This week we\u2019re covering the winning topic from the latest ACOUP<\/em> Senate poll, which is a look at some of the odd designs and mechanics for futuristic science fiction body armor, particularly rigid \u2018hardsuits.\u2019 Naturally, this post isn\u2019t going to cover every variety of armor that appears in science fiction, so I want to be clear that I am generally limiting my scope here to rigid non-powered armor. Power (or powered) armor \u2013 that is, armor that moves with built-in servos and motors, rather than purely under muscle power \u2013 is its own topic that we\u2019ll leave for another day.<\/p>\n (I\u2019m running a bit behind on this one on account of the Thanksgiving Holiday, but I\u2019m going to go ahead and post it, a bit rougher-cut than usual, and hopefully fix any typos or mistakes when I get back home)<\/p>\n Instead, I want to focus on rigid science fiction armors because they offer an interesting lens to consider their design: how to armor a human body in a rigid substance is an exceedingly<\/em> solved problem: quite a few cultures have tackled this particular problem with a lot of energy and ingenuity, attempting to balance protection, mobility and weight. And the \u201cproblem with sci-fi body armor\u201d begins with the fact that most of these futuristic \u2018hardsuits\u2019 utilize little of any of the design language of those efforts. Instead, where real armors evolve against threats<\/em>, fictional armors evolve as a visual language, borrowing the design elements of other fictional armors<\/em> far more often than they dip into their own historical exemplars, with the result that the whole thing sort of devours itself.<\/p>\n All of which provides a fascinating window to talk about how actual armor<\/em> is designed and the concerns that can motivate its structure, in contrast to the often very flawed visual designs we see in media.<\/p>\n So what we\u2019re going to do is first look at some quite obviously (to me, at least) flawed science fiction armor designs. Then we\u2019ll look at how threats shape coverage and other concerns for body armor and from there look at some historical exemplars that might point to potential solutions (and also a bit why I suspect designers don\u2019t use them).<\/p>\n As always, if you like what you are reading here, please share it; if you really like it, you can support me onPatreon<\/a>; members at the Patres et Matres Conscripti<\/em> level get to vote on the topics for post-series like this one! If you want updates whenever a new post appears, you can click below for email updates or follow me on twitter (@BretDevereaux) and Bluesky (@bretdevereaux.bsky.social) and (less frequently) Mastodon(@bretdevereaux@historians.social) for updates when posts go live and my general musings; I am in the process of shifting over more fully to Bluesky than Twitter, given that the former has, of late, become a better place for historical discussion than the latter.<\/p>\n What actually spurred this topic in my mind the first time was a single promotional still for Dune <\/em>(2021) showing Dave Bautista (as Glossu Rabban) along with some Harkonnen soldiers in their battle armor, because I thought both the design of the armor and also specifically the modifications made to Bautista\u2019s \u2018main character\u2019 version of it were really telling:<\/p>\n In particular, you can see that the Harkonnen soldiers (officers, presumably) have armor that consists of heavy pauldrons and a high collar, along with a breastplate that runs all the way to the hips (the \u2018belt line\u2019 as distinct from the natural waist) and then extends a bit further in the front. But one also instantly <\/em>notices that Bautista\u2019s armor is a lot less protective: the rigid component covers only the upper-torso, with only fabric over the belly and much less shoulder protection. And it isn\u2019t particularly hard to guess why: with such large rigid elements, one imagines those extras in the shot can\u2019t move or bend very much (I think you can actually somewhat see, in the shot above, how confined their posture is, in fact), but Bautista needs to do a lot of physical acting and emoting which is going to demand that he can raise his arms over his head and bend at the waist.<\/p>\n Except, of course, if these fellows were expecting to be in an actual fight<\/em> they might also want to, you know, be able to raise their arms over their heads or bend at the waist!