Minecraft knight and armour skin bases

How the armour is built

Metal is drawn with a metal pattern and a wider light-to-dark range than cloth, which is what makes it look polished. Each plate has a lit top edge and a shadowed bottom edge, and the breastplates carry a highlighted ridge down the centre. The library's single light direction (above, in front, on the character's left) applies to every plate, so a knight looks consistent as it turns.

How much of the overlay a design uses tells you how heavy it is. The obsidian knight uses about 1,120 overlay pixels, more than any other base in the library; the steel plate uses about 1,020 and covers every overlay region; the chainmail-and-tabard knight uses about 360, mostly for the coif, because the mail and tabard are painted on the base.

Making a knight your own

Start with the metal colour. Filling the steel tones with gold, bronze or a blackened iron changes the whole character, and the ridges and bands keep their highlights because they are steps of the same ramp. Keep one darker metal for gauntlets or greaves so the limbs don't merge with the body.

Heraldry is yours to add. The tabard on the chainmail knight and the base-layer chest between the plates on the steel knight are both open areas for an emblem of your own: a simple shape in two colours reads best at this size.

Finally, decide on the helm. The steel knight's helm is open and the obsidian knight's is closed with a glowing slit; both faces are painted underneath, so erasing the overlay head front turns one style into the other.