Clothing/Costume Design in Comics

[arcojawa]

Thought of a fun topic for you guys. What's your thoughts/processes on clothing and costume design within your comic?

....... for me it's gotten a little rough seeing as I kind of pigeon-holed myself with the decision that my main character would only wear one-piece clothing to associate her with the spandex-happy superhero genre. This, combined with the fact that her power is arms coming out of her back which kind of necessitates backless clothing has greatly restricted how I can design my outfits for her.

But despite that it's been fun anyway and one thing I've greatly enjoyed is changing outfit that clearly weren't intended to be single-piece outfits into single piece.

[mariusthered]

I get fashion guides from my local library as a lot of what my characters wear are based on historical pieces. looking at the history of fashion can give you lots of good ideas.

[Kittosaurus]

I would like to push my designs further but I think my current lack of skill/ schedule prohibits that a lot. Looking back now a lot of the secondary characters have very similar outfits. Apparently high-waisted pants are all the rage in my comic... oops!

[irene_addler]

I draw very generic/bland clothes, I think. I'd love tonl do better, but that's just one more thing I have to put more time into. So I guess until I'm better at drawing everything in general before I do that.

[Kelheor]

As a rule of a thumb, my MC guys usually wear warm colours and MC girls - cold colours I don't even do that intentionally, it just happens... a lot.

I have a lot of OCs, but I never really think hard about what they wear, because it's nothing elaborate. A witch girl wears black velvet top with stars and long purple skirt, a demon guy wears leather skirt and heavy boots on the battle arena, an ordinary boy in a camp wears t-shirt with comfortable shorts and sneakers.

I don't have characters from actual historical times, so no problem with that. If I have problems I start with Pinterest! I know a bunch about traditional East Asian clothes, so I don't usually need research for that, the only time I really searched for something was European armour

In Hexameron we only see one week from the kids time in the camp, so I really didn't want to change their clothes much. Come one, these are kids in a summer camp, no one cares about clothes there. So they all only have 1 change of clothing... okay, 2 changes for Zoe, but she is a girly girl. And of course they all are wearing something casual and relevant to being in the camp.
In the second arc they will wear mostly the same coloured clothes, but more appropriate for autumn weather and a bit darker, because teens Also - triangles! They are the recurring elements and not only for Hexameron.

And then there's Eugene... I wonder what will happen to his fashion sense later

[punkarsenic]

since twaw is a period piece, i have a lot of fun keeping a BIG pinterest folder of costume concepts and designing them new costumes

twaw

eg: costumes for the finale at the end of the year

i take massive liberties, cool > historically accurate, but try to get the vibe across.

as for modern civilian costumes... havent had a lot of practice. its usually a very difficult part of the process for me bc im not very fashionably diverse myself, i usually wear black tees and black trousers, or dress like a military brat (i am not a military brat). so its smth i need to practice, i wanna start building up an inspo board of generic modern clothes for this purpose

[kaetana]

Yessss, I love doing costume design!

For my comic, I will definitely look to historical/cultural clothing for inspiration, but since I'm doing a fantasy setting I leave myself free to combine, adjust, or just make up things as needed.

I usually try to pick a core color for each major character to base the color palette of their design around, to keep everyone looking distinct. Between my first and second story arc, I'm switching up the clothing that my main characters are wearing, while still trying to make sure they have enough in common to keep the same general look. I also keep some items the same, whether because they have special significance to the character or just make sense to keep around (maybe they didn't need a new pair of boots yet).

I also try to think about what sort of clothing choices are practical for a given character, but that can vary a lot based on personalty and role. Cross here is a front-line fighter with a strict and closed-off personality, and wears heavy armor that covers most of his body.

Meanwhile Tecatl (the guy with the sword), is also a front-line fighter, but he makes use of magical protections (think Mage Armor) and a healing factor for defense, and his costuming is more in line with both the warmer climate he normally operates in, and his boisterous and outgoing personality.