<\/p>\n That problem restricted to these Harkennonen uniforms, although the contrast between Rabban\u2019s armor and everyone else makes it quite clear. But you can see the same issue and how it was resolved \u2013 from a film perspective \u2013 on the Atreides and Sardaukar armor. The Atreides armor is worn for the arrival scene, so it can be quite rigid because no one needs to actually fight in it<\/em>. Consequently, the rigid shaping of the breastplate, which extends all the way over the pelvis seems, in the scene, to require the actors to stay quite rigidly stiff and stand up very straight, while its not clear the pauldrons allow a full range of motions to the arms.<\/p>\n Meanwhile the Sardaukar do<\/em> need to take their armor into actual fight scenes. And the film\u2019s solution was to cheat<\/em>: the Sardaukar armor looks<\/em> rigid, with the same heavily structured pauldrons as the other too and the long front \u2018plate\u2019 running down to the waist, but in fact if you look closely (especially as they move and fight) you realize these \u2018armors\u2019 aren\u2019t rigid at all, but appear to be made of flexible textile, allowing the actors to bend and move. What I think is interesting is that the Sardaukar armor, to my eyes, shares so much of the shaping and design language of the Atreides and Harkonnen armor, I think we are supposed<\/em> to assume they\u2019re all made of the same rigid elements in only modestly different styles.<\/p>\n One of the quirks we\u2019ll return to in fictional armor design is that its developmental trends respond not to technological development or threat environment<\/strong> (as real armor does) but to other fictional armor designs<\/strong>. And so this problem \u2013 rigid science fiction armor that one couldn\u2019t possibly move effectively in<\/em> is one hardly confined to just the recent Dune<\/em> films. Take, for instance, the iconic N7 armor, worn by Commander Shepherd (who can be male or female) from the Mass Effect<\/em> franchise:<\/p>\n Now someone whose player the Mass Effect<\/em> games may argue, of course, that Shepherd (and other armored characters) bend and move just fine<\/em>. To which I might suggest they look closely next time at the character models and how they move when<\/em> those characters are running around and fighting, because I suspect you\u2019ll see, as I did that a lot of those movements require having very clearly rigid plates<\/em> on the character model bend in order to facilitate motion.<\/p>\n In particular, characters often move their necks in ways that require those high collars to bend in dialogue and cutscenes, while in combat characters do a lot of both turning at the waist (that his, horizontal rotation of the upper body) and bending at the waist (that is, bending forward or backwards). And visually, these armors have a set of belly-plates that seem meant to perhaps vaguely imply<\/em> that they can bend and articulate, but they pretty clearly can\u2019t. Those plates can\u2019t slide on each other horizontally because of the way they\u2019re sculpted (they\u2019re not flat!), while height difference of the plates seems too little (especially on the male Shepherd) to allow these plates to easily slide over<\/em> each other vertically (and also the uppermost plate is flush with the breastplate, so it\u2019s going to push that<\/em> into the chest (ow). Meanwhile, the \u2018V\u2019 shape of the belly-plates also means the sides of the body and a portion of the front lower torso are unprotected (more obviously on the male Shepherd than the female Shepherd, as she has a big \u2018ol extra belt and a narrower frame).<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in order to get something there it looks like these Shepherds can get their arms over their heads leads to a really odd pauldron design I\u2019m seeing appear increasingly frequently in both science fiction and fantasy settings: the breastplate is suspended by mere straps from the shoulder (rather than rigidly covering it as a historical breastplate would) and the pauldrons (the shoulder guards) are mounted not on the shoulders, hanging down, but on the upper arms, projecting upwards. That creates \u2018poke yourself in the neck every time you raise your arms\u2019 problems if the pauldrons are actually high enough and tight enough to protect the shoulders. In the case of the N7 armor, that\u2019s resolved by just leaving a huge gap <\/strong>between the armored collar and the shoulder, which as we\u2019ll see is a pretty big problem for armor that is at least in part designed to resist contact weapons<\/em>.