LAST EDITED ON Dec-17-06 AT 06:21 PM (EST)
 
>1560 Utena's black armor appeared in several artbook
>illustrations, but never on screen.

Utena and Anthy do appear in armor briefly in the opening credits, riding horses between the spires of the Castle in the Sky. That's what I used as a guide for my fanart:

(Sorry about the embedded image: I couldn't get the "HREF link with text display" to work, and typing the bare URL in automatically embeds the image instead of creating a link.)

I did add a few plates to improve the coverage of the lower torso and upper legs. In the opening credits, this area was completely unarmored--perhaps acceptable for jousting, since it'd be a difficult lance strike, but definitely not viable for sword combat.