Characters, Comics & Webtoons Creation

Practical Tips on Comic CHARACTER OUTFITS in Any Style!

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.avi.

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Hello!

I’m .avi. I work as a professional game illustrator and creating comics and webtoons is my hobby.

This tutorial isn’t about fashion trends or what your characters should wear, it focuses on practical tips and tricks about how to design outfits that you, the characters of your comic (webtoon, cartoon…) as well as the readers of your comic will like!

A well-designed comic character outfit:

⭐ Is easy for you to draw over and over

⭐ Reflects the character’s traits, background, and personality

⭐ Makes characters easy to tell apart and highlights their quirks

⭐ Enhances the enjoyment and immersion of both you and your readers!

The second part contains tips for effective workflow, like using layer modes to easily change colors and adding accessories quickly with the help of brushes, 3D models and stamps!

I’ll demonstrate using characters from a webtoon I’ve been working on, created from my previous experience designing cast members for sequential works.

🟪 CHARACTER DESIGN

🟧 Setting

The comic takes place in snowy mountains, so characters wear mostly winter clothing:

It’s a modern-day setting. If, like me, you’re not into fashion, online outdoor wear stores are great for references 😄

🟧 Silhouettes

Often overlooked—but silhouettes are the key for recognizing characters!

Even in full-color comics where everybody wears distinctive colors, in some scenes the colors can be significantly affected by lighting, making silhouettes your primary tool for telling characters apart:

Think about distinctive features of each character:

🔸 Body shape and size

🔸 Typical posture and movement

🔸 Hairstyles and accessories

🔸 Preferred types of clothes

💡 Try breaking characters down into simple sketches to test how recognizable they are:

🟧 Clothes Defined by Story

Review your story to spot moments that could influence outfit choices.

👉 For example, this boy’s hat was adapted to how he often pops up from somewhere and scares the main character – the first thing one sees of him in a dark scene are the eyes of the monster-like hat:

👉 Another example is this guy’s black jacket – it’s black mainly because I don’t like drawing certain stuff and the jacket being black helps a little...

🟧 Clothes Defined by Personality

Colors and clothes of a character help the readers get to know their personality without having to read any of their lines.

Colors and details say a lot:

🔸 Dark vs light colors:

🔸 Bold vs desaturated colors:

🔸 Warm vs cool colors:

🔸 Accessories vs lack of them:

There are just as many ways to approach this as there are types of personalities.

Let’s take a brief look at some examples — can you guess the characters’ personalities?

🟡 This guy was supposed to be the very definition of a “super-generic guy”, except that he’s:

🔸 Very expressive - big mouth and prominent eyebrows

🔸 A former rockstar-wannabe - the hairstyle, dog-tag-like pendant and fur-rimmed black jacket

👟 A funny story about shoes...

In the storyboarding stage I drew the shoes in a style I was used to with the intention of changing them later to something more realistic.

After getting down to properly design the characters, I searched for references and even diligently prepared brushes for the shoelaces and markings…

However, when I started inking the sketches, I realized that these new realistic shoes were just no fun to draw!

That’s why he has such designish trekking shoes in the character sheet, but in the actual comic he’s back to his old cartoonish skateboarding shoes - simply because the artist had much more fun drawing them! :D

👍 Moral of the story: draw what you enjoy, not what you think it’s expected :)

🟡 The youngest of the kids group is supposed to be what people call “little angel” - kind, responsible and sympathetic:

🔸 Light blonde hair

🔸 Heavenly blue eyes

🔸 Clothes in the colors of his eyes combined with similar calm colors

🟡 The most mischievous, energetic and loudest kid that’s always in the front is dressed in the most saturated colors:

🔸 Red and orange

🔸 Combined with green as a complementary color

🟡 On the contrary, the oldest boy with the usually stoic face is always in the background, like a dependable pillar that everybody runs to – in the story he’s described as a “mother hen” :D

🔸 His colors are the least saturated

🔸 The combination of these shades of blue, grayish violet and mint green symbolize stability

🟡 The younger girl is supposed to be cute, but has a mischievous side and joins every fun the red boy comes up with.

🔸 Girls’ typical purple and bluish tones on the more saturated side

🟡 The older girl is the leader of the pack, smart and always speaks her mind.

🔸 The hue and saturation of her red-based palette lean more towards purple (rather than fierce orange) which gives off the feeling of authority and dependability

🟡 Lastly, the grandma character:

🔸 Dressed purely practically - no unnecessary fashion accessories

🔸 Muted colors that indicate experience, dependability and authority

🟧 Character’s Typical Color

Each character has a main color, with the rest of the outfit built around it—either shades of that color or complementary tones:

🟧 Character changing colors

When characters evolve, reflect that in their outfits!

