Medieval Armor Tutorial
Uploaded by
Rollo MirfinoMedieval Armor Tutorial
Uploaded by
Rollo MirfinotutorialPainting
brushes that I have used so that you can try
The Block In
Armour
them out too. To load them, just click on the
Start by blocking in the main shapes of the
brush tool and then right-click on the canvas.
figure (Fig.02). At this point you are just trying to
Your brush menu should now open. In the top
get the basic shapes of the figure, so dont worry
right corner is a small triangle button - click on
about the details just yet. Next, lay in the basic
it and go to Load Brushes, then select the file
colour and shapes for the face (Fig.03). I felt the
that is included in this tutorial. As for what size
need for some more colours in the background,
of a file you should work in, I always paint at
so I added some yellows to the ground and
300dpi and usually around 3000 pixels wide.
brought them up behind the character, and also
This artwork is 2404x2905.
onto his legs (Fig.04).
Gather Information
The first thing I usually do when I get a project
is to collect all of the reference material that I
am going to need. Most of the time you can find
everything you need by just Googling it. Fig.01
shows images taken from different museum
websites. It is a good idea to start building up a
large reference folder on your computer so that
the next time you need some armour reference
you will already have it. Now that we have our
reference material, we can start the illustration.
Getting Ready
This painting is going to be done primarily in
Photoshop CS2, with a little bit of Painter IX at
the end. I have included the Photoshop CS2
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Adding the Detail
Usually I block in more of the armour shapes
before I work more on the head, but this time I
am going to finish up the head first so that I can
focus more on the armour (Fig.05a). I wanted
this guy to be a rough and tough knight, not
just another big brute, but one that is proud and
charismatic. Another way to make someone
look more heroic is to elongate their proportions.
Usually I make them around 8-9 heads tall. Now
that I have the head down, I can start blocking in
the armour. I wasnt really sure what the armour
was going to look like, so I just started throwing
down paint (Fig.05b). The shape I put down for
the pauldron didnt really make any sense, so
I start cutting away pieces and trying to give it
some more form and function (Fig.05c). One
thing you always need to be aware of when
designing a character is whether or not they
could actually function. Its nice to make them
look cool, but a lot of the time, especially in the
gaming industry, the character will need to be
able to animate. This is where your references
come in handy. Study how real armour is
put together and try to figure out why it was
designed a certain way and how it works. I felt
like the character was leaning too much, so I
rotated him a little counter-clockwise, and gave
him hair and a beard (Fig.05d).
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There are many ways to paint in the highlights, one of which is to use the colour dodge tool (Fig.06a
& b). I know people always say to never use colour dodge, but when used correctly it is a great tool.
First you need to pick a dark colour. If you pick a light colour you will overexpose the illustration very
quickly. Next, click on the brush tool and go up to the mode pull down and select colour dodge.
You can use any brush you like, but I find it easier to use a soft brush. Sometimes the area you
paint will become very saturated, so just go back in with the desaturate brush. For the plates on the
arm, I first paint in the curved shadows that they create (Fig.07a & b). Then I put in some specular
highlights, the core shadow, reflected light, and a highlight to the rim of the plates (Fig.07c).
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A lot of people ask me how to get textures in
their paintings (Fig.08). Most of the time I just
paint my textures in manually with my brushes,
but sometimes I will overlay a texture from a
photo. I found this texture from Barontieri (www.
barontieri.com). The easy way to add texture to
a painting is to take the texture, copy and paste
it into your illustration, and set the layer property
to overlay. Then you can knock down the opacity
to whatever looks good. In this case I lowered
the opacity to 45%. I wasnt really feeling that
his pose was fitting with what I had in mind, so I
changed around his stance to a more confident
pose (Fig.09 & 10).
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Armour
Again, whenever you are painting something, be sure to remember that
there are several parts to describing form, such as the core shadow,
reflected light, and the highlight (Fig.11). Another really cool part to paint of
armour is the chain mail (Fig.12 & 13a). Painting chain mail is really easy
and looks cool when you are zoomed out. This time I decided to make a
chain mail brush for the purpose of this tutorial. Open a new document
and draw a few c shapes. Make that into a brush and go to the brush
controls. Click the box next to Shape Dynamics and under Angle Jitter
set the control to Direction. Doing this will cause the c shapes to follow
the direction of your brush. Also click the box next to Other Dynamics so
that you can have opacity control with your stylus. First lay down one row
of chain mail by painting from left to right, then you can paint the next row
simply by painting from right to left. The reason we can do this is because
we set the angle jitter to direction, allowing us to paint the c shapes in
both directions without having to rotate the brush. This will let you get the
basic idea down. Now go back in and pop in some highlights and darken
the edges (Fig.13b).
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The armour on the arm is going to be handled the same way I handled the chest armour (Fig.14, 15,
16 & 17a). First paint in the basic colour, then add in the shadows and highlights. After that I drop in
a texture overlay layer (Fig.17b). On top of that I use the colour dodge brush to pop in some more
lights (Fig.17c).
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Go through the same process on the legs as we
have used with the arms (Fig.18a, b, c, d, e & f).
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It is a good idea to occasionally take breaks from your painting, so that
when you come back to it you can more easily see mistakes you have
made (Fig.19). You should also regularly flip the image horizontally to see
any flaws. I felt like his head needed to be a little bit bigger, so I enlarged
that and changed his left arm as well (Fig.20).
The Final Touches
Now I am going to move to Painter IX to add in some final textures
(Fig.21). Open the image. It is better to add the texture to another layer
so that you can erase out parts you dont want. To do this you will need
to make a copy of your illustration. Select the entire canvas (Ctrl+a) and
then, with the move tool selected, hold down Alt and then left-click. This
will create a duplicate layer. Now go to Effects Surface Control Apply
Surface Texture. A dialogue box appears with the different settings.
Change the Using drop down to Image Luminance (Fig 22). Now go
down and make sure that Shine is set to 0. Adjust the Amount to an
amount that looks good to you and then click ok. Finally, just erase out
the parts that you do not want, flatten the image, and you are done. Next
month I will show you how to create Ancient Greek/Roman armour! Keep
your eyes open!
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Daarken
More work from this artist can be found at:
www.daarken.com
Contact them via:
[email protected]
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