Ironstein heavy armor concept

You ever have a piece that evolves out of a sketch book doodle, but takes years of marinating in your thoughts before you can fully bring it to fruition?

Cause that’s exactly what this was! I’ve got literally pages and pages of variations on this idea, some of them that eventually found light as parts of my “Space Soldier” design a few months back, but I’m happy to report that after all that thought I’ve arrived at what you see here. What exactly is it you ask? I’m not even sure myself anymore!

Originally, this started as nothing more than a helmet shape, with the idea that it belonged on some type of urban combat body armor suit. I tried a variety of different approaches to this, before abandoning the idea because I just wasn’t arriving at anything I was happy with. Then I was at a restaurant with my sketchbook a couple of weeks ago and all of sudden all these ideas I’d been circulating came together at once. By that night the design was finalized and I started this as soon as time permitted.

The list of inspirations for this design run deep, off the top of my head I recall being inspired by Steampunk, vintage diving equipment, riot gear, baseball catchers gear, football pads, etc. etc. About the only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted the armor to feel heavy and strong but also somewhat battered and “combat used”. Achieving a balanced weight that still managed to convey that without feeling immobile was a challenge but overall I think I arrived at something I’m satisfied with…plus now I have a whole backlog of armor ideas for future designs so it’s a win/win!