Drawing clothing or believable fashion designs on a character can be tricky! It can be hard to
draw something other than a default t-shirt and jeans. How do you make your outfits feel
more inspired? How do you make your outfits complement the characters you're illustrating?
These are the highlights from a livestream where I took video game character suggestions from our
viewers, and illustrated modern outfits for them! The first character, Venti from Genshin Impact, was
chosen based on a community poll and the other characters were requested by the stream chat. By
the end, we finished with Venti, Link from Legend of Zelda, James from Pokemon, and Leon from Pokemon
Sword and Shield. I don't play Genshin Impact, but I see a lot about Venti on my Twitter timeline.
I know a few things about him, such as him being a wind god and having a very cute and playful
personality. But I decided to rely on his colour palette to inspire his outfit. His palette was
built up of a lot of blues and greens, making his original palette very analogous. It's quite
pretty, actually! But I tend to like working with complementary palettes, so I decided to
add in some browns. Brown is usually a product of a dull orange or red, which are both complementary
colors to blue and green, which gives me a more subtle complementary palette to work with. For the
clothes themselves, I went with something inspired by both light academia and modern casual fall wear.
Because of the cuter personality I know he had, I decided to go with an equally cute outfit to match.
The fabric your clothes are made out of, and how loose or fitted the article of clothing
is, is important when you're drawing folds! Fabrics that are thicker and loose fitting tend to have
more looped folds. Whereas stiffer fabrics, thin fabrics, and tighter clothes tend to have thinner,
more triangular folds. Because the turtleneck is a loose fit and made of thicker fabric, the folds of
the arms are more looped and large compared to the smaller and thinner triangles of the fitted jeans.
There are tons of Links -- and unlike Genshin Impact, I've played a lot of Legend of Zelda games.
For this stream in particular, I went with his Breath of the Wild
design, favouring the blues once again. However this time around, I did
know his personality. So I based the design more off of that rather than the palette.
Link in Breath of the Wild has lost his memory and while he was originally a more stoic individual,
because of his memory wipe, he became a little more goofy, lighthearted, and somewhat daring.
An outfit of choice can say a lot about a character, so keeping that character's
personality in mind while deciding what style of outfit they should have is crucial.
For Link, I went with a sportier outfit. He's a royal knight, so I'd expect him to want to have
more practical clothing for physical activity. I also kept in mind the fact that he climbs
practically anything in-game, so something a little more loose fitting and easy to climb in also made
the most sense. I figured the sleeves of a hoodie would get in the way as well, so I chopped them off.
How you draw a hoodie depends on the material the hoodie is made out of. For athletic hoodies, they'll
lie flatter across the shoulders and have thinner folds because the material is most likely thin.
For warmer hoodies, the hood won't be able to lie as flat because of the thicker fabric.
But remember that all hoods will fall around the shoulders, almost like an accordion.
I cheated a little with James since he's part of the Pokemon anime,
not the game. But oh well, stream's over now anyway. James has an intense and dramatic
personality, so I decided to illustrate him in a similarly intense and dramatic outfit and pose.
James would wear anything from a cameraman's outfit, to a tour guide's outfit, to a huge
frilly ball gown. So I figured that something similar to a male salsa outfit would suffice.
I'm glad I chose this though, because it really shows how different fabrics
can affect how you draw your clothes. With this outfit in particular, it was a little
more skin tight and shiny. Thus, it'll have far thinner creases and concentrated highlights.
Always keep your fabrics in mind when drawing clothes, because they'll all behave differently! In
contrast to the shiny and tight bodysuit, the sash across his body is far more loose and freeform.
This gave the outfit a different bit of dimension in contrast to the tighter fitting bodysuit.
Leon, Pokemon Sword and Shield's champion, was a nice and simple finisher for this stream.
Not only have I played this game, but I lurk around the community. He'd already come from a game that
had a fairly modern setting, but his outfit was a little out of line for something you'd see a
modern person wearing. In this case, I decided to work with the fandom's idea of Leon rather than
what the game actually presented to him. The fandom somewhat exaggerated his clutz-like personality
while simultaneously presenting him as a prince charming of sorts -- practically idealizing him.
So, because I was already kind of going with the fall vibes with Vent, I decided to go for
a similarly fall-vibey outfit for Leon as well. As I mentioned with the past three characters, your fabrics
are what's most important for drawing your clothing folds! With a jacket like Leon's, the
fabric is most likely far stiffer like a suit. Your folds would be drawn more angular to match
the stiffness of the fabric, rather than with the rounded edges of Venti's oversized sweater.
If you want to watch this drawing in real time, check out our live stream replay -- link in the
description below. I hope these tips can help you the next time you design and draw some outfits!
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If you enjoyed this video, here's a couple other videos you can check out next.