<\/p>\n And before we move on to talking about armor design concerns in the real world, I want to note that I picked these two sets of armor designs deliberately for one reason: in both settings, armor is significantly about dealing with contact weapons<\/em><\/strong>, like swords, spears or clubs. One of these days, I want to revisit the Dune<\/em> combat model more broadly, but it is a conceit of the fiction that energy shields in Dune<\/em> largely obsolete the battlefield use of most projectile weapons, leading armies back to fighting with swords and knives in close combat: your energy shield stops bullets, so your armor is really concerned with blades (the long-knife kindjal<\/em> being the standard personal weapon of the Imperium).<\/p>\n Mass Effect<\/em> is a bit more mixed, but players of the series (especially the first game) will know that one of the tactical considerations is that melee strikes are not impeded by the \u2018kinetic barriers\u2019 (read: shields) of the setting, which are designed only to intercept small objects (like bullets) moving very fast. A Krogan swinging the butt of his rifle at your head is too big and too slow and so passes right through to one-hit-KO Shepherd if you are careless. As a result, contact weapons remain a thing<\/em> in setting: Asari commandos wield swords, Krogans will engage, cheerfully, in melee and Shepherd him\/herself takes up wielding a sharp \u2018hardlight\u2019 omni-tool bayonet in later games. That said<\/strong>, Mass Effect<\/em>\u2018s shields aren\u2019t as absolute a defense as Dune<\/em>\u2018s shields \u2013 they fail much quicker \u2013 meaning that armor is also<\/em> in theory supposed to protect from bullets (and especially from energy weapons, environmental conditions and heat all of which ignore kinetic<\/em> barriers).<\/p>\n So let\u2019s talk about how to think about what armor covers, how it covers it and why. And we need to start with the place that all armor development starts<\/em>, which is:<\/p>\n Whereas fictional armors are often shaped through a kind of evolution whereby costume designers, artists and animators see each other\u2019s costume ideas and iterate on them, armor development responds (within the limits of the physical materials available) not to other armor design, but to the demands of the human body<\/em> (you need to be able to bend and move and armor needs to be of a weight a human can wear) and to the threats<\/em> the armor is meant to defeat.<\/p>\n We can think about this by contrasting two very different<\/em> threat environments: an ancient or medieval battlefield dominated by contact weapons as the principle threat, and a modern battlefield where shrapnel and direct-fire munitions are the primary threat.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with the ancient or medieval battlefield<\/strong>. Now, I don\u2019t want to over-generalize about the balance of \u2018threat\u2019 between missile weapons (arrows, javelins, etc.) and contact weapons (swords, spears, maces, etc.) on pre-modern, pre-gunpowder battlefields \u2013 that balance would have varied, from contexts where nearly all threat was contact weapons (colliding hoplite phalanxes, for instance) to conditions where the dominant threat was missiles (for instance, warfare on the Steppe). But for the sake of this thought experiment, we\u2019re going to a contact-weapon focused threat environment<\/strong>, mostly because that most closely fits the threat environment in Dune<\/em> (where shields remove nearly all missile threats).<\/p>\n Now contact weapons can deliver energy (nearly all weapons are about delivering energy to a target) in quite a few ways: as a penetrating blow with all of the force directed at a small point (spears, sword-thrusts) or a cutting blow with the force concentrated along a narrow edge (swords, axes) or blunt trauma, delivering potentially somewhat more energy somewhat less concentrated.<\/p>\n Those threat profiles influence materials and design. Armor works largely by converting various kinds of piercing or slashing attacks into blunt trauma distributed over the widest possible part of the body<\/strong>. And that in turn is part of the advantage of using rigid materials<\/strong> in armor construction. Of course the materials themselves also play a role: rigid materials (like steel) are often a lot stronger for their weight or thickness than non-rigid alternatives (like fabric). But also in a lot of cases rigidity is the point<\/em> (or more correctly, how you defeat a point). <\/strong>If an armor material perfectly holds together but bends such that it is simply driven into the wound, that isn\u2019t necessarily an ideal outcome (the classic example of this are silk Steppe garments which might not be pierced<\/em> by an arrow, because silk fibers can be very strong, but also wouldn\u2019t really impede<\/em> the arrow, being instead just driven in around the arrowhead).