post again. Feel free to call me an ass in the comments. I hear blogs are mostly written by arrogant self-obsessed arseholes anyway. ;P


Watching the newest video released as Behind the Scenes of the new HBO series - Game of Thrones, I  was again faced with a couple of issues I have with fantasy armour design.

I'll try to explain them here.
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Watch the video if you haven't already.
What is it I don't like?

1) Mixing of stuff.

There's nothing wrong with it. If it works as a design, if it's visually appealing, if it does what you want it to, ok. The costume designer is proud of how much the mixed and that it's not immediately obvious that some culture is this "Earth" culture and some other culture is another. That's nice, I like that. However, I think if you're doing a realistic tv show based on a book set in a very medieval-Europe-like world, you probably shouldn't go too crazy.

Yes, you want variety and especially with soldiers in armour, you need to be able to tell immediately who's who. It's a pity they chose to make these factions so incredibly different. Yes, it's unbelievable, it doesn't seem likely to happen at a small continent where all these big families fight each other for centuries, to have armour designs this strangely different.

No, nobody's going to notice, only a few armour enthusiasts. But just as boring slow stage fighting, it's going to make them dislike the show.

TL;DR:  If you're mixing stuff, make sure if makes sense for the world's history.

2) A specific example - Lannisters and King's Guard

Most armours are quite the medievalesque/dark ages standard. These two however are a complete fantasy and in my eyes - a close (but disappointing) fail.

Photo from Winter-Is-Coming, click for full view. In the foreground you can see the King's Guard, behind them the Lannister soldiers.

King's Guard:

Like: - the slightly archaic combination of cuirass and scale sleeves is a change from the book, but I quite enjoy it.
Dislike: - the shoulders have a weird shape that would more likely catch a blow rather than let it slide away.
- the ornaments are poorly done, someone has downloaded a set of "tribal" Photoshop brushes and used them all in a horrible mess. Very disappointing.
- the helmets. Oh boy. A case of what I call "the fantasy bucket". Why is it that the barbutta-type helmet is SO popular with fantasy designers? I know it's a simple design, but it takes more to make an attractive helmet, surely! Buckets with cutouts for mouth and eyes, I simply despise them. Anyway, this one is a bit bolder, with the almost dragon-like ridges at the top - I like those. But then it's all ruined by the bottom - why is it soooo very wide? I realize they probably made them without the actors' measurements, but they don't seem to fit them. (notice how the guy to the left can't see through the eyeholes)
The width of the bottom rim doesn't work both for practical and aesthetic reasons - it would wobble terribly on anyone's head, it allows plenty of space for a thrust to the neck or lower face and it would obstruct movement of the head quite a bit. Also it makes the head look way too big thus making the whole figure comical.

Lannisters:

Like: - I quite like the armour itself. I'm not sure why they thought a Japanese influence made sense, but whatevs. It works - it's slick and close fitting. There are gaps in it which I can't quite explain, but it does look ok in general.
- I really like that the visor of the helmet looks a bit like lion's face. (not sure if that's intentional, but it works for Lannisters)

Dislike: - The helmets don't work. The combination of a Japanese bowl shape (wide near the bottom again), yet of dark age construction with the connecting ridge in the middle. A weird horizontal crest (Roman influence?Why?) and a rather anglosaxon/viking visor?
It could pass for a strange sallet, but those usually had a neck guard like this:

- this helmet leaves the neck completely exposed. Again, this is both a practical and visual mistake - both the neck and cheeks/face are endangered and it makes the helm look unbalanced, dangling on a thin neck.

3) The myths about armour and its properties

- the lady argues that the Northerners don't use metal armour, because it's unfit for the cold climate. Why? That it would rust? You just oil the thing. Your tongue would stick to it if you licked it? I don't think the cold climate stopped the Scandinavians from wearing metal armour if they could.
- the actor playing Jaime says that "to imagine people fought in this...it's not that comfortable". I wonder if it's just the spoiled softness of the modern human, or the fact the armour wasn't made to fit. Real armour is actually surprisingly comfortable.
"...*grins* but it looks fantastic!"  yeah, not that great if you ask me.
- metal shields. *sigh* For some reason the Stark guards have full metal round shields. I wonder if they're aluminium. If they were iron, I'd like to see them try and fight with them.

