Design ideas

Two armours on the design board....for some Ren Faire "participatrons". A couple who are looking at custom armours. She wants a custom "Phoenix" motif armour, and he wants a "Dragon" armour.

Thats a tall order. I mean, there are so many things I can do! Open dragon mouths with the client's arms coming out of them, high fences with dragon backs wrapping around the gorgets...the mind boggles. But then, I come down to earth a bit....and think about how to make armour which the average person would be able to afford. One way to make it affordable would be to pretty much do the tried and true patterns and tinker with the details.

In the sketch above, I have assumed a standard South Tower pattern shoulder armour. Like this one....
http://www.southtower.on.ca/armour/images/NewSpaulder6.jpg

Then, lets see...the phoenix and the dragon are both fire animals, so perhaps a common fire motif...say, the top lame being cut into a flame shape. The other lames would be underneath that, so it looks like their feathered or scaled hide is coming out from the flame. We could make the flames out of brass. Hey, we could make another lame underneath that to support the "flames" and make that lame out of black steel.
Other lames coming down could have a feathered motif, or alternatively a punched dragon scale motif. The lames are small, and would not cost much to do.

How about a fence up top? Mound a phoenix or a dragon on the fence...perhaps have some nice cut outs? Or perhaps not....that might be overkill. Like the idea of a dragon snaking over the shoulder up there though.

Hmmm.....

Keep the ideas reined in...smile!

I am sure there are lots more ideas....gosh knows these motifs can be transfered anywhere else...flame forming a necklace around the openings of the breastplate and backplate, great wings being embossed into the backplate, dragon claws forming the wings of the knee cops and elbow cops.
Looking forward to this one.