#maille armor

[jacob-cohn-art-and-projects]

Historically inspired darknut! This drawing was intended to just be a quick little doodle as a bit of a brain reset while working on a fierce deity drawing but it ended up being a lot more complex to render than I expected, even still there's some details I didn't include that I'd like to so I'll likely come back to this one at some point. For the design I wanted to incorporate elements from all iterations of darknuts. Most of the armor is inspired by twilight princess's depiction though I included the cape as a nod to the original legend of zelda as well as the knight's crest from windwaker which I adapted into a 14th century inspired plaque belt! Both the sword and the helmet I went my own route for, the sword being inspired by both the Dacian Falx as well as some of the two handed falchions depicted in the Maciejowskie Bible, overall going for a spiky "bad guy" look (or to @phoenix-arts7 's eye a cheese knife XD, can't unsee that). The helmet is based on a European "frogmouth" jousting helmet which though not being particularly practical for foot combat gives a really cool and intimidating dehumanizing effect that I always felt darknut designs were trying to achieve! Hope y'all enjoy!

[jacob-cohn-art-and-projects]

Here's another: Historically inspired Legend! I based this design off of 11th century European kit and really wanted to drive home the fact that contrary to a lot of modern depictions, the middle ages had incredible vibrant colors and sharp looking outfits. While I might have gone a little over the top with the bling, you gotta have some fun with it sometimes (can you count the triforces? I lost track lmao) Overall the design is mostly inspired from the official art for A Link To The Past though I took some ques from Linked universe as well.

While the lighting effects are a wee bit off, making everything shiny was a ton of fun, and I'm really happy with how mirror shield turned out, making the shield boss the sun from the original design. Clip studio paint also had a sparkle brush that looks EXACTLY like the sparkle effect the master sword makes in game, so that was fun to add as well! This was my second historically inspired Link, and I think I might make this a goofy little AU of it's own? Not sure yet but follow me to find out ;)

[jacob-cohn-art-and-projects]

Historically inspired Hyrule! Mixing it up a little off the medieval theme of the last two, this time doing Roman Republic. Hyrule's fighting style in game is very roman so I wanted to reflect that in my redesign. I also tried using a maille brush to draw the maille instead of drawing the rings individually like on the last two, I think there's pros and cons to both looks but it's certainly far far faster with the brush.

I opted for a short and stocky build instead of the typical skinny build for Hyrule as I've always imagined him being that way especially that he casually will fight 8+ blue Lynels or Darknuts at once and win. Overall I think my favorite part of this design was the little ear guards on the helmet, while they are featured on a lot of roman helmets making them long enough to protect Hylian ears ended up with a silly look that I enjoy a lot.