Not to be a complete nitpicky nerd, here's a couple of things I really like about the costumes and designs:

1) The architecture. I like how King's Landing is very southern and different to Winterfell. Well done. Or maybe I don't know as much about architecture as about armour. :)
2) The Dothraki. Nice nomadic look. I only wish they made them ride without stirrups, that'd be so cool!
3) The swords aren't bad. Have a few impractical bits and they're not quite LOTR swords, but still very nice for a TV show.
4) The normal clothes - Jaime's leather coat looks a bit eastern, but great. Rest of the dresses, tunics and all that look nicely worn and simple.

That's all. Feel free to leave hate posts in the comments. ;) I'm ready for you, GoT fans!

5 Sins of the Sword in Fantasy Illustration

Today's post will be a very concentrated and shortened version of an article I've wanted to write for a while. I can't seem to find the time to do it properly, so I'll half ass it. Ha!

EDIT: As Jon Hodgson very rightly pointed out, I'm a big meanie and a party pooper, hating fantasy for its charm. 
No, not really. ;) IF your goal is to paint somewhat realistic and believable swords, then you might want to consider this...

I'm sure fantasy artists often struggle with swords. Swords are among the most common weapons and objects in fantasy illustration and it's hard to get them right. How to design a proper sword that looks like it would work, that's a whole different story and I may do a blog post about that some other time.

Today I want to talk about mistakes and errors in painting a generic sword in a fantasy illustration. (or god forbid - in a historical illustration)

What are the most common errors and what other dangers are there while drawing a sword? I chose the main 5 that came to my mind.
(you can take a look at the two drawings I attached at the bottom to better understand the points.)

1) Proportions
Understanding sword proportions is absolutely key to achieving a believable sword, even if you're designing something ridiculously over the top for WoW. There's just too much that falls under this cathegory, so I'll only address my personal pet peeves.

- making the crossguards too large. European swords weren't massive lumps of iron medieval knights used to bludgeon each other to death! They were precisely crafted ellegant tools. The swordsmiths went as far as changing a blade's tapering not only in width, but also in thickness along the blade's length. So much effort went into making the blades strong yet light enough to wield comfortably.

Why on earth would someone put on a giant lump of steel to make the sword too heavy? it's nonsense, yet you often see swords with unbelievably large crosspieces, often because the artist didn't look for enough reference and had no idea how a crosspiece looks in 3D. (you can find sword photos from the side easily, but do you know how broad/thick a crosspiece usually is? What shape does it have in a cross section?)

- making the pommel too small. Or leaving it out completely! A pommel has many uses and purposes and it changed a lot through the ages and different places. If you're trying to paint a somewhat generic medieval-ish sword, it has to have a pommel. There's no way around it - look at reference, preferably of real swords from museums and observe the size, all the various shapes and forms the pommel could have.

There's more to proportions - the ratio of blade to hilt, shape of the blade itself and its profile...Too much to cover here. (more hopefully in the future sword design post)

2) Oh SO long hilts
...on supposedly one handed swords. A minor thing, some may think. It just makes me cringe every time. If your character has a shield and a sword, a dagger in the off hand or if it's just obvious he's not using both hands to wield the sword - for the love of art gods! Make the sword a one handed one.
It doesn't make your hero a badass, it makes him look dumb.
Obviously, you can use a two handed sword with one hand, but it's uncomfortable and wrong. The long handle will only get in the way.
Feel free to paint an oversized sword if it's that kind of fantasy, but try to make the hilt shorter.
(and yes, I am aware of swords with hilts long just so that you can wield them both ways. A good example would be the sword of Balian in the film Kingdom of Heaven. I don't have anything against that, it works.)

3) Alignment of all the bits
Oh yes. It's still surprising to me how often I see this in illustrations by the absolute top artists in the field. A sword is a long object and usually has at least one axis going straight through it.

Be precise about this - draw a helper line and get all the bits on that line. Usually you can see the swords suddenly changing their angle in the hand holding them - the hilt and the blade are aligned differently.

