Design Tips - Blog Posts

may i ask how do you come up with your characters designs and outfits??? i have such trouble thinking up functional costumes for my characters and i admire yours so much omg

ofc ofc!! I’ll try to keep this short n simple so there are pretty much just three steps in costume creation, compiling reference, sketching, and creating the final piece!!

Compiling reference is pretty self-explanatory! I recommend having a folder in your computer to save costume design to, or pinterest bcos pinterest is a fucking gem. Just. Hoard all the armor/clothing you can get your hands on. even if the only part of a design you like is the shape of some coat buttons. stash that shit away man. Here are some references I used while designing armor for Rato!!

The next step (and also the lengthiest step, at least for me) is sketching!! This can be………intimidating to get into, but it’s not that bad once you dive in!! Just think of it as tossing all your reference pictures into a giant melting pot and then throwin a bunch a your own personal flavor in there too for good measure. 

I super duper recommend sketching outfits in a paper doll sort of way, with shapes instead of lines, and in greyscale! Good outfit design depends 90% on shapes imo, and blocking out clothing forms makes the entire process much much faster and easier to think about. The greyscale is so you don’t have to distract yourself by thinking about colors just yet B^) for example: 

when Im designing outfits I like to lay out a bunch of sketches of the character naked/in underwear/w/e and then just go down the line blocking different chunks of the armor out. Each different shade of grey is a different layer so I can easily add stuff on top of or underneath other clothing pieces. It really helps to have a bunch of sketches on one page so you can recycle pieces of different mock-ups you’ve done!! Im sure you can see that a lot of the Rato sketches up there have the same boots/coats/chestpieces :~) its honestly just throwing shit at a wall and seein what sticks

and then you just gotta finalize it!! think of colors and materials and all that good stuff. Im not sure what else to write without making this obnoxiously long, so hmu if you have any other questions!!

This, just yes.

This is actually how I’ve ended up designing some really cool OCs, I’ll start by just going “random person” and as I move from general body shape to hair to eyes to attire, I just go with whatever feels right.

Basically: it’s a really good drawing exercise to start with basic details that could be found on everyday people, because that’s how main characters start out; random people in the world.