🔸 Shift hues slightly

🔸 Desaturate or brighten colors

⚠️ Keep the basic colors very similar to their originals, otherwise the change may be too drastic and the reader may feel they’ve been introduced to a stranger.

👉 For example, the main character starts with gray-blue tones, only accented by the orange markings on his shoes and the pendant, indicating he’s simply driving through life without a real purpose.

After he meets the kids, his world broadens and literally gets more colorful. With that level-up, he gets a reward in the shape of the greenish hoodie! It is more saturated than his main colors, but still in harmony with the rest (it’s similar to the color of his eyes and complements the hair color). The zipper slider refers to the pendant as a distinctive feature of the character.

💡 QUICK TIP #1: Drawing the storyboard first helps shape character design 💡

This may sound like putting the cart before the horse, but letting characters’ designs take shape while sketching storyboards is incredibly efficient.

As you sketch the characters over and over, you become familiar with their distinctive features and can simplify their design to the optimum that’s easy for you to draw while keeping each character easily distinguishable.

👉 For example, the twin tail girl had a much bigger hairdo, but I quickly found out it was taking up too much space in the panels 😅

Moreover, you can come up with ideas along the way that you wouldn’t have thought of before!

👉 For example, as I kept scribbling the main character, I noticed that the outline of his hair in certain angles looked as if he had cat ears pointing back…

I went along with it and used it in several comedic scenes where the children have fun with their imagination :D

💡 QUICK TIP #2: Keep your characters as symmetrical as possible 💡

Asymmetry is fun—odd hairstyles, one-sided accessories, etc.—but it’s hard to keep track of in the long run…

Believe me, even after having drawn many comics where I learned my lesson about asymmetrical design, I still naively thought that having only three characters with asymmetrical elements would be fine…

But no way! I still find it hard to keep track of which side the fringe goes or which hand has the watch!

(っ﹏< ‘)

I originally put the watch on the hand in the front and only much later I realized it’s the right (wrong) hand XD

Mirror shots are cursed…

But that doesn’t mean I would go back and change that – even though I have to be extra careful with these things, I decided they were worth it, and not only because having all characters completely symmetrical would be boring.

👍 You as the artist decide what’s worth the extra effort!

🟪 TIPS FOR EFFICIENCY

🟧 Separate Light Layers from Base Colors

When making character sheets:

🔸 Put base colors on separate layers

🔸 Add shadows/lights on their own layers (clipped to the folder with base color layers)

✌️This lets you adjust colors easily while seeing how lighting affects them:

💡 Match the lighting in your character sheets to your main comic scenes. I use two main lighting setups: day and night.

💡 Set up each light condition as a layer comp to preview them easily:

🟧 Easy Accessories – Brushes, 3D Models, etc.

Don’t give up on a cool accessory or a detail of your characters’ clothes just because they’re hard to draw repeatedly — Clip Studio Paint has great tools to help!

🟨 Brushes

CSP Assets offer many decoration brushes.

For example, here I used a full-color chain brush on a vector layer — the vector correction tools let you tweak the shape and thickness easily!

By clipping raster layers in various blending modes on it, you can quickly add highlights or shadows.

🟨 Image Materials

I drew the pendant’s front view, registered it as an image material, and now I can just drag-and-drop it into each panel!

💡 To fake 3D:

1️⃣ Free-transform the rectangle into perspective

2️⃣ Duplicate and move layer to create the back side

3️⃣ Darken the back for shading

I draw the sides and polish it more only in zoomed-in panels.

🟨 3D Models

From the beginning I wanted the main character to have this generic silver wristwatch, but it’s such a pain to draw!

Fortunately, working with 3D models in Clip Studio Paint is pretty easy, from transforming the models and camera to setting up lights, and they mostly only need minor final touches:

If you aren’t good at drawing technical stuff, like me, I recommend searching for 3D models to help you.

I learned my lesson when I thought I could just draw this transmitter earpiece by hand, since it was simple…

Then a friend (who saw it in progress without lighting and the blue circle) said that it looked like a band-aid covering a shaving cut…

Oh well… That made me realize that using 3D models even for such simple things is the better way to go for me! :D

Look in Assets for 3D models optimized for smooth use in Clip Studio Paint (usually there are many free and paid alternatives):

Alternatively, search Sketchfab - there are many free models in various formats. The only downside is that textures and materials may not be imported correctly (.glb format worked best for me) or that some detailed models can be heavy on your computer.