This is fucking amazing. Some random guy with a drawing board had better design than multi billion studio. How it that even possible? How does this video has so small amount of views anyway? I would love to see a Witcher series with this type of costume design. I mean you would be able to make entire costume draft in a week and it would be 100% better than anything Netflix ever produced.
Wow! Just Wow! You should be the official concept art designer for Witcher Netflix!!! As per your request, I would love to see a re-design of "Vilgefortz" armor (as an actually mercenary warrior mage) & your own new design for Geralt of Rivia armor for season 2. I do feel the brigandine armor looks like Chalkis or Leeds styles/designs would totally fit Geralt a lot more because he's not a really a fancy person that could afford expensive armors, so more of a "mercenary nomad-like" character.
It still looks too sinister and fantasy dragonknight. Specially the helmet with Banemask. Also there is little variety in them. It would have been nice to see random infantrymen, horseman patrols and bodyguard honor guard wear different armours or helmets.
@@yetipotato8567 Well its hard to decide when you have a million ideas. im sure they decided just right esp considering its a fan favorite for the audience. Idk what kind of armor you have in mind maybe you should email them a sketch and hopefully we'll get to see it in Season Never.
I too thought these costumes were particularly bad. But as someone who works in costume making for film and and TV and having worked on similar productions I can tell you that time/budget are THE biggest factors that are considered-especially when endless variations of one costume are needed in bulk. This will be why these costumes were accepted. Armour is incredibly expensive to produce bespoke and even hiring armour can set you back around £1000 per set. Just something to consider.
Great work friend! I really agree with you that the film industry should do more research when it comes to how they design their armor. Just because something is fantasy, doesn't mean it has to be unrealistic or have no correlation to historical armor. Subscribed!
Also, the show-writers' official explanation for their armor is that it's not supposed to be of high quality, but just cheap armor for cheap cannon fodder, something that soldiers used in mass charges would wear. Yet the armor from the show isn't even remotely realistic. The material looks too cheap, yet the design is too ornate for mass-manufacture. They could have just thrown in some chain mail and a black shirt with a sun motif and called it a day, and it'd be more realistic as to what low-ranking grunts of the Nilfgaardian army would wear.
HolyknightVader999 The original costume designer is gone, they are the ones who said that the show runner stated about the black ones having cheap armour. Kind of threw her under the bus really. But I’m optimistic, we should get some actual armour. Hopefully like the Cintrian or Temerian armour which was pretty decent
Could you please redesign the entire show... it really needs it. I'm joking of course but god I wish people like you called the shots, wtf was netflix thinking. another thing ruined i guess
The show's armor doesn't even look like what they had in the games. There, Nilfgaard armors actually looked beautiful, ornate, with black plate and strips of metal combined with a sun motif and wings on the helmets. The show's version look like cheap cannon fodder. Also, Nilfgaard soldiers used big shields, crossbows, and even sorcerers flinging fire alongside swordsmen. Outside of the one guy who sniped the King of Cintra, the show's Nilfgaardians were all just charging forward with swords. It's like they had no idea what tactics and strategy are supposed to be, whereas in the games, they combined heavy melee units bearing shields with crossbowmen firing at you and even a mage throwing fireballs, which shows how much they cared about strategy and why they're an empire to be feared.
So I'm probably way to late to suggest a redesign. But a redesign of the armor worn in Gondor would be cool. Especially your interpetation of the description in the books.
My guess is that they were worried about legally distinguishing themselves from the game, then someone made cool sketches, then the fabricator said "I can do something similar to that idea, but I need to drop costs and it'll be simplified" and then we got testicle armor and it was too late to restart the process.
Great video, the show did a terrible job not only with the nilfgaardians but pretty much all character's clothing and armour looked veeery cheap, i seriously hope they hire someone more talented for the next season.
This is the first time I've seen that pic the witcher is clearly set in a like medieval period and what the Netflix did looks like from outer space. It has an alien vibe 👽
I actually really liked the cheek plates. You could have cut back the helmets sides to behind the ear and then had the cheek plates in front of the ear.
Looks amazing. Can’t tell you enough how disappointing and distracting the show version of the armor is, the guy who thought it was a good idea to make them look like they wearing melted garbage bags needs to get fired. Another thing that bothered me was the weapons carried by the Nilfgaardian soldiers, not one was carrying a spear...occasionally one would have a pole axe but not one time do you see one spears or any other type of polearm. The sword they carry isn’t terrible it’s basically a ugly looking sawed tooth messer or falchion which is perfect for a sidearm but still a arming sword would have been efficient.
Great vid! They really dropped the ball on this armor. Read a interview of the producer of the netflix series and she said they arent taking ques from the game (probably because the author hates the games and hes involved with the TV series) Its sad because they games really made that book series what it is.
I think you criticized gondorian armour one time, i know that John how was pretty aware about how an armour works so i wonder how you would have done it 🤔😉
I can do a redesign of the Gondorian armour! :) It's mainly the cuirass and tassets that are an issue with the design. The pauldrons are also a bit on the larger side. When be a fun video to cover!
