Costume Design

Costume Design

You’ve created your characters, and you're proud of their designs so far! But something is missing: clothing. That’s where Costume Design comes in!

Costume Design is an exciting part of the design process, but it can also be overwhelming. Costumes are where you, the artist, get to dive deeper into your characters and experiment with how their personality and world reflect in what they wear. Are they curious and always sneaking out, and therefore tearing the knees of their jeans? Are they a royal, terrified of messing up and weighed down by their heavy crown? Or are they a student so focused on perfection, that even the smallest hair out of place stresses them? The options are endless!

In this article, we’ll break down designing costumes from start to finish, beginning with understanding who your characters are and ending with a lineup of outfits for their world. Costume Design isn’t just a t-shirt and jeans; it's a whole hidden story!

To create a costume, you must first understand your character and their complexities. Someone who is energetic and curious dresses differently from someone relaxed and nonchalant, and this can be true even when characters are wearing uniforms! The goal of Costume Design is to further world-build and help the audience understand the little details that make your character unique and real. To begin, you must ask yourself ‘Who is my character?’.

Before drawing anything, you first need to understand the general idea of your character’s personality and the struggle they need to overcome in their story. Try and go beyond deciding surface-level personality traits, like if they’re extroverted or introverted. Ask yourself questions, like: how do they respond to bad news versus good news? Do they isolate themselves, or do they reach out for help when overwhelmed? When they’re alone, how do they keep themselves occupied? What would make them happiest, or fulfilled? Characters are constantly reacting to the world around them, and Costume Design is a way to reinstate their personality and reactions.

Let’s dive into the costume design for Rumi from Kpop Demon Hunters. Compared to Zoey and Mira, Rumi’s outfit feels defensive. She’s hiding something, and we can tell by the guarded armour motifs in her clothing, such as the shoulder-padded jacket, shield-shaped norigae, turtleneck top, and spikes on the shoulder. She does not have any ‘free-flowing’ clothing items, like Mira’s metal shoulder chains or Zoey’s baggy pants, because she feels trapped in her own identity.

Now, let's look at how the trio are alike in clothing! Rumi’s costume still matches the visual notes of the other two girls to show that they are a team. The leather texture found in her jacket, Mira’s skirt, and Zoey’s top all match. Rumi also has both the pink color from Mira’s outfit and the blue color from Zoey’s outfit in her costume, signalling that she is what ties them all together. All three girls have matching norigae, but each one has its own design and color specific to their personalities! So, when designing characters that are meant to be a team, you can incorporate different matching pieces to make their costumes come together as a whole. Or, if they are enemies, create parts of the costume that are opposites to show how different the characters are, like someone decorated in sharp metal while the other is draped in flowy fabric!

These small details add up very quickly to paint a picture of a girl who is a part of a group, but feels isolated and protective of a secret. Once you begin to identify the struggles, personality, and reactions your character has, you can begin translating that into a costume.

Now that we’ve explored a character’s personality, let’s look at how they live and how that would affect their clothing! A farmer and a teacher could wear the same outfit to work, but by the end of the week, they would look different; one would be dirty with grass, mud, and sweat while the other would be cleaner, but would have a name tag pinned, a coffee stain, and eraser shavings on the front. When we look at our characters, we have to decide how the world around them and their personality would affect their clothing. We also have to consider the role they play in their world, and decide on articles of clothing that make sense for their day-to-day life!

Let’s look at Link from The Legend of Zelda (Breath of the Wild) for this part. Even if you don’t know of this character, you can take a good guess at what his job may be and the sort of world he lives in just by his clothing and accessories. Link is a soldier, fighting to save a kingdom from demise. He lives out in the fields and mountains, rides wild horses, and battles goblins with weapons he found scavenging old ruins. What gear would he need in order to accomplish all of this? What is the culture of the kingdom Hyrule? What sort of wear and tear would this do to his clothing? All of these questions are what you should be asking yourself as you begin designing outfits.

A common notion in character and costume design is that each item must have a purpose. Link's boots fit well for horse riding and managing rough terrain. His long-sleeved shirt beneath his tunic serves to protect his skin from the sun and weather, and the pattern on his tunic is one commonly found decorating items, homes, and more in Hyrule. He wears multiple belts, and each one holds an item to his hip to free his hands for climbing mountains. Even his hair is tied back, so that it doesn’t get in his face during battles. Each of these design choices point back to his role as a soldier fighting to save a kingdom, and helps him to survive the world he lives in. Whether your character is facing life-or-death situations like Link, or is a teacher or farmer, their outfit should clearly show what they do and how they live!

Now that we have our character fully fleshed out, we need to begin gathering references! Strong costume design comes from a strong understanding of what you’re creating, so we need to make sure that the references we are using will help us to create something original and believable. The goal of gathering references is to make it as easy as possible for our minds to pull inspiration from what already exists.

Not every reference will be helpful to you, so it's good to know how to sort through what is a ‘good’ reference vs a ‘bad’ reference! You want to make sure that the photos you're choosing align with the costumes you are creating.

