Creating Fantasy Armour: Balancing Aesthetics with Function and Accuracy
/We’ve all seen it: fantasy armour that is wonderfully, amazingly, stupendously poorly designed.
Sometimes it’s so ridiculous and impractical that it makes people wonder, “what were they thinking?” Sometimes armour is too focused on not being fantastical to the point where it’s a little boring. Sometimes the focus on being accurate to the real-life inspiration makes it stand out like a sore thumb in the fantasy world.
There you have it—the trifecta of fantasy armour design: aesthetics, function, and accuracy. This trifecta applies to most fantasy fashion, but especially to armour because it gives that perfect mix of creative leeway with having a solid and specific purpose.
Working within the constraints of “is it aesthetically pleasing? Is it functional? Is it accurate?” can be difficult. It’s a balancing act that can make even the most experienced and knowledgeable creators crumble.
So, what is the most important part of creating fantasy armour? Does it need to be realistic to work in a story? Is the focus on aesthetic and fascinating armour ruining the idea of accuracy?
Here’s what you need to know.
Aesthetics
Unlike many other genres, the actual form of the armour plays an important role in fantasy. Due to the nature of fantasy, armour doesn’t always need to conform to something realistic and functional.
Fantasy worlds are a chance to let your imagination go wild, and fantasy gives readers the biggest suspension of disbelief because they go in with the understanding that this world is not meant to mimic reality.
Saying that, there are limits. Depending on the context, sometimes gigantic, elaborate, or unrealistic armour seems out of place with the rest of the story. The impracticalities can overshadow the design in a way that’s impossible for audiences to ignore.
There’s a time and a place for armour that looks like it kicks ass even if it couldn’t exist. However, it still needs to make sense to some degree, either in or out of the story, to maintain the audience’s suspension of disbelief.
Function
For readers and writers alike, there needs to be something in fantasy that keeps it grounded and realistic enough to get that sweet immersion into the story.
Fantasy has historically been atrocious at having functional armour. Even though purely aesthetic armour can look cool, it can be jarring for some audiences when it’s clearly non-functional. Functional armour tends to make the story more believable.
Accuracy
Because it’s incredibly difficult to make an entirely new fantasy world from scratch, many creators will draw inspiration from real-life sources.
However, even though using historical armour often solves the functionality part of the fantasy armour trifecta, the creator still needs to work to make the armour blend into the fantasy world. The material, design, and usage should make sense within the story and may require some tweaking that sacrifices the overall accuracy of the armour’s inspiration.
Ultimately, the creator of the fantasy media gets to choose what part of the trifecta—aesthetic, function, accuracy—is the most important to their work. The medium, the message, the context, and the personal preferences of the author all come into play when creating fantasy armour. Sometimes you can balance them all together, and sometimes you’re going to favour one more than the others.
There is no “right” answer with fantasy, but considering all the options and choosing the best one for your story works a lot better than thoughtlessly focusing on only one part of the trifecta.
Overall, you want to remember that you’re creating a fantasy world—it doesn’t have to be 100% accurate to real life. In fact, it’s better if it’s not. You don’t want to destroy the fantasy.
Visiting my best friend: Muddy the Mudcat in Dunnville, ON.
ALEX GAVA — I’m Alex, a student of Professional Writing at Algonquin College. Besides being a professional writer, I’m also a professional catastrophe.
You can usually find me hunched over my laptop, typing furiously across the keyboard in either a stroke of genius or madness. Sometimes both.
When I’m not writing, I’m usually taking care of my lovely pets, reading, watching the same TV shows and movies that I’ve been watching since grade school, or taking naps.
Thank you for visiting the Otherworld’s Corner. 🦄
