Introduction

Hello friends! In this post I will guide you in creating outfits for your OCs, a stage that I consider to be the most fun part when working with original characters.

 

For this, a few elements must be taken into account:

1- The context

2- The weather

3- The personality and history of the character

4- Your preferences

 

Let's get started!

 

 

Basic elements to take into account

1- Position ourselves in the context

The CONTEXT in which our character's story develops is essential when defining their wardrobe. Different key contextual aspects must be considered:

 

 

A- The historical period

When putting together the story we have to think about what historical era we are going to position ourselves in. To do this you will have to do some research to find out about the fashion and clothing of that period, so we will know what clothes and colors were common to wear.

 

Of course, the easiest thing is to locate ourselves in the current era. All you have to do is go out into the street and see the type of clothes that people wear, or look at online stores to see the clothes that sell the most. I assure you that with a search you will find cute things for your characters!

 

 

B- Geographic location

We must take into account which country/region our character lives in. We all live in a society that conditions us, even before we were born, so we must take this detail into account when designing outfits.

 

Our character is going to have certain moral concepts that will prevent him from wearing some types of clothing, as well as make him feel more comfortable wearing something that is socially accepted. In short, both the country and the region where the character lives influence their clothing, due to cultural and climatic factors.

 

 

C- The socioeconomic situation

There are certain luxury goods, such as jewelry, that will be unaffordable for people who do not have a good economic situation. Brand-name clothing, second-hand clothing... we have to think about what economic situation our character is in to know which of these two types of clothing they can afford.

 

This affects the quality and quantity of garments.

 

 

2- The seasons and climate

Thanks to this element we can design many outfits! If it is autumn, winter, summer or spring, the colors change and we have to cover our character to face the cold or give him lighter clothes for hot days :)

 

 

3- Life history and personality

Our character is going to develop his preferences based on the events of his life. On the other hand, depending on your personality and tastes you will prefer one style over another.

 

To convey your personality we can use COLORS and poses that talk about what our character is like.

 

 

4- Your preferences

You have to think about whether the character belongs to an urban tribe, what type of music they like, the colors they are most attracted to...

 

 

Example

My OC is an immortal being who has lived in different historical eras. She resides in Argentina, more precisely in the northwest of the country, and her style for much of her life was consistent with rural areas. She really likes earth colors, mainly red, which is loaded with meaning due to disputes that occurred between two sides during the civil wars.

 

Taking these details into account, I have designed their outfits throughout history, changing their hairstyles and way of dressing to fit in with the rest of the humans of each era, but without losing their personal touch.

Let's draw!

Once we have decided on the outfit we are going to draw for our character we can start drawing it!

 

To have clear references for future drawings, I recommend that the character be drawn standing, to be able to show his clothes well. A TIP that I give you to facilitate this is to take advantage of the 3D dolls that Clip Studio Paint provides us.

As you see, we can edit them as we wish! This way they can have a doll with the type of body their character has as a base.

 

Modeling the doll and giving it a pose can waste a lot of time. If it is something that you don't like, I recommend searching Clip Studio Assets for the pose that you like the most. All you have to do is grab the downloaded material and drop it on top of our doll so that it takes the pose.

(Below I leave the material I used)

In my case, for simple clothes I like to use chibis. To do this, I gave the original Clip Studio Paint doll the proportions that I use in my style.

Here are the steps I follow when drawing:

 

1- I position the 3D doll until I find the pose that I like the most.

2- Now I draw the shape of my character's body. IMPORTANT: We have not placed the clothes yet, since it is important to have the base to be able to add more outfits and know where the clothes are going to be folded without failing in the anatomy.

3- Now we add the outfit! My character really likes the color red accompanied by white, yellow and brown, mainly.

 

Then I go clean and it looks like this:

But... What happens if we don't decide on the colors? It's normal for us to be undecided, so it's good to see all the options we have available!

 

We will select the layer of the garment that we want to change the color and we will use the option [Edit] > [Tonal Correction] > [Hue/Saturation/Lightness…]

 

(Or we just use our keyboard pressing Ctrl+U)

This window will appear. With the [Tone] option we will change the color, with the other options we will vary the warmth and luminosity a little

Play with colors! For example, this is how my character would look with different color options:

You can use the same base to make different outfits. This can help you when you are making reference tables for a comic you have in mind.

Extra: Materials

To facilitate our drawing we can use the materials we find in Clip Studio Assets. For jean garments I love using textures that make it more realistic!

I hope these tips help you ^^ Thank you very much for reading!