Interesting armor design. Look quite early-mid 16th century and anywhere from Germany to the Western extent of the Silk Road.

The bill hook caught my eye in the icon. XD Such an under-recognized weapon for how widely it was used!

Shall be interesting to see where you go with this. You always have such delightfully loose sketches and concept art.

Why thank you!

I find at the current stage I'm suffering from an embarrasment of riches when it comes to design sources. I need to do quite a bit of brain work to divide real world styles and eras between my various pretend factions or things will keep degenerating into a glorious, inarticulate mess.

The initial eyecatch point was probably the articulated Hungarian-style hussar cuirass--the whole milleu owes a lot to those halcyon days of the armourer when plate harness could still be sold with a dent that proclaimed it proofed against pistol balls, hence too the burgonets and so on. Along with arrival of rakshasas as a conceptual element there's a lot of turkish and indian influences bubbling up under the surface.

Hurrah for the military bill! As a british native I feel a weird sort of national alligance to it (sorry, scots....)

"Glorious inarticulate mess" aptly describes diverse armored troops at various times when armorers had too much time on their hands and well-off noblemen too much silver to pay them with...So what's the problem???

If anything, it sounds to me as if you have successfully created a melange of East and West...That's how I read it! So if your intent was such, then you're absolutely there.

And oh yes, the days of half-harness and match or wheel-lock...I adore them. I have a whole little series of stories casting about in bits and vignettes, waiting to be assembled into something more coherent and illustrated now that I am drawing once more. It was a wonderful era, where things were hardly as certain as they seemed, where sword and horse might yet win the day despite those dirty damned craven peasants that someone had had the sheer tastelessness to issue with buchse. Nobility still flourished, somewhere, and chivalry was not yet dead, and Europe was in an uproar.

Fun times. Throw in a bit of the Orient and magical at that (if I remember correctly what a rakshasa is), and life gets really interesting.

"Glorious inarticulate mess" aptly describes diverse armored troops at various times when armorers had too much time on their hands and well-off noblemen too much silver to pay them with...So what's the problem?

This is a trick and interesting question, but I think the answer comes down to legibility...on several fronts
a) as a fictional depiction this gear owes a greater debt to plausibility that reality does, since reality has nothing to prove

b) my design aims include reproductibility, both in the sense that the harness could reasonably be produced in a munition grade to outfit "men at arms", and in the sense that I should not get sick of drawing it repeatedly

c) as armour will be a costuming element for the characters & millieu I'm developing, it needs ideally to supply a significant amount information about the person wearing it--from the faction/s they belong with, to more subtle hints about their identity: are they traditional or progessive? cowardly/circumspect or reckless/brave? kind or cruel? rich or poor? All of these relative statements need grounding absolutes to anchor them referring to the 'primary hues' of the fictional environment, detailing what kind of person uses what kind of equipment.

MORE! MORE SKETCHES! Omnomnomnomnomn!

I especially like what little you had of the boar's hand.