Research is just as important as design, as this is the basis you build your work off of! Make sure that you have a reference for each part of the costume. When collecting references, I often divide my costume research into 5 parts: fabrics and textures, colors and patterns, silhouettes, accessories, and common outfit styling. When you have all of these items together, it becomes easy to pick and choose different examples from all 5 to create various versions of the same outfit until you find what best fits your character.

Additionally, if your costume is meant to be a part of an existing culture, it is best to only use references directly from that culture your character is a part of. You do not want to misrepresent anyone, or have any sort of modern clothing or hairstyles on your reference board, as that can confuse the history, shape language, textures, style and more. The same goes for outfits set in a specific time period or career. If your character lives in the 90’s, you want to make sure you don’t have any modern outfits ‘inspired’ by the 90s, but rather genuine photos from that decade. If your character is a scuba diver, you want to research the proper diving gear, ideally in different parts so you understand how it works.

When collecting references, it's important to ensure each photo is accurate to your story. The better you understand your references and goals, the easier you can create. We want to eliminate any guessing.

Finding good references for clothing can be difficult. While your gut reaction may be to look through Pinterest or Instagram, there are better resources that don’t contain AI, are properly researched, and aren’t being used by the masses! The more you're able to diversify where you gather resources from, the easier it will be to design costumes that are unique.

Great resources for costume design include museums (both in person and online), fashion magazines and blogs, and high fashion archives. When creating costumes that are cultural or based in a historical context, museums are a perfect resource as they often have multiple references of outfits and their parts, the date and history of the outfit, and details of the resources used to create it. When creating costumes from more modern times, fashion magazines and historical photos serve as a great insight into the fashion trends and styles of the time. Additionally, high fashion and fashion shows are very inspiring for finding new ways to incorporate shape and movement into your clothing, especially if your story is set in a fantasy world. Many high-end and well-known fashion brands keep an archive of their past designs, and you can also find books detailing fashion of different times at your local library. With the rise of AI, it is very important to ensure that the references you use are accurate!

If you have gathered all of your resources and do not know how best to view them for work, I recommend using PureRef. PureRef is a great, free resource for compiling references into one space. It allows you to organize your photos, add notes, links, and more. I often use PureRef to organize my references by character so that when designing, I am able to look at one place and see everything I’m working from. Whether you use PureRef, other apps, or your own method, it is very helpful to see all references in one place to understand the visual you’re aiming for as a whole.

Now that you’ve decided on who your character is and found the resources you need, it's time to draw! By figuring out your character’s personality and sourcing references beforehand, you are able to focus all of your energy into designing. We will use an example from my own project, ‘Beauty and the Kaiju’, to show this: here is Minoru!

As I briefly mentioned before, when you are designing a costume for your character, each item you add must serve a purpose. There are all sorts of ways an item could show purpose, and I will list a few examples.

A technical purpose would be an item that serves to function like a sword sheath or a belt for baggy pants. A personal purpose item would be something that reveals more about the character's interests and personality, like a bag charm or a band tee. A cultural purpose is an item, pattern, or style that connects a character to their specific culture, real or fantasy, such as body paint or clothing patterns. A belief purpose  would be an item that tells you about a character's beliefs, like a cross necklace or a ‘go green’ bag pin.

Below are a few examples of items found in Minoru’s outfits. Example A, the design on the inside of Minoru’s kimono, serves to tell you not only about his culture, but about his dark secret. He is the beast, and this is revealed to us here! Example B, the sword handle, serves as a technical piece to his sword, but also informs the viewer that he values beauty in everything, including the handle of his weapon. Example C, the swords themselves, let our audience know that he is a swordsman able to afford such crafted items, yet he is personable and keen on decorating them with his own charms or ties despite any rules.

Many people get caught up in the look of their costume and oftentimes forget that costumes serve as a functional extension of your character, moving and interacting as they do! People, as well as our characters, express themselves through clothing. Each item you include should have layers of thought and care behind their designs.

To create compelling characters and costumes, you have to focus on the basic shapes and elements of what you’re designing. Let’s look at Minoru and see how this may affect the way he appears to our audience. Which design, 1-4, feels the most secure to you? Which feels dangerous? The reason you may have picked Design 2 for security and Design 1 for danger is all because of the shapes, silhouettes, and details of the costumes!

When focusing on the shape of your designs, also known as ‘Shape Language’, it's important to understand what feelings different shapes give off! The main three shapes you will find in character and costume design are squares, triangles, and circles. Squares, bold and strong, give off the appearance of something sturdy and reliable. Triangles, sharp and pointed, give off the feeling of something dangerous and sporadic. Circles, however, are rounded and soft and appear approachable and safe!

Each shape is universally understood, and is a great way to further communicate a character’s personality and approachability. You can use them in clothing, accessories, hairstyles, and more. Oftentimes, we see parental characters portrayed through sturdy squares, reliable and funny friend characters portrayed through soft circles, and the evil villain portrayed through dangerous triangles. But that’s not all- good characters and costume designs add a secondary, smaller shape to not only make the design more visually interesting, but to also let the audience know another level to the character’s personality. Let’s take a look at these Big Hero 6 character designs by Shiyoon Kim. Can you tell what shape influenced their designs? What about the secondary shape?

