The Matter of Armor.

[Dayon]

Hello,

I obsess about the details, and I have a character who wears plate armor. I want to do some concept sketches of how he looks in the armor, and I'm curious about how it's all actually put together.

On the internet I came across a video of a knight being dressed by his squire. Also, I've noticed that modern sets of armor for costume purposes utilize a sort of harness system to distribute weight. My search for the make-up of a medieval harness set brings me to a lot of hiking equipment and such. Does anyone have a photo reference of a harness for armor? I found a few on www.kropserkel.com, but I'm looking for a bit more.

Do belts really play a role in the armor? Sometimes I see them, sometimes I don't, but in WoW, there's always a belt visible, for the most part. Ornamentation or function, which is it for plate armor as represented in the game, do you think?

Boots. In Wrath we started seeing much bulkier boots with kneeguards. Do those kinds of boots have names?

Thanks much.

EDIT: I'm going over different breastplates and such in the WoW Model Viewer and good lord, some of these breastplates look absolutely rigid. I also see a lot of continuity problems (using Male Human as a default) where at the meet of the shoulder and torso, the designers didn't mind how the rest of the armor should look when attached to the arms. I don't know how our characters are even able to move in this armor.