Anywho that's the stuff I normally try to think about (and also just what looks cool off course!). Love seeing everyone else's costume design stuff here!

[imiogri]

My creative process is "how do I make these exact same articles of clothing look different this time"

[vothnthorvaldson]

I'm a traditional clothes and fabric nerd, so I would say I have a good library in my head and I just pick things here and there.
I particularly like clothes from roughly 12 to 19th centuries, with many exceptions.
A lot of my inspiration come from Persia, India, Anatolia and the Arab world. Again with lots of exceptions! I like clothes for many many other places.
I decided to go for a fantasy comic mostly to be able to mix up influences and centuries without feeling bad about it!
In my comic, clothes are rather simple because I can't afford to draw complicated clothing for hundreds of panels, but I have a lot of more interesting costumes for single illustrations, that I will probably use as chapter pages.

So my thought process is about like that:
1 - Decide what kind of character I'm dealing with, to know what kind of clothes I'm going to give them (traditional from the place the character is in, traditional from another place, more original/crazy clothes etc..).
2 - Pick a few influences I want in my costume.
3 - Simplify to make it possible to draw in a comic at acceptable pace.
4 - Make sure point number 1) is fulfilled even after simplification,

Three of my favorite books:

[Iris-Grimoire]

Sketch a character, scream at myself, do it again with references this time. I have a bad habit of just slapping robes and boots on everyone so I have to force myself to go and look up characters with a similar theme/personality, and start looking for clothes that might fit, historical or modern. Here's Mortimer's references for when I finished his design for real!

Don't be afraid to just search up on Google, Artstation, Pinterest or your own reference folders for random themes (wizard, warrior, scary, cool) until there's something that you can say "my OC would wear this" to. And if it's still rough, look up references for fashion in general! I unfortunately lost the source but here's some examples of specific clothes reference to make the articles have more character.

[GesuGesu]

my own sense of fashion helps dress my boys (and girls) I generally like layered clothing since it can make clothes look more detailed with minimal effort. I haven't drawn fantasy comics, although I did design a few for my friends!

[ben]

I used to think I’d end up going to a fashion school and try to design or be a stylist so I really think about clothes a lot and they tend to be kind of a centerpiece to all my comics.

All of my characters wear different things everyday and a common theme I do with most of my comics is have the original outfit concept for the chapter (if it starts on a new day) up at the beginning of the chapter. I often end up giving them clothes I own since I can get good reference out of it!

I also have characters that are less ~stylish~ whose clothing serves more of a narrative purpose or a gag. I’m working on a detective character who is always wearing suits but they are always either way too big on him or way too small. He also wears a lot of novelty ties because he’s got a sense of humor.

[ButterflyEmpress]

I always had difficulties with clothing design, maybe it's 'cause I dress pretty plain(jeans, tshirt, hoodie). Love Me, Deity has gods and normal humans in it. I try to avoid to being too detailed since I do have to draw them multiple times a page.

For the humans, it take place in modern day so it's a lot easier to design. I could just go on a clothing store site for references. The outfits are designed to match their personality:

Akina wants to be more mature and independent, she wears somewhat formal/conservative clothes like sweaters, button downs, skirts, flats, etc. You wouldn't see her out in tennis shoes, denim, anything revealing.

Whereas Niyu is more chill and a bit lazy, so he wears things that you can just toss on and go.

Now the deities are a different story, especially since they're completely made up. So I kinda had a few difficulties not having them look mystical enough. Their designs are centered around their powers:

I felt like Nyota was easy since it's easy to make. She's a star goddess so she has a firey skirt and ribbons and she's colored like stars.

Nyct was the most difficult for me to design. He's a god of literal darkness so demonic/evil traits would be ill-fitting. I ultimately settled with a somewhat pajama look, since he is associated with night and cold weather. I don't like using straight up black so he's more blue.

The other gods aren't entirely finalized since they haven't debuted yet. I'll have to do a lil more research