I’m not the biggest fan, as an artist myself I can’t imagine who looked at this and said, “Yep that’s good, that’s the one were are going with.”
Lets just start with the basic look of the armor.The first thing that screams out to me is that it’s top heavy, almost as if it has Reach syndrome, where the SPARTANs lost the lengthy athletic look in tern for a more bulky squat, compact, muscular look.
Ona better imageIt also looks like the armor is to small for John, and yet still looks top heavy. Why because he has no neck and the thrusters on the back come up to be almost even with his head, and farther back, the chest just bulks out with no real definition, and this isn’t just on the Toys, this is in the renders and the art.
The shoulder pads set on his biceps instead of moving all the way up to cover his shoulder. The knuckle guards, seem to be a good distance from the forearm, even the finger armor doesn’t segment together like the Mid-evil plate gauntlets their taking inspiration from. Then there is the cod piece with no bet it looks awkward, however why does the [Y] segment, that I believe should be around his hips look like its meant to be stomach armor(?), and there’s this odd little crease where under the 5 dots, where it looks like it should fold under him, Than looking at the back of the armorthere is just a green butt pad, as if its attached to the ‘soft’ suit, and not outer armor, you know like every iteration of Halo Armor. This also lends more credence to the it looks stretched out complaint and as if he’s to big for the armor.
Artistically its a mess too, look at the lines of color, with spartan armor, the black of the ‘soft’ suit is more often than not an accent to the Green/Sage of the armor, that’s fitted to it. Here its a mess, with no real order in its placement. Again looking at his center and hip area, the black is just a blotch, with a green streak in it, and the back is worse. And again look at the neck, there is none, the helmet looks like a mess between the Scout from Halo 3, the HAZOP and MK-VB from Reach. The chest looks like a rejected Gundam design and not the segmented armor from Halo.
I know what they were going for a mix up of this and Halo: CE A it does look like it, only they took out what made that armor look like SPARTAN armor.
If they had to change his armor, why not something off the base of what he had in Halo 3 instead? Like this this looks more futuristic, but looks like John’s armor, its sleek instead of bulky, the black and sand brown offset one another nicely, and the textures add a very nice level of detail. But more importantly it just looks like John I think that’s the biggest thing, I have no problem with them changing his armor, I have a problem with the fact it doesn’t look like him, We don’t see his face, his armor is what makes him, because it is him, The change from Halo CE - 2 wasn’t nearly as bad, it looked like an evolution, this looks like a throwback in the wrong direction.
Also I’ve got a bone to pick with this armor its the MK-VII armor, right? Why the hell does it have the Halo 3 plasma scarring? I can’t let that one go.
http://www.halodestiny.net/images/news/halo_4_figurine_master_chief_prototype.jpg
