Fantasy Weapons Concept Designs

These weapon concepts were a final project for my first project management class I took in Fall 2022. We were given complete creative freedom to choose a project, plan it out, and execute it throughout the semester. I decided I wanted to try my hand at concept art, particularly concepts for weapon designs in order to challenge myself a little, as that was something I had never attempted before.

To start off my project, I wanted some kind of source material to make sure my weapons could follow a cohesive theme. I decided to use a fantasy world and stories I had written for a non-linear storytelling class I took in Fall 2020, which is a world with a strong magical presence with magic being a core part of daily life.

I next moved on to my research phase. I looked through and saved dozens of different weapon concepts from artists all over social media to gain inspiration and ideas. I looked at all different kinds of weapons, such as swords, guns, maces, axes, spears, staffs, and more. I felt very drawn to swords in particular, finding tons of different wildly unique designs. This research really opened my eyes to how interesting weapon designs can really be, and how unique they all are, even being the same type of weapon.

I moved on to rough sketching different weapons based on designs from other artists that I found interesting, especially weapon types that I was unfamiliar with typically drawing. During this process, I wanted to get a feel for the general shape and proportions of different weapons, as well as get to know the level of detail that are present in each design.

At this point, I was pretty sure I had decided what weapons I wanted to design to fit into my fantasy world I had created: a staff, a sword, and an axe. I wanted each weapon to be different enough, but still be able to fit into the world I imagined. I also thought back to some different characters I had created for these stories, and felt these weapons best represented the main three characters.

• The staff best represents the main character, Annora, a quick-witted but shy half-human girl who is unusually skilled in magic.

• The sword best represents the character Leofwin, a human blacksmith who took Annora under his wing and taught her his trade.

• The axe best represents the character Elias, Annora’s first guardian who was banished from the kingdom for posing as a human while being a half-human being, and now lives in the woods outside of established territories.

From here, I began sketching my design ideas for each weapon, making notes and potential alterations as I sketched them out. For all three weapons, I decided to make sure they all followed a nature-centered theme. In the world I created, it is extremely nature-centric, with magic being a part of nature and a source of life itself, i.e. the soul.

I then brought my sketches into Procreate to experiment with color palettes and how I might want the final concepts to look, also adding any adjustments from the notes I had taken while sketching out the designs. I also played around with the style I wanted to color the designs in. Up to this point, I would typically start with line art, but this time I wanted to experiment with more of a painted style rather than needing line art from the beginning.

After I was comfortable with the color palette I chose for each weapon, I was ready to paint my final designs and complete my project.