Drawing Armor

[Saigokarasu]

Can anyone offer any tutorials and/or visual aids for drawing armor? I can't find anything decent on the web.

[HunterKiller_]

http://images.google.co.nz/images?q=armor&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi

Wasn't too hard.

[Elwell]

CA armor reference thread: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2138

[Nrx]

i think im only replying so people will say, "you dumbfuck go take advantage"

but im lucky enough to live very near the royal armouries, basically its a museum (thats free to enter) thats full of differnt weapons and armour from medieval to ancient chinease to modern armour, they also have jousting and other various things, i've never been there with a sketchbook or camera....


Also with my college we got taken to the museum store, which is basically were they keep all the exhibits that arnt in use (i got to hold a piece of meteorite that was older than the earth lol, that bastard had been one piece before any of this.. ever since i can fire lazers too! ) anyway, we were told we can ring up and organise to come down with a few people and work from the stuff they have there, they have all kinds of crazy stuff like monkey skeletons moose heads, stuffed polar bears.

[m@.]

Can anyone offer any tutorials and/or visual aids for drawing armor? I can't find anything decent on the web.

Well, one big thing about drawing armor is thinking about reflections and how metal reacts to light. A usual mistake that people do when drawing metal is making it gray with white highlights. But you gotta think about the environment around the subject, what color it is, if there is a blue sky on top, what kind of light sources around it, etc, and then appropriately tint your planes.

Think about the hierarchy of lighting for your highlights. What is the brightest light in the scene? for instance, in a broad daylight environment it would go something like : sunlight->skylight>reflected sunlight on bright surfaces->artificial lights. Study photos and look around you to think about that light hierarchy in all kind of conditions. This will tell you what kind of value hierarchy you will need to have on your metal (and anything else basically, but mostly on metal since it is so much influenced by pure reflections).

Don't use white highlights for everything, use only white (or your brightest color) for the reflection of your very brightest light source, and go down from there.. And think about the overall color temperature of the scene, don't use plain grey. Really think about the armor as a sort of 3 dimensional mirror showing of the environment, rather than a solid object with random highlights. Of course all armors are not perfect mirrors like chrome, you gotta think about how worn out it is, which basically will direct the way you will paint your edges, super sharp to super soft and blurry, which will blend the reflections together. And your metal can be tinted of course, and lighter or darker. Hope this helps :)