Now that your shapes are figured out, it’s time to look at the character as a whole. The best way to do this is to create a clipping mask and fill in your character. When you do this, we have created what's called a ‘silhouette’! Many successful characters are recognizable by their silhouette alone- looking at the three silhouettes below, can you recognize these characters? 

The important thing about silhouettes is readability. How well can your audience tell what’s going on when everything is blocked out? Does a sword become too complicated? Does a hat meld with hair? Does the cape make the character turn into a blob? Issues such as these can become clear when you create and focus on a character’s silhouette. If you find your character and their costume is too jumbled and confusing, step back and show the silhouette to a friend or family member to see if they can understand what you’ve designed. At this stage of the design process, we are honing in on our designs and simplifying all of our complicated ideas.

Once your character’s costumes are complete and you are satisfied, you can take your costume design a step further by breaking it down into parts and pieces! Examples of this are pattern design, texture samples, a full turnaround, a secondary design, a prop page, and even a layers and block pattern reference sheet.

Oftentimes, the video game and animation industries require costumes to be further explored in the various ways listed above, so that animators and fellow designers understand the functionality of it, the patterns and textures, how it moves, etc. If you want to take your design a step further, these detailed directions would be a wonderful way to go! For the sake of simplicity, we will only discuss a full turnaround and secondary design examples today. Please feel free to research others if they interest you!

Turnarounds may be a term you have heard before, but if you haven’t, it is very self-explanatory! Turn Arounds are when you turn your character around in several angles so that those you’re working with understand the volume your character holds in space and how they look from each side. This is especially helpful for costume design, as this is your chance to show all details to the jacket or shoes or hairstyle you created! Think, if you only draw your character from the front, how will anyone know about the cool pattern you made for the back of their jacket?

Turnarounds are oftentimes known to be difficult to keep consistent, so a good practice is to overlay your different angles to measure the volume and heights. When creating turn arounds, your character should rotate on the same plane seamlessly! You can create a simple turn around with 3 points (Front, side, and back angle) and work your way up to a 5 point turn around (Front, front ¾, side, back ¾, back).

Secondary designs are great for a character whose appearance and costume goes through change. Change can be anything from custom alterations they make, like cutting their sleeves or sewing on badges, to wear and tear from battle, like bruises and scuffed shoes! Secondary designs are fun because you get to alter your original design to align with changes happening in the story. In my project, Beauty & The Kaiju, Minoru fights in a big battle and gets roughed up. However, with his longer hair, he would have trouble seeing as he fights: so, let's see how I reimagined his original hairstyle for the secondary design!

Ask yourself, what would they do? Think of several specific and complex situations that would force your character to act. How do they respond?

Here are some example scenarios you can try out:

Take your character's clothing and apply the answer from each question above! For example, if they break the pen, draw the ink splattered all over the front of their shirt from the damage! Did they sit and sulk in the well? Draw the moss and dirt smeared on their clothes! Did they decide to patch their clothing up? Draw the patch with all of its haphazard stitching!

Now, what do you notice about your character? Write down the personality traits you’ve discovered, and draw an arrow to where the scenario appears on their clothing.

Apply the same to your secondary character, or you! How are you two different? How are you alike? Write this all down to actively reference whenever you feel lost on how they would act in their clothes!

Find 3 examples of costume- 1 dramatic, 1 plain, and 1 that draws your interest the most.

Deconstruct these costumes! What fabric do they use? Are any parts dangling or stitched? Trace the shapes you can find in the costume, like if the top is square or the shoes are round! Do this 3 times per costume!

Print this out, and cut each part you selected out. Fold them, and shuffle them around! You should have 9 pieces in front of you.

Now, pick out 3 pieces of that paper and recreate them as either a dramatic, plain, or interesting outfit! Repeat this 2 more times until you have all of the original outfits completely reimagined into 3 new ones!

Take a costume you have already created, or one that another designer has created, and pick 3 of these 6 prompts-: high fantasy, space travel, school uniform, ancient ritual, magical girl, and futuristic soldier.

Then, reimagine your costume in the 3 ways you have chosen from above! How do little details translate into a new world and time? How does their hairstyle change, or their clothing's colors? Does their favorite gel pen turn into a magical staff? Does their freshly-ironed blazer become a sheet of protective chest metal? Really dive deep!

You can also take your favorite costume design and break it down! Create either a Turnaround, Prop page, or a Pattern design detailing the new costume you have created. Make sure to keep things consistent!

This all goes to say that when creating costumes, it's better to show than tell! With plenty of ways to express your character through clothing and accessories, the options may feel endless and overwhelming, but don’t feel discouraged. The more you practice, the pickier you will become, and the bolder your costume designs will feel.

Take interest in both the fashion around you, and the fashion unknown to you. Remember- do your proper research, every item should have a purpose, and utilize shape language. Most importantly, have fun! You’ve got this!