'Jeanne' - Legs

 The legs were actually the first pieces I worked on. Pretty straight forward for the most part. I duplicated the base mesh, chopped chunks of the leg off, extruded them out, played with the topology a little to flatten out the curves, and added a hard vertical line on the ventral parts.

The knees were trickier, and I've actually redone them a few times.



The version on the left is the original model I did. Very generic, but they worked well enough and went nicely with the vertical lines through the leg plates. After I did the armor on the front of the torso, however, I knew that one or the other had to change. The cross shape on the knees simply did not work with the scalloping of the plackart and they looked like they came from different sets of armor. So I reworked the knees to get the new piece on the right. The curves work rather differently, though. In the plackart most of the bending happened near the base of the curves which then straightened out as they separated. Here, and in a lot of my the other pieces, the curving happens more near the middle or far end. I'm not entirely sure if it works or not. I've also gotten some feedback than the wing covering the outside of the knee looks too much like a fin, giving the piece an aquatic look. Only one person has told me that, though, so I don't know how big of a deal that is.

I am worried about the legs being too plain. I wont be sure until I've got a lot more of the armor finished, but I do have a couple possible solutions in mind if it is a problem. The lower legs are probably fine. The shape of the calves, the ankle coverings, and the curve of the ventral ridge following the shin bone does enough for them. The plainness of the thighs I can address in several ways. It may take care of itself once I figure out how I'm going to handle where the legs join the torso, as that will almost assuredly overlap with the top of the current armor. I can also work a variation on the curve motif into the thighs where instead of having the curves branch in both directions from the vertical line I have them only curve to the outside, sort of like a wing rather than a scallop. I can also break it up into two different plates - a top and a bottom - but that's my least favorite option. It may also go away once I add hinges and straps to it, like I've started on the lower leg, but I doubt it as they aren't particularly visible 

On the subject of straps and buckles and other detail-y things, I've decided to swap where the hinges and straps would be located on normal armor. The buckles are just a lot more interesting visually and do a better job of breaking up the outline of the armor from the sides, so I've moved the straps to the outsides of the legs and the hinges to the insides. At present I've only modeled the half of the straps with the buckle on it.

Edit - I forgot to mention that I will be rotating the legs away from each other in the future when I go to bake everything to a low poly version.