<\/p>\n A rigid material can spread out the energy of a weapon impact over a large surface<\/strong>; because assuming it remains rigid<\/em> the entire armor component moves from the impact, contacting the body across a much larger area. The power of distributing impact energy in this way is pretty stark. A 50J impact concentrated into a very small, sharp impact zone (like the tip of a spear or an arrowhead) can easily produce lethal wounds. By contrast 200J applied across your entire chest is something you\u2019ll certainly notice<\/em>, but probably won\u2019t cause any permanent injury. Indeed, as modern body armors show, impacts upwards of two-thousand<\/em> joules (the energy delivery of many modern rifle rounds) is quite survivable if spread over enough of the body. So rigid elements (be that a breastplate or, as in modern armor, something like rigid plate inserts) can be of tremendous value precisely because they\u2019re rigid<\/em> and thus spread out the energy of impact.<\/p>\n That said, you will not armor all parts of the body evenly<\/strong>. We\u2019ve actually discussed this before, back in some of the earliest days of ACOUP<\/em><\/a>: armor is always a balance between weight and protection<\/strong>, with the result that armor is rarely uniform in structure or thickness. Thicker armor means more weight, which adds up fairly rapidly, while more complete protection around joints means reductions in mobility. So an armorer has to think pretty hard about the tradeoffs between mobility, weight and protection. And one of the key questions here is, quite simply, \u201cwhere is an opposing blow most likely<\/em> to land or be most dangerous<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n The answer to this question depends on an intersection of two factors. On the one hand, there is the attacker\u2019s factor: biomechanically, all weapon-strikes originate from the shoulders<\/strong> and so as they travel away from the shoulders, they sacrifice reach and power to do so. If I have, say, a sword and want to strike at your legs, I have to advance further<\/em> into measure to be able to do so, because my arms and weapon are angled downward from my shoulders, whereas you can respond by making a \u2018straight line\u2019 strike at my upper-body. Consequently, with contact weapons, there\u2019s a lot of threat on the upper body, less on the legs. In particular a lot of weapons<\/em> can deliver very strong downward strikes onto the shoulders themselves, so the top of the shoulders<\/strong> is a pretty important threat zone. The upper-arms, by contrast, demand a horizontal strike, rather than a falling vertical strike: that\u2019s a vulnerability, but less so.<\/p>\n The other factor derives from the defender\u2019s body: different parts of the body are differently lethal if struck. Strikes to the shoulders, neck or head are obviously potentially very rapidly lethal, though the head both requires a lot more mobility and also is harder to strike effectively because heads tend to move around a lot in contact fighting. Likewise, the torso is full of vital organs and arteries that make wounds there really dangerous; the upper-torso is perhaps easier for an enemy to strike, but the presence of the rib-cage (nature\u2019s natural armor) can both limit the damage a weapon strike there causes and also, in the case of a stab, make it hard to recover the weapon (that is, get it back out<\/em>). Consequently, a lot of fighting systems emphasize penetrating strikes to the gut. By contrast, arms and legs move around a lot and are generally less lethal if struck.<\/p>\n That leads to the rough \u2018order in armor\u2019 I discussed all those years ago, with the chest and head (specifically the cranium, the top of the head) coming first, followed by the shoulders, followed by the waist\/hips and upper thigh, followed by limb and face protection.<\/p>\n By contrast, the threat profile of gunpowder warfare is slightly<\/em> but importantly different<\/strong>. On the one hand it is a lot harder to armor against bullets because they arrive with much more energy. And I want to stress: much more energy<\/em>. For a sword or spear swung by human arms, the upper limits are around 130J, though most blows will be much<\/em> weaker than this. Arrows, as we\u2019ve noted<\/a>, top out around the same energy at launch but fall off somewhat in flight. By contrast, musket bullets can arrive with many hundreds of joules of energy and modern rifle rounds can deliver in the neighborhood of 2,000J of energy on impact. So armor that is trying to stop such a round has to be able to absorb a lot<\/em> more energy and successfully spread it out over