A.K.A. "I love giving my characters armor to wear."

ALTERNATE VARIANTS
Clothed Variant / Nude Variant (SFW) / Nude Variant (NSFW)

ALSO VIEWABLE ON THESE SITES
Twitter / DeviantArt

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The final temp sheet for Zitra! I've shown off her revised nude body and the casual outfit I designed for her already... now it's time for the armor! With such muscles and scars, it's obvious this horned equine is no stranger to combat, and a proper warrior's definitely gonna have gear to protect them in battle!

When it came to designing the armor, I knew she had to wear something sturdy enough to withstand most blows, due to Big Z's apparent preference for fighting up close, but also still light and flexible enough in the right places to ensure she could remain agile in combat. The end result was this Roman-inspired getup, consisting of a rather nice quality steel-and-scale cuirass with armored skirt for improved mobility, a series of much cruder iron pieces attached to her arms and legs, and the lot of it all being held in place with ropes of varying thicknesses in lieu of leather straps to better give it all a bit of a "salvaged" look.

Yeah... Zitra's tribe is hardly the most advanced lot. They only have so many resources available to build and maintain gear, as it turns out, so a lot of their better equipment came about primarily from scavenging old imperial forts and (in recent years) looting it off of whatever foolhardy ruffians thought it wise to pick a fight with her tribe. Not only that, sometimes they have to improvise too when it comes to keeping that stuff in order, especially since the tribe doesn't actually have anyone among their ranks that's really capable of working with iron or leather all that well. At least they have a decent coppersmith on site, and it's apparent from that cuirass that they do indeed sometimes get ahold of some good stuff!

I wasn't originally planning for the armor to be an entirely different outfit from her base casual wear, and an early sketch I made (see link at the bottom) showed that my original intent was to have her wearing the toga over the armor as a means of simplifying the design. However, during the refined lineart process, I found that things were in fact not as simple as I had anticipated, and changes I made to the toga design early on when I was lining the base outfit made it apparent that my original idea no longer worked, forcing me to either make up a new armor design that could work... or just draw the armor without the toga.

Ultimately chose the latter, as I found that adding the toga would in fact only serve to make the design more cluttered, not less... though I did manage to add in a teal waistcloth during the lining process to ensure the design still had some color in it.

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In addition to the armor itself, I also saw fit to give Zitra some brass horseshoes to wear. The sandals I drew up in the clothed version didn't really mesh well with the armor, but I still wanted to give her something that could help protect the bottoms of her hooves, as well as provide additional traction on rough terrain and offensive capabilities should she need to kick/stomp an opponent. Plus, it helps give her feet a little more color!

Knuckledusters were also added, since even someone like Zitra can only do so much with her bare fists. They're fairly crude, being essentially a steel plate riveted to a thick leather strap, but it's better than nothing and helps to both cushion her knuckles when throwing punches (especially useful to have against armored foes) as well as give them a bit more impact in combat. When making this temp sheet, I realized the pose didn't really show them off all that well, so I needed to draw up a pair exclusively for this sheet (and yes, it had to be a pair and not just a singular one). This is also why this particular sheet took a significantly longer time to post than the other two.

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And that's about all I have to say about the armor! It was a little tricky to design, but I believe I succeeded in my goals, just like I did with the other variants. I'm looking forward to using this as ref material for commissioning artists over time, and hope you'll come to all like the character, what I've done with her so far, and what I plan to do with her down the line!

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Zitra is property of  SilverMelee, A.K.A. myself.





BONUS
First Draft / First Draft with Notes
Early sketch I did last year, done just a few months after buying the character off of Lotus. Unlike the nude and clothed variants, a fair bit of revisions were made during the refinement process, mainly due to the aforementioned removal of her toga.

Getting rid of that wound up complicating things a little, since I now found myself having to draw out the entirety of the cuirass rather than just part of it, which in turn gave me a fair bit of trouble as I had to work on figuring out just how certain parts connected in addition to just how the rest of her battle-skirt should look. It was a lengthy process that resulted in me taking a longer time to finish lining this version than the other, but I wound up having a better idea of how everything worked in the end!

Other noteworthy changes include the addition of a large belt in lieu of the rope one she initially had (another result of removing the toga) and the collar around her neck being swapped out with a cruder and far less fancy one (kinda like a neck shackle, but one she can unlatch without the need of a key).