And even if you get this right, there are other straight or dangerously curved lines you need to watch out for! - The blade has two edges (which need not be straight, often they're leaf shaped) and either a spine, or a fuller (what the laymen call a "blood groove". I'll get to that myth in the design post).
All of those need to be properly aligned in perspective in their appropriate planes!
(quite often you can see the artist drew the helper lines, but then managed to mess it up in rendering, a common mistake is rotating the blade around the axis, so it's in a different plane than the pommel. It's often quite visible on the fuller, because it catches light so well.)

It's hard. Often I don't bother with it too much. But it shows, it's immediately visible and even if you can't name it, you know there's something wrong with the sword. Just like if you mess up the perspective on a building. You can often notice artists weren't confident enough to draw a sword in space and the rotation fitting their pose, so they painted it flat facing the viewer like if it was laid on a table.
I can't say "don't do that". But it'll always make the poses of your characters holding the sword look unnatural.

4) Weirdness of the blade near hilt
There are two extremes I'll talk about here.

A) Brick Forte.
EDIT:  As Caleb pointed out in the comments - this is called ricasso. In the comments I explain why I think it's often used in a wrong way. Here's an example of a 16th century sword with a ricasso. That can still be considered medieval and I failed. ;)

http://www.a-work-of-art.net/page14.htm 
Here' you can see a replica of a longsword with a ricasso. If you want to use this element - know why it's there - to allow for a wider grip.


http://forums.swordforum.com/showthread.php?t=95599

You can see this in my drawing. I didn't find any good photo of this, because sword replicas are starting to get better. But I used to see this all the time on reenactment swords and wallhangers. And you can still see it in fantasy illustrations. It's that part of the blade near the hilt, where you suddenly don't have an edge and the profile of the blade is rectangular. It always bothered me - what was it there for?!

Someone once told me it was the forte, part of the blade which was used for blocking. Therefore it didn't need an edge an was left this way.
OK, that sounds reasonably plausible. But it's not true.
Yes, that part of the sword is called forte (or "the strong" of the blade). But that brick profile has nothing to do with blocking. (you don't usually and preferably "block" with a sword anyway. That's for a swordfighting blog post, which I'd also love to do, though)
I've never ever seen this thing on a real ancient or medieval sword. You can prove I'm a dumbass by posting a link to a photo of such sword, if you feel like it.
My theory is - it's a thing made up by modern replica manufacturers who grind blades from blocks of steel. Not knowing how to fit a blade with full edge into a crosspiece, they went the easy way - left it rectangular near the hilt.  (and hey, reenactors can "block" with it too! yay.)

TL;DR - Don't do it, it doesn't exist.

B) Blade cutouts. There's no excuse for this. I'll talk more about the construction of a sword in the blog post which will hopefully happen in the future. The main idea is - swords have to undergo a lot of stress and absorb a lot of shock near the hilt. Many swords taper towards the point.
There is no reason to make the blade more narrow near the hilt. None. Considering the preferable distribution of mass, mechanics of the sword, how it handles and what its purpose is, there is no reason to do it.
Yet, it's an evergreen of fantasy swords. Oooh, that tapering blade looks so boring, I'll add some spikes here, I'll cut this bit here out, it's gonna be AWESOME!
Also dumb.

TL;DR - Don't do it, it doesn't exist.

5) Holding it wrong
Usually with two handed swords. If you have a long hilt, why not use it? It's why it's long - it's a lever! You get more power and handling speed that way!
Look, it's easy - it's not a baseball bat, it's a sword. One hand under the crosspiece, one hand on the pommel. Done.
(again, more info about how a person stands and moves with a sword would probably fit into another post.)


That's all for today. Let me know if it's in any way useful and feel free to share this if you like.

My portfolio needs YOUR help!

I decided to do more colour paintings for the portfolio. I've been collecting reference - all kinds of colour paintings I might learn something useful from.

If you have a couple of minutes, please, post links to one or two fantasy book covers, RPG covers or just colour illustrations/paintings YOU think are awesome.

Thanks in advance!