more of the defender\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n The other factor is that, whereas melee strikes originate at the shoulders but can be rising strikes (\u2018uppercuts\u2019) or falling strikes or horizontal strikes, bullets and other direct-fire weapons (this would be, for instance, equally true of directed energy weapons) fly very fast on relatively flat trajectories, which means the threat<\/em> is mostly to the front of the body<\/em>. Meanwhile, whereas a melee combatant can tailor his strikes to your armor \u2013 striking at the unarmored portions of your armor \u2013 soldiers with guns are generally trained to aim for the center of mass and generally cannot, in battlefield conditions, target specific parts of the body of an enemy (due to limits of accuracy and range). Consequently, whereas armor against contact<\/em> weapons tends to want fairly complete<\/em> coverage of the torso <\/strong>(including the sides and the tops of the shoulders), armor against bullets<\/em> (and other missile weapons) is much more concerned with covering the vertical surfaces of the torso and is willing to compromise armor on the shoulders and even leave gaps in protection<\/strong>, if that means achieving a favorable balance of coverage and weight.<\/p>\n If you glance back up to the Mass Effect<\/em> armors, I think you will see where they take some of their design language here with the shoulders covered only by the straps holding up the breastplate (with the pauldrons moved over to the upper armors; we\u2019ll get to that), which you see in modern body armor designed for bullets. One also sees that pattern \u2013 a breastplate essentially suspended over the chest by straps over the shoulders, rather than extending some protective coverage over the shoulders \u2013 in some Japanese armors<\/a> (particularly those associated with non-elite soldiers, the ashigaru<\/em>), which I suspect has a lot to do with the prevalence of arrows in Japanese warfare in the pre-Tokugawa period. More elaborate armor for the samurai<\/em> warrior-class frequently features sode<\/a><\/em>, protections for the shoulders and upper-arms.<\/p>\n Once we\u2019ve decided on what<\/em> needs to be armored and that the how<\/em> is a rigid material, be that steel, ceramic ballistic plates<\/a>, or some future material, we then have to think about how the armor is going to articulate<\/em>, that is, how it will allow movement. After all, the human body is not rigid and has to bend in certain ways to enable us to move and fight.<\/p>\n And indeed, here the demands of fighting with contact weapons<\/em> impose some pretty sharp limits on armor, because effectively fighting with swords or spears or other contact weapons generally requires using the whole body: you need to be able to twist and bend at the waist, move the arms freely (including getting them over your head), manage footwork and so on. As a result, armorers needed to be pretty careful in how they constructed armor protection so as not to limit mobility (which is, I must note, a separate question from weight<\/em> and its impact on fatigue and endurance).<\/p>\n The first solution to the problem of how to use a rigid material to armor the body is of course to simply armor the parts of the body that don\u2019t bend and then use some other material to protect the parts that do. Archaic Greek \u2018bell\u2019 cuirasses and later Greek and Roman muscle cuirasses take this approach, with the cuirass terminating at the hips and hanging leather strips, called pteryges, <\/em>hanging down to cover the rest of the hips, groin and upper legs. But this is not exactly an ideal solution, as it sacrifices a lot of coverage.<\/p>\n Instead, of course, the solution is to construct the armor out of a series of rigid plates which are able to move relative to each other. There is another<\/em> solution, which is to create what is essentially a fabric<\/em> composed of rigid rings \u2013 mail \u2013 but we\u2019re going to leave that aside for today. The earliest of these articulation solutions is scale<\/em> armor, by which we mean an armor composed of a lot of small rigid scales (metal or hardened leather, typically) which are fixed to backing material (textile or leather), so that they hang down. The scales overlap, which presents a solid metal face to the enemy, but since they move independently, little mobility is lost, allowing a scale coat to extend down past the waist and even cover the legs. The weakness of the approach, however, is that the scales are only anchored to the backing material at the top; there\u2019s not much to stop a blade or spear-tip from sliding up<\/em> one scale and beneath another, thus penetrating the armor. That\u2019s less of a concern for something like an arrow-strike (which is going to be descending at least somewhat when it arrives) but against an opponent with a sword or dagger in close combat, that is a very real weakness.