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Now that my first armor is finished, and I have a baseline for one of my primary factions, I need to expound upon the theme.  This is how strong artwork is produced in game design, you make one thing, your best thing, and then you generate everything below it.  Boy Joe, that sure doesn't make any damn sense.  Oh ok, lets explain.

So I need to make a concept for a faction, so the first thing to do is go completely crazy with hard work and detail.  In that period you are thinking about what colors work together, what shapes, what decals, for instance in the armor I made the theme is wings.  There are wings on the chest and belt buckle, and feather prints all over the pauldrons, back, and bracers.  Now that I have a base line for color, shape, and theme, I can produce the armors that are less extravagant and know what they should look like.

Next, I need to make a weapon, boots, helmet, and shield.  Once this one unit is fully decked out, it is easy to make the rest of the troops.  In essence this is what the player is working toward, when they think about what faction they want to spend the next 200 hours playing as, hit is what they are thinking.  The end is the ultimate goal, and getting a handful of troops that wear this armor and use those weapons should be hard and signify an achievement.

Before I can do that, here is a short to do list.
Make a Spec Map for this armor
Make a Normal Map for this armor
Pick models for boots, helmet, and shield
Quickly make some boots (least important but must match)
Quickly retex standard gauntlets (not covered above because its quick)
Tex shield (second most important)
Tex weapon (third most important)
Tex helmet (helmets make or break a unit)