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Description
Hello!

Here's a little something I thought I'd finally finish, I had this old sketch floating around of a cross-section of a Warhammer 40K Terminator space marine so I just went and finished it. I thought about making it into an infographic right from the start but it just fell by the wayside when I was working on other stuff as I knew it'd be a lot of work to finish it. Well, here's the end result.

The thickness of the armor for Terminators in't specified in any lore-source I've seen (I did search for a source for the pic but found nothing really). I based the thickness of the armor on the height of the astartes which is often cited to be between 2,5- 3 meters height. Some larger examples exist too but I used that as a guideline for scale. After establishing scale I just scoured through a bunch of official 40K art to see how the different plates are shaped, where they are positioned and how they would interact with an anatomically feasible human body.

That's the point where I noticed you can't put anything resembling a human body into most official 40K depictions of Terminators. The thighs are often very narrow and if you'd assume very thick plates on each rigidly armoured body part, the marine would end up looking like popeye the astral sailorman streched 3 meters tall! Similar anatomical problems occur with the waistline and my goodness, the shoulders. The shoulders! In every official artwork the pauldrons and breastplate interact in such a way the shoulderjoint is dislocated by a mile not to mention the area of the latissimus dorsi being badly mangled in any position (that's actually a problem on all Space Marine armour but I digress). Most often the Space Marines depicted in official art are anatomically ok- ish if you think the armor is paperthin, in that case most of them work fine. I can totally understand why they are depicted that way and can appreciate the style (it's the cool factor!).

Regarding this piece though I wanted to make a depiction that tries to marry a somewhat anatomically correct marine with an armour that mostly works. The plating is as thick as it can be while still preserving the silhouette of the Terminator armour. In a few places I made changes to the shapes and sizes of the plates for example the head: it is brought back and up a bit and moved slightly into the backpack section. I do understand the critisism that it's not as thickly armoured people would perhaps imagine, with the waist and joints looking quite thin relative to the chest but to this I reply with historical precedent that I used to justify this styling: suits of armour as we know them, had variable thicknesses between plates in different parts of the body with the torso and usually being thickest. So the Terminator armour here is as thick as it can be, while preserving style and looking it could stop heavy firepower in crucial areas that, if penetrated, would probably be fatal.

P.S. The fluff text states early on that the protection levels exceed that of Guard vehicles, not armor thickness as such. I imagine Guard vehicles having thicker armour, but of much lesser quality seeing how the vehicles can still be mass produced and the Terminator armour not really.

More versions on my Artstation:

www.artstation.com/artwork/qAr…

Description
Hello!

Here's a little something I thought I'd finally finish, I had this old sketch floating around of a cross-section of a Warhammer 40K Terminator space marine so I just went and finished it. I thought about making it into an infographic right from the start but it just fell by the wayside when I was working on other stuff as I knew it'd be a lot of work to finish it. Well, here's the end result.

The thickness of the armor for Terminators in't specified in any lore-source I've seen (I did search for a source for the pic but found nothing really). I based the thickness of the armor on the height of the astartes which is often cited to be between 2,5- 3 meters height. Some larger examples exist too but I used that as a guideline for scale. After establishing scale I just scoured through a bunch of official 40K art to see how the different plates are shaped, where they are positioned and how they would interact with an anatomically feasible human body.

That's the point where I noticed you can't put anything resembling a human body into most official 40K depictions of Terminators. The thighs are often very narrow and if you'd assume very thick plates on each rigidly armoured body part, the marine would end up looking like popeye the astral sailorman streched 3 meters tall! Similar anatomical problems occur with the waistline and my goodness, the shoulders. The shoulders! In every official artwork the pauldrons and breastplate interact in such a way the shoulderjoint is dislocated by a mile not to mention the area of the latissimus dorsi being badly mangled in any position (that's actually a problem on all Space Marine armour but I digress). Most often the Space Marines depicted in official art are anatomically ok- ish if you think the armor is paperthin, in that case most of them work fine. I can totally understand why they are depicted that way and can appreciate the style (it's the cool factor!).

Regarding this piece though I wanted to make a depiction that tries to marry a somewhat anatomically correct marine with an armour that mostly works. The plating is as thick as it can be while still preserving the silhouette of the Terminator armour. In a few places I made changes to the shapes and sizes of the plates for example the head: it is brought back and up a bit and moved slightly into the backpack section. I do understand the critisism that it's not as thickly armoured people would perhaps imagine, with the waist and joints looking quite thin relative to the chest but to this I reply with historical precedent that I used to justify this styling: suits of armour as we know them, had variable thicknesses between plates in different parts of the body with the torso and usually being thickest. So the Terminator armour here is as thick as it can be, while preserving style and looking it could stop heavy firepower in crucial areas that, if penetrated, would probably be fatal.

P.S. The fluff text states early on that the protection levels exceed that of Guard vehicles, not armor thickness as such. I imagine Guard vehicles having thicker armour, but of much lesser quality seeing how the vehicles can still be mass produced and the Terminator armour not really.

More versions on my Artstation:

www.artstation.com/artwork/qAr…