<\/p>\n A way to solve that weakness is to connect the scales to each other<\/em> rather than to the backing, so that an opponent cannot slide a weapon underneath them or flip up a scale to render the opponent vulnerable. That solution \u2013 small metal plates connected to each other, rather than a backing \u2013 we call lamellar armor<\/a><\/strong> and it was very common<\/em> in a wide range of cultures, but it has very little purchase in modern fantasy or science fiction armor designs, I think primarily because it was not included in the Dungeons and Dragons<\/em> armor system. Nevertheless, lamellar armor was quite common in a wide range of cultures: we see it in the Near East, in Europe, in China and in Japan. The rigidity of the overall armor for lamellar varies based on how the plates are connected together (which you can see quite clearly in Japanese armor, in which a single set of armor often includes both rigid surfaces and articulation both using lamellar, connected more or less rigidly). In Europe, we see a variation on this concept, the brigandine<\/strong> (also underused in fantasy settings) where the metal plates are riveted through each other and a textile or leather backing.<\/p>\n But of course the solution we\u2019re most interested in is plate armor<\/strong>, where a set of armor (a \u2018harness\u2019) is composed of a set of articulating plates which both provide a rigid protection to the wearer but also articulate where the wearer needs them to bend. Now going through all of the different methods late medieval plate armor uses to allow the armor to articulate would run beyond the scope of this post, but the relevant part here is the way that plate armor articulates over the torso, broadly speaking. The key components here are the cuirass<\/strong>, composed of a breastplate and a backplate, which covers the upper-half of the torso; this component is generally entirely rigid over that surface because the human body doesn\u2019t bend there much either (on account of the rib-cage).<\/p>\n Below the cuirass, often directly attached to it, is a component called faulds<\/strong>. This consists of a set of articulating \u2018lames\u2019 (horizontal strips of armor) connected via leather straps or sometimes sliding rivets so that the lames can telescope into each other to enable the user to bend at the waist or raise their legs or even sit down. Faulds usually extend over the hips (sometimes only on the front) and a bit of the upper legs but occasionally run down as far as the knees. Then in many armors, an additional pair of metal plates hang down from the faulds to cover the upper legs called tassets<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Above the cuirass, we have pauldrons<\/strong> or spaulders<\/strong> (we needn\u2019t here get into the differences), which protect the shoulders and upper arms. These are structured with a shoulder \u2018cop\u2019 \u2013 a dome-shaped metal piece \u2013 covering the shoulders, to which were attached a series of descending lames (articulated the same way the faulds would be) to apply coverage to the upper arms. Crucially, these pieces generally<\/em> attach to the cuirass (though spaulders often also attach to the upper-arm armor called the rerebrace) rather than just to the upper arms, because as you will recall protecting the top of the shoulder is really quite important<\/strong>. Indeed, even a casual look through ancient and medieval armor will quickly reveal that this armor tends to be the thickest on the shoulder: Early mail armor often featured a second later of mail to cover the shoulders, for instance; for some medieval armor, a mail coif or aventail also provided a layer of protection over the mail covering the shoulder.