Introduction
Outfits are so important to let someone know who a character is, and what they’re about. Clothing can give you so many clues on many parts of their life: their occupation, their culture, what hobbies they’re into, their personality, and more!
Hi, Qilin here. In this tutorial, I will be talking about my approach to designing outfits for your characters. In the process, I’ll show you how I created outfits for three characters with totally different personalities and backgrounds.
Video
► "Interview" your characters
Before deciding on an outfit straight away, it is super important to get a good understanding of who your character is. If you’re struggling to organize your ideas, these are questions that I think are really useful to ask about your character.
✱ What do they look like?
This refers to general appearance: meaning age, skin color, eye color, hair color, body type, other identifying marks, etc.
✱ Where is your character from?
This refers to time period and location. These can be real or completely fictional, though it does help to have some real time periods and places to reference from! E.g. a futuristic, cyberpunk city based on Hong Kong in the 1980’s.
✱ What kinds of skills or abilities does your character have?
This refers to any professions/jobs and special abilities your character has. E.g. a construction worker with super strength.
✱ What kind of hobbies or interests does your character have?
This refers to activities they enjoy in their free time, or general things that they like.
Examples of hobbies include: gardening, painting, fishing, astronomy…pickling...you get the idea.
Examples of interests could be an obsession with the color green, playing video games, eating particular foods, specific fashion styles, etc.
✱ What are your character’s personality traits?
I think this is pretty self explanatory, but if you’re struggling to put thought into words, I made this handy table of personality traits that can be useful to pick and choose from!
Understand that these are questions that help you get a direction to kick off with, and don’t need to be answered fully in depth!
► Character Profile Examples
For this tutorial, I developed three different character profiles to work with.
In each box, I included information about: their appearance, where they live, their personality traits, and their skills/abilities/hobbies/interests.
CHARACTER 1
► early 20’s, tall lean build
► lives in a modern urban setting
► lazy, analytical, calm
► likes lazing around at home, playing strategic video games and watching kaiju movies.
CHARACTER 2
► 40’s, muscular strong build
► lives in fantasy village setting
► gloomy, cautious, patient
► a hunter/trapper by profession haunted by ghosts of animals she hunted in the past.
CHARACTER 3
► in her teens, petite build
► attends prestigious academy
► uptight, organized, determined
► an honor student and a student prefect, likes fantasy novels and blueberry themed goods.
► Outfit Design
✱ Brainstorm
So how do we turn these traits into outfit designs? What kinds of clothes does your character wear?
I find it easiest to start by considering where your character is from, and what kinds of skills/abilities/hobbies/interests they have. It’s best to focus on whichever is more at the forefront of your character’s identity. Meaning that some character’s identity will be centered more around their jobs, while others might be more centered around their culture.
It helps a lot to note where you’re getting your inspiration from, so you can look up references more easily!
I’d recommend to have ideas for each of these clothing categories:
► Tops (shirts, vests, dresses)
► Bottoms (pants, shorts, skirts)
► Outerwear (sweaters, jackets)
► Shoes (sneakers, sandals, dress shoes)
► Accessories (hats, eye wear, jewelry, bags, etc.)
Let me start by considering my three character profiles, and make a general brainstorm on ideas for their outfits. For now, I’m only thinking about what kind of garments they might wear and accessories they carry – I’m not too concerned with colors or patterns other specifics yet.
► lives in urban city
► identity centered around interests (games, kaiju movies)
► could wear more modern styles that can showcase interests, like graphic tees, baggy pants for comfort, headphones.
► I’m taking inspiration from street fashion and tech wear, using styles that look loose/oversized but hold a well constructed shape.
► lives in fantasy setting
► identity focused on occupation (hunting)
► since their primary means of living is hunting/trapping, their clothing should be more protective and practical, like a cape, chest armor, and leather boots.
► I’m taking inspiration from classic dnd and fantasy outfit elements.
► identity more focused on their environment
► is a student at a prestigious boarding school
► clothing would be a formal uniform, with a blouse, a skort, a blazer, a school bag, and Mary-Jane shoes.
► I’m taking inspiration from British school uniform styles.
✱ Adding detail
After having ideas about general outfit styles, you can make further adjustments and add more details like color, pattern and texture based on their personal interests and situations.
When it comes to deciding on colors, I’m thinking about how color can add to the character’s overall appeal and how they relate to their character traits. Try not to use too many colors, find a balance of neutral and accent colors.
Character 1 wears more modern styles, and I’m using visuals inspired by techwear and street fashion, so having movie poster-like graphics on the shirt and adding bold graphic styles onto the vest jacket and beanie. The colors used are similarly bold, and I used purples and blues to match a bit more with their calm-type of personality.
Character 2 needs to use clothes to their benefit in their profession, so colors should be more earth toned and naturalistic to blend in more with the forest environment that they hunt in. On their leather armor, I’m adding textures like dirt and scratches to show their wear and tear. On their cape, I erased lots of holes for visual interest, as if she had a fierce battle with a big creature.
Character 3 is a polished student prefect, so they might have additional accessories on top of the uniform like a prefect badge. I’m keeping the colors of her uniform generally quite neutral, with the small addition of an embroidered school emblem on the breast pocket of her uniform. She likes blueberry themed goods, so a purplish blue color can be featured in small aspects of her outfit like on her schoolbag.
It might also help to think about what purpose you’re designing the character outfit for.
For example, an outfit concept for an animation would benefit from much less detail compared to something like a game that uses 3D models that can afford to be more complicated. Of course, if you’re designing a character for fun, you can make their outfit as simple or as complicated as you want!
✱ Personality
I think personality shines the most in terms of the styling, in other words, how the character wears their outfit.
For example, a serious person might wear their school uniform neatly in a polished manner, while a clumsy person might have some mishaps with their outfits.
Let me make some adjustments to my current outfit designs while considering my character’s personality traits in more detail.
Character 1 is lazy, analytical, and calm. The lazy trait means that they might prefer over-sized, more comfortable clothes that take less effort to wear. They might often leave their shirts untucked, since they aren’t bothered with looking neat.
I’m adjusting the lengths of the clothes so I can emphasize the bagginess, and adding more visible wrinkles and folds as if they’ve been dug out from a pile in a closet.
Character 2 is gloomy, cautious, and patient. The gloomy and cautious traits means that she might prefer to wear clothes that conceals more of her face and body, reflecting a desire to shield herself from unwanted attention and scrutiny.
I’m making some adjustments here and there, but mainly changing her cape so that it wraps around her upper body a lot more, as if she’s hiding in the fabric.
Character 3 is uptight, organized, and determined. The organized and uptight traits means that she cares about her image, and is meticulous about looking as neat and as presentable as possible.
I’m honestly not making too many changes here, just some general cleanup and adjusting some proportions, but trying to maintain a clean and neat appearance!
Finish!
Here are all my new characters with their outfits! I hope my thought process made it easier to design outfits, and I’d love to see your designs if the tutorial helped! Thank you so much for viewing ^^
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