Post by poptarticus on Mar 15, 2010 22:31:03 GMT -7
Okay,
So I went back to the drawing board, so to speak, and worked out the first official figure for my "generic" Samurai army. Before anyone says anything about the armor, most of the details will be in the coloring. I opted to avoid a lot of the gratuitous fluff that harumaki-do could easily have because I don't really think small miniatures handle lots of detail well. I may change my mind later and add some in, but we'll see.
As a result, there are no ties for the kabuto (helmet) or the sode (shoulder guards), no haidate (leg guards that sit under the "skirt"), no sheath, and no odoshi (lacing) aside from what holds the kusazuri (skirt pieces) on to the do (breastplate). The suneate (shin guards) are very simple and I opted to give him bracers instead of proper kote (arm guards). He also doesn't have a sei-ita (literally "coward's plate," a piece that covers the opening up the back) because I felt it would be too much going on. Not to mention the fact that there aren't enough kusazuri, as there should be five, but a two dimensional figure takes a lot of width out of the armor.
You might be able to tell that I'm a costume designer (even got a degree for it!). It's actually kind of a pain when it comes to things like this, because it makes me question all of my choices over-much.
So what do you all think? Does it need more detail? Less? Does it look strange without eyes? (I tried the helmet every which way until I settled on this one as looking best, and the most menacing.)
Other miscellaneous information: All of this artwork took me approximately 5 hours. I worked entirely digital, using a variety of sources. I did the artwork itself in GIMP with a Wacom Intuos 2 on Ubuntu (Karmic) Linux and traced it in Inkscape.
So I went back to the drawing board, so to speak, and worked out the first official figure for my "generic" Samurai army. Before anyone says anything about the armor, most of the details will be in the coloring. I opted to avoid a lot of the gratuitous fluff that harumaki-do could easily have because I don't really think small miniatures handle lots of detail well. I may change my mind later and add some in, but we'll see.
As a result, there are no ties for the kabuto (helmet) or the sode (shoulder guards), no haidate (leg guards that sit under the "skirt"), no sheath, and no odoshi (lacing) aside from what holds the kusazuri (skirt pieces) on to the do (breastplate). The suneate (shin guards) are very simple and I opted to give him bracers instead of proper kote (arm guards). He also doesn't have a sei-ita (literally "coward's plate," a piece that covers the opening up the back) because I felt it would be too much going on. Not to mention the fact that there aren't enough kusazuri, as there should be five, but a two dimensional figure takes a lot of width out of the armor.
You might be able to tell that I'm a costume designer (even got a degree for it!). It's actually kind of a pain when it comes to things like this, because it makes me question all of my choices over-much.
So what do you all think? Does it need more detail? Less? Does it look strange without eyes? (I tried the helmet every which way until I settled on this one as looking best, and the most menacing.)
Other miscellaneous information: All of this artwork took me approximately 5 hours. I worked entirely digital, using a variety of sources. I did the artwork itself in GIMP with a Wacom Intuos 2 on Ubuntu (Karmic) Linux and traced it in Inkscape.
you already have the half of the mini done (the front) 