<\/p>\n The key advantage of this setup is that by terminating the solid form of the cuirass at the \u2018natural waist\u2019<\/strong> (where the body is thinnest) the cuirass allows the wearer to bend and rotate at the waist<\/strong>, while the faulds, with their telescoping design, allow the wearer to bend down at the waist, raise their legs or sit. Likewise, the segmented, articulated construction of the pauldron both protects the shoulder, but also allows the arms to be raised<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Coming back then to our science fiction armors, we can diagnose some of the problems here. Both the Mass Effect<\/em> and Dune<\/em> armors extend too far down the body in a single, rigid structure which would cost the wearer some ability to bend. In the case of the Mass Effect<\/em> armor, there\u2019s some hint of articulation, but in the games\u2019 actual animation the armor doesn\u2019t articulate, but rather merely bends, despite being apparently rigid in structure (like the breastplate to which it attaches). In addition, the Dune<\/em> armor features big pauldrons which look like they offer a lot of protection, but it\u2019s not clear how well they can fold upwards to allow the arms to be raised; in the case of the Sardaukar armor, it certainly looks like they can only because the material they\u2019re made out of isn\u2019t, in fact, rigid.<\/p>\n The alternate form of these problems one increasingly sees, particularly in fantasy armor, is to simply not cover<\/em> some of these troublesome areas. Thus for instance, Baldur\u2019s Gate III<\/em>\u2018s armors have this problem where there will be a breastplate, but no faulds or tassets, leading to a question of how to fill all of that space below the waist. I had intended to include a screenshot from the very recent Dragonage: Veilguard<\/em>, which has this problem bad<\/em> in some armors as well, but I\u2019m away from home right now and haven\u2019t the images to hand. In that case, several armors end up looking more like a padded jumpsuit with just a small armored plate over the upper-chest.<\/p>\n Likewise, I\u2019ve seen a tendency for pauldrons to end up, rather than a dome over the shoulder with some articulation, as a vertical plate connected to the upper-arm, which both compromises protection on the top of the shoulder. That\u2019s not a huge problem, as we\u2019ve seen, if the armor is designed to deal primarily with direct-fire missile weapons (like guns), but a significant problem if it is designed to protect against swords (also a tall or spikey plate affixed to the upper-arm could potentially dig into the neck when you raised your arms, which would be more than a little uncomfortable).<\/p>\n Now, we might ask why do these costumes keep reproducing these sorts of \u2018bad\u2019 designs?<\/strong> I think the first thing to note on that score is that costume armors are often more in conversation with other costumes<\/em> than with historical or modern armor. As a result, these designs often don\u2019t \u2018reference back\u2019 to the real thing in a way that would ground them in the realities of combat or even just physical mobility.<\/p>\n Another factor is materials<\/em>. Real armor is generally made of expensive, durable, rigid materials that are designed to take a beating. For much of the iron age, that was, of course, iron<\/em> (or steel), along with padded textiles and hardened leathers. For modern armor, the basic structure is made of kevlar or other similarly strong synthetic fabrics, backed up by steel or ceramic insert plates. With those sorts of materials, joints, rivets and other attachment points can be really robust while still being small. It just doesn\u2019t take a very large rivet or buckle to hold up to the forces of a moving human body when the rivet or buckle is made of steel.<\/p>\n By contrast, my understanding is that a lot of costume armors for TV and film are made of weaker, lighter and cheaper<\/strong><\/em> materials, like plastics, unhardened leather or EVA foam. Those materials often have to be thicker<\/em> than the equivalent in something like iron or steel simply to hold together (though they are often much lighter), but also they can\u2019t handle small, high-stress connection points, like the sliding rivets or buckles of articulated lames or the holes in scale or especially<\/em> lamellar. As a result, its often quite hard to make these articulated structures with those materials. Not impossible<\/em>, of course \u2013 you will see talented cosplay folks work miracles with leather and EVA foam \u2013 but harder.<\/p>\n As an aside, I\u2019ve often suspected this is why good ol\u2019 fashion mail<\/em> \u2013 ubiquitous on the medieval battlefield across Eurasia \u2013 is so rare in fantasy films and TV. In older movies, it was common to use silver spray-paint on kitting to create \u2018knitted mail\u2019 and that works well enough for extras in the background, but for major characters, there\u2019s often no real substitute for actual mail<\/em> which is going to need to actually be made<\/em> of thousands (tens of thousands if they\u2019re correctly sized) metal rings. And you can\u2019t really make those out of plastic or foam if you want the costumes to hold up during shooting. Consequently, while one can certainly get mail made a lot<\/em> cheaper today than even two decades ago, there is no truly \u2018cheap\u2019 way to get lots of mail, especially if one insists on realistically small rings.