I think one thing we should consider when doing "better" armour for movies is the expense. Because armour is expensive to produce. Sure, there are ways of lessening the cost, but it's something there isn't an unlimited budget for. No offense, but I feel like the armours you've drawn as alternatives to what we've seen in the trailer aren't really workable, due to how expensive it would be to produce big quantities of it, what with all the detailwork that would have to go into it. I doubt even Weta Workshop could manage the things you draw on reasonable scale. And, historically most armours weren't that fancy. Sure, elite units and the nobility might well wear fluted and roped armour with various levels of engravings and the like. But the grunts will still be wearing pretty basic things. I for one think that a simple, smooth breastplate, maybe with a backplate, and something along the lines of a salet or bascinet would do it. They might be painted - this was after all done historically when one couldn't afford actual toning of the armour - in suitable colours. So, black with a sun crest for the Nilfgaardians. I'd also rather skip the mail standard, because the only thing we'd get would be that god-awful butted mail that the movie industry uses(for understandable causes), and I'd rather not have to see that. Most of these things could be made in plastic or fiberglass, and the paint would leave the watcher none the wiser. Because sure, we can all (according to ability and so on) draw or show much more beautiful or fitting pieces of arms and armour, but if we want to bring serious suggestions to the table, and be better than those who actually did(n't) do the(ir) job, we have to remember to operate within their rough parameters. I feel like it was the same case with your alternative for Geralt's armour: Sure, it looks great, but would he really wear such a relatively fancy thing? Please note that this is in no way reflective of your skill as an artist. Your drawings, as far as I've seen, are beautifully executed, and show a lot of care and interest in the subject. This soldier looks beautiful indeed, but I get the feeling he would probably be of a more elite unit, than just a simple grunt soldier. Cheers.
Geralt's armour to start with is impractically expensive. Random and many layers of leather and mail. His redesign would be cheaper and better in every conceivable way. There's plenty of films and series over the last two decades where most armours on screen are every bit as detailed if not more so than his Nilfgaard soldier. The difference is the detail adds to the impracticality and atrocious aesthetic rather than enhancing the authenticity or design. I agree though, for your average Nilfgaardian soldier a more simple breastplate especially given the lack of neck protection is more practical or even just Brigandine. I think though a mail collar if there's no other neck defence is a must. It seems to be so entrenched, so widely represented on nobility with their plate defences off and on more lightly armored soldiers alike that without the mail collar it would no longer feel like this period. Term 'grunt soldier' probably makes little sense in a historical context. It makes sense when you imagine war being like a video game where the player distributes their own wealth among a vast number of player controlled entities. It makes less sense when we're talking about real living people.
Yet the armor from the show isn't even remotely realistic. The material looks too cheap, yet the design is too ornate for mass-manufacture. They could have just thrown in some chain mail and a black shirt with a sun motif and called it a day, and it'd be more realistic as to what low-ranking grunts of the Nilfgaardian army would wear.
I dont know why they make these horrible looking things. I know it's expensive to suit lots of people in metal armour but I've seen people make fiberglass pressed armour and paint it to look like very convincing metal (especially if its not for main characters). So budget definitely shouldn't be an issue when designing metal-like armours. Hopefully this makes sense
@Robbie McSweeney Before I get critical I want to say your design is the best of the three, it's much better than any armour design in the entire Witcher game franchise before the release of Blood and wine. I actually really liked this video and was surprised how good your final armour looked, as many issues as I had I wish films, games and the like were even one tenth as fashionable as your final design. The helmet is meant to be a Sallet, their helmet looks better than yours. They've just got the sallet's tilted back. Visored sallets can look silly when they clash with the rest of the design of a harness. With the visor down they tend to look best with a bevor or gorget as there's not a lot of point of choosing a visored Sallet over other styles if you're not going to wear one. Just like the original Witcher version all of the rivets on your Sallet are pointless, on real helmets these rivets would be used to hold a helmet liner, to attach the visor, to attach an aventail or something like that. Your helmet has 'spikes' for the sake of having spikes. Why would your soldier intentionally wear a breastplate design like that with a mail collar and not to support a gorget? Would have been more practical to use a more conventional earlier breastplate design that covers the collar with solid steel protection, especially given how open and vulnerable that target is. You say you did it so it was more 'cost effective' but the breastplate design is anything but simple or cost effective. Your soldier there chose decoration including in their clothing over a practical collar and neck defence because he wanted to be cost effective. They chose decoration over protection for their arms and back. Now it was a legitimate option to fight with less armour on the arms, face, back and legs but when your guy is filled with expensive decoration he's not doing this because it's cost effective, it's a choice. Given he had the choice that breastplate and neck defence makes no sense. He looks like he has a full harness and just decided to talk half of it off.
Hi, I really love this video style. It is fun to watch and I am on board with what you do 100%. Just a side note. Netflix would not use the games style for few reasons. As someone mentioned, Andrzej Sapkowski does not like the games. Also because of stupid copyright laws they could get sued. And maybe the biggest reason of all - they NEED to be different, because huge company like Netflix can do better than Polish game studio (not sure if my irony is obvious). So they designed something entirely different. For one to enjoy the show, he/she needs to forget that Witcher as videogames exist. But of course, Netflix did terrible job at designing these extras/random soldiers. And you did fantastic job redesigning them :)
Thanks! Yeah, the copyright thing is a bit of a bum. That's why a changed up the helmet a bit, but I'm not sure if it was changed enough. Netflix definitely wanted to go different to the game, but the design has gone way off course haha. Ah well. Unfortunately we don't have a lot of power to tell them what's what.
No need for irony it should be true. This dude in probably what amounted to a few hours dramatically improved on the game's design for the Nilfgaardian armour, it's not actually a very high bar and you would expect, hope it's not an unreachable bar for professional filmmakers.
Netflix Witcher wa supposed to be SJW trash , but at the end they kind of saved it cuz 💰. The nilfgard armour was supposed to look like a scrotum it was supposed to portray patriarchy whatever
Tbf it wasn't really SJW,SJW is putting things out there and putting on their poltical views. If your talking about some of the characters being black then no that ain't SJW (its weird for that character but we can move on beyond the skin tone as I don't really care)
