If for whatever reason you need reference images of swords, I have yet to find a website as good as myArmoury.com.
It is unfortunate I only found out about it only after long years sweating on multiple, less available resources.
All those years wasted on books!

The awesome thing about myArmoury is the compare tool, where you can display pretty much every possible kind of sword ever made, sorted by kind and historical period. It’s a priceless resource if you need consistency within a given environment – a video game for example – where you seldom have a history consultant reviewing what you draw.
In the compare tool you can place the swords next to each other and have an immediate idea about their size and relative proportions, another priceless feature.

Even if the weapons are the part of the website that impressed me the most, the armours database is no less valuable.
The site also hosts a forum, with “discussions of reproduction and authentic historical arms and armour from various cultures and time periods”, a Makers and Manufacturers section and so on.

From a concept artist’s point of view, this is the link that everyone should save in their bookmarks.
The only thing I would ask of them is having sizes in centimeters. Come on guys.

by Paolo Puggioni