<\/p>\n Now the funny thing is this material<\/em> problem shouldn\u2019t apply to video games at all. After all, video game armors \u2013 any armor that exists only in CGI \u2013 doesn\u2019t have to bother itself with the rules for this or that material. Thus there\u2019s nothing stopping<\/em> CGI artists from making armor with articulation, scales and so on. And sometimes they do. But often, I think, there is the feedback effect where video game artists aren\u2019t imitating real world armors, they\u2019re imitating film armors<\/em>, and so inheriting their problems even when they don\u2019t share their limitations. That, I think, explains quite a lot of the silliness one sees in games like Baldur\u2019s Gate III<\/em> <\/a>and DragonAge: Veilguard<\/em>.<\/p>\n The final factor, I think, for science fiction<\/strong> armors is an aesthetic one: artists and designers working on science fiction properties don\u2019t want<\/em> an armor structure that feels medieval<\/em> in its design. The telescoping design of faulds and the free-hanging plates of tassets, in particular, seem to scream \u2018medieval\u2019 in their visual content, which might be seen as undesirable for a production \u2013 be it a video game or a film \u2013 that wants armor to look and feel futuristic. The problem is that while materials may change, the human body doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Coming back to Dune<\/em> and Mass Effect<\/em>, the quirk of both settings is that because shields can substantially limit the vulnreability to ranged weapons, but aren\u2019t effective against melee weapons, the armor worn is mostly<\/em> about dealing with those melee weapons. This is explicit in the Dune<\/em> universe, where it is, by the time the novels take place, no longer common for soldiers to even regularly carry<\/em> firearms and other ranged weapons. Again, we should get into, some other time, if the Dune<\/em> combat model works, but I would say under these conditions we ought to expect armor to look quite a lot like medieval plate armor in terms of coverage and shape<\/strong>. But of course that might well cut against what the director or the artist wants to communicate in terms of futuristic shaping.<\/p>\n All of that said, one of the things that has changed<\/em> is that for designers who want to consider their armor designs a bit more deeply is that there is a lot more information available. Museum catalogs these days are generally online with pictures and it is a lot easier to engage with the robust community of recreators and reenactors who are often fairly knowledgeable not only about how armor was made but also how it was worn<\/em>. So the opportunity for designs that engage meaningfully with past armors in a way that produces something that both looks good but is actually broadly function is much greater now than it was even just twenty or thirty years ago.<\/p>\nGetting Armor Wrong<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Untitled.webp?resize=1024%2C683&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Armor-Comparison.png?resize=900%2C347&ssl=1\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/both-shepherds.jpg?resize=1024%2C724&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\nThreat Profile and the Human Body<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/armor-flowchart.webp?resize=599%2C771&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Army_returns_life-saving_helmet_to_Soldier_unveils_new_protective_gear_army.mil_545210.jpg?resize=1024%2C682&ssl=1\")
Structuring Rigid Armors<\/h2>\n
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\u201cAlso let me tell you that the student immediately before me who struck his opponent in the face with the pommel of his sword, could also have done what I do, that is, step with his right foot behind his opponent\u2019s left leg, and then hook his opponent\u2019s neck with his sword handle, in order to throw him to the ground as I do.\u201d (trans. Colin Hatcher)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/330px-Dacian_Scale_Armour.jpg?resize=330%2C437&ssl=1\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Armor-Components.png?resize=753%2C533&ssl=1\")
Returning to Speculative Armors<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/BG3-Armors.png?resize=537%2C485&ssl=1\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acoup.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/ar88u.jpg?resize=1024%2C576&ssl=1\")
Like this:<\/h3>\n