Having gone through all of my previous designs and picked out my favourite elements I decided that I was quite happy with a number of the helmets which I had drawn but there were hardly any full armour concepts I liked. This isn't to say I disliked everything I had drawn, merely I wasn't happy with any of the full armours that had been drawn up. There were elements I liked, and designs with a small amount of armour roughed out that I wanted to explore further. As such I set out to take the best concepts and draw them up in full suits of head to toe armour. However I would make sure to concentrate on the body and not the head, as I had already drawn many, many helmets and didn't need to design any more. As such most of the below helmets are only place holders and may be replaced later.
With this in mind I set out to explore one full concept or design in each suit I drew. I started with a suit that was meant to provide maximum coverage with minimum restrictions to movement (top left and centre). I used a lot of the research I had done when creating the paper armour to figure out how to try and solve the mobility issues. The idea was basically to have all of the panels be able to slide over one another to keep things covered but also flexible.
The next concept I tried working with was a more basic and realistic (top right), for this I went back to the tried and tested method of having larger plates over some less protective but more flexible under armour. I particularly wanted to show the roughness of this design with the large fastenings, basic panel shapes, and the use of current weaponry and extra armour.
The next set of designs I worked up were based on armour concepts I had drawn in the previous round but wanted to see as a full suit. The first design (bottom left) was based on a drawing showing the suit from the waist up, and I particularly liked the arms and shoulders of this design as well as the large panels on the hips. I set about continuing the style of my favourite parts across the whole suit, designing legs and redesigning the chest and abs of the suit.
Next up was a much more futuristic design that ended up being a little too sci-fi with not enough grounding in reality (bottom centre). The original design had been almost full body, but had been around a feminine form, I decided to redraw it over a male body as I am more familiar with the body shape and so that it was more in keeping with the other designs. The design is sleek and futuristic but also doesn't appear to offer the level of coverage and protection I am after.
Finally I worked up a design which had previously only been the shoulders and head of the suit, but I had really like the helmet a lot. One of the main features of the previous design had been a large double collar around the head, which I liked but wanted to reduce to a single layer. When I drew the collar onto the base figure it became apparent that only a single collar would fit in place anyway. I expanded the style of the design to encompass the whole suit and developed something that ended up with a great middle point between futuristic but realistic too. I decided that this design should have built-in weapons mounted onto the forearms, but that they would be modular, so they could be removed and swapped out as the mission dictated. This lead to the design being covered in these modular slots, so many weapons or extra armour could be added.
Eventually I decided that this was the design that I liked most and that it would be the design that I wanted to continue with. However there were still some things I wanted to tweak before I was ready to start sculpting it. Nearly there....
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