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Feb 2016

Where and how do you get ideas for clothes for your characters/ocs?
How about really fancy clothes for your characters?
I myself use pinterest or my own wardrobe, although my wardrobe is like super plain... (its either all black or stripes.)

For my current webcomic I mainly use a really huge book named "The Costume history" -around 500 sheets of ancient costumes, from really old ages until the 19th century - And I also use pinterest too, is really useful. smile

Half the time I just think of it randomly, the other half I see pictures of people with cool/cute hairstyles or clothes I like.

I go for aesthetics a lot of the time but I also think of what would be practical, given the character/time period/setting etc. For example, in my comic99, I have a race of beings with rather large wings and flight is a major part of their culture. Therefore I tend to design their costumes as very form-fitting and light.

i have a tag on my tumblr dedicated to reblogs from various fashion blogs! a goldmine of inspiration for civilian and fancy clothes alike. sometimes i'll also see an outfit that catches my eye when i'm walking to college, and i'll make a quick scribble of it later.

for my current webcomic, my characters' appearances are based on various entries i've seen on a vintage photography blog, and i'll go through yearbooks and clothes catalogs from the 50s-60s. nothing too complicated, since they're fairly modest civilians.

First i figure out what Kind of cloths they would wear.

Then i scour fashion blog after fashion blog to reblog things to my refrence/inspo blog.

also for boys because they are more difficult to dress for me. I look at alot of clothing store websites. Joe fresh, American outfiters, just anything.

Anything historical i research. Tumblr, professional websights. And my best friend his a history major with a cosplay hobby so i can always ask her.

Right now it's fashion week and I'm rebloging a storm

Tumblr. Haha! Because we're in a scifi setting with the comic I work on, Kamikaze20, we use a lot of inspiration from cyberpunk, steampunk, and afropunk styles. Now...that said, the complexity of characters costumes we have is dictated by where they live and/or come from. Those in higher status have more formal looking costumes, while those of a lower status have simpler outfits.

Case in point, this is our lead character, Markesha. She's lower on that status rung:

Clothing is simple for her. She's a runner from an economically deprived area, so she can't be in really formal dresses or the like. She needs that freedom of movement, and can't really afford any clothing that isn't actually functional.

Now take in this guy, Logan. He's higher on the status ladder.

Here you see the Mandarin collar, the shiny details, frivolous overcoats and sashes that...frankly just aren't needed. Logan even has a whole sash made of plated metal scales because he freakin CAN. You can read more about his character here18. In fact, everyone from similar status as Logan has their own distinct style but equal in their frivolity, as you can see here6 annnnd here5 .

While we haven't been able to bring in TOO much of the cyberpunk/dustpunk styles yet, it's coming. wink

That said, one of the best things we did for costuming was figuring out an understanding of certain style trends that show up everywhere. Mandarin or Mandarin-like collars show up everywhere, but especially in the men's clothing (such as Logan above. Additionally each high status place has their own distinct style, too. Logan's family trended toward Pacific Indian styles mixed with 1920's American. Yvonne and Everett's family dress in very traditional clothing that harkens back to African patterns and Japanese silhouettes Meanwhile the Cornerstone family was very much HEAVILY influenced by Russian royalty and Celtic patterning.

All that said, if you're gonna do costuming right, keep in mind that costumes have to be functional for your character above all else. A costumer friend of mine always told me that "Function is the foundation of good costume design." My team and I took that to heart! blush

I haaaaaave - this:


I am a digital hoarder, and have my very own reference-library in the form of neatly labelled, cross-referenced folders full of ALL THE THINGS.

Not shown here: the entirely separate folder I keep of character-designs from games, and the other entirely separate reference-folder I keep entirely for Grassblades.

And after I get all of my inspiration-pictures lined up, I tend draw and draw and draw my characters, filling page after page in my sketchbook (or file after file, if I'm drawing digitally) with different versions of clothes in which they might fit, until I find the one set that does. It also helps to figure out the basic look of the culture from which your character is from, if you're working with an entirely fictional universe - that way, you can give them some context and at the same time tinker with things to make them look unique.

Yeah I browse pinterest too. My characters don't wear anything fancy. I mostly like streetwear and/or casual wear so I just search for those. Sometimes I look at sites like modcloth for cute clothes for some of my female characters.

I literally just browse the internet for ideas sweat_smile! I like to combine a lot of the outfits I find or just get inspirations for things I see online. Pinterest, Tumblr and google do the trick :3.

i have a huge poser wardrobe of 3d clothes, drawing out the figures gives me even more scope on theses

idea base on observation on anime, illustration and online games. Mostly clothes from MMORPG give me lots of inspirations.

Pinterest is your best friend!!
I don't like saving pictures on my laptop so having a pinterest account made things so much easier for me, any clothing I find good for the characters I save it on my pinterest account !

My current comic has to have the characters changing clothes very often, I found it easier to give them a sort of style that they like to dress most of the time. The main guy likes to wear knit sweaters, the main girl has a very classy style, another girl likes to wear more punk style clothing. Whenever I need ideas for their next outfit I go and search for inspiration on pinterest. I combine outfits and change the colors and that's it.

I normally imagine funny looking clothes for mine

This! blush I was told when I first started learning to draw digitally, to start making reference folders as soon as possible and for each project.

I get my references from everywhere and put them in my folders, which is synced on the cloud.

I love pinterest for keeping a neatly organized collection of pictures of shit that I can access wherever I want.

Art refs, clothes refs, architectural refs, scenery refs...

For my webcomic strip4 series I've gotten my ideas from family, life experiences and jokes I tell to others. For clothing, I try to keep it simple and pick favorite colors for each of my characters. Then I can keep their clothes limited to those colors. Sometimes I'll use patterns in the clothes for variety.

My character wears Lolita and I look to tumblr and pinterest for various dresses, brands, and styles. I've been drawing a series of images with my OC in various Lolita, you can find it here40. I started to design a few of the latter ones for fun.