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hi this is Brooks with character design Forge I've gotten a lot of comments from you guys recently regarding characters closing one commenter in particular was frustrated that it seems like they only ever know how to draw t-shirts and hoodies for their characters well a character's clothing is like an extension of the character design itself and it's not only a good way to show off the character's personality but it gives you a great opportunity to use interesting shape language I'm splitting this video up into four segments which you can follow along with there at the bottom of your screen we're starting higher up with the sort of ideas that go with storytelling and personality when it comes to a character's clothing and then we're working our way down towards sort of the nitty-gritty technical details when it comes to drawing clothing when it comes to personality clothing can tell you a lot about a person we tend to use clothing as a means of self-expression and so whether or not someone is interested in showing or expressing themselves through their clothing it shows so the sort of obvious thing that comes to mind is that someone who's wearing very loud and vibrant maybe colorful clothing tends to have a personality that's more bombastic and outgoing than say someone who's wearing very muted colors or baggy clothing as a very generalized sliding scale we could perhaps say that someone who is wearing loose or ill-fitting clothing perhaps doesn't have a very good body image or maybe they're not very confident in themselves but as you kind of slide up that scale with a trim well fitting clothing perhaps tight or too tight clothing you might say that someone is very confident in their appearance or in themselves overall or perhaps are overconfident so that's a good storytelling area that you might be able to use where someone perhaps learns to esteem themselves a little bit or perhaps learns a bit of modesty you can also use the fit of the clothing to show how capable a character is in the role that they're in so for an example here's a little personal story of mine when I was like 12 years old or so I started working in my dad's shop and I would wear the same shirt that was meant for an adult but of Cour it was huge on me and ever since that point I've kind of had this weird quirk about wearing clothing that's maybe a size bigger on me or looser baggy especially when I'm working because it feels like oh you're just the boss's son or you're like a kid playing dress-up instead of someone who is capable or qualified to be doing the work that you're doing now I don't know if that makes any sense at all or if it's just a weird crazy quirk of mine but I ended up adapting this element into a story with this character named parcel so parcel is just getting this new job that she really needs but her employee gives her a uniform that's just way too big and the problem is they don't really care about getting her one that fits because they don't think she's going to make it so parcel who would actually much rather be designing costumes at the theater is really determined to keep this job and so she ends up modifying the uniform herself okay so on to some visual aspects of clothing clothing is often highly dependent on the setting or era that your character is in even sci-fi and fantasy worlds have very distinctive looks for clothing as is the case with a lot of things in art reference is going to be your friend when it comes to finding clothing for your characters the resource that a lot of artists use for reference that I like to use for finding clothing for characters is actually Pinterest so you can add just a few keywords to the search bar and then the finding the clothing that you're looking for and maybe some photos of people wearing that clothing which can be really useful clothing more so than a lot of elements can be very telling as to what era your story is taking place in and this is because fashion tends to change a lot between different eras if your story is contemporary maybe avoid giving your character's clothing that's too trendy or at least weigh the consequences of what your story will look like in a few years time maybe it might look dated depending on what it is you choose to have them wear and if you feel like you're only giving your characters t-shirts and hoodies to wear maybe try looking for some reference like on Pinterest or better yet go to a public area like a coffee shop or a mall and see what people are wearing it's time for a big old list of things at least I could come up with that are alternatives to just t-shirts and hoodies there's button-down shirts sweaters flannel and plaid layering light jackets tank tops turtlenecks v-necks collared shirts vests scarves overall suspenders jewelry thin or thick belt not to mention all of the different materials and colors and patterns that your clothing can have moving on to the shapes of your characters drawing this is a really good opportunity to utilize some shape language in your characters clothing so before I've talked about how round square and triangle shapes can inform you about a character in my shape language videos and so using the same thing with their clothing can be interesting as well for example a big diagonal strap down the torso of a character can kind of break up your character into segments perhaps make them look a little more dynamic and add some visual interest I think it's smart in this case if you want to change the shape of your character's clothing over top of them to perhaps give them a little bit heavier clothing like a jacket or coat that way your character's clothes aren't just a thin layer over top of them like a t-shirt is just some cool examples I'll show you this one from the artist gracefully or rargh I'll on Twitter she has a really good sense for movement and animation but I also love the use of clothes on this character of hers there's a lot of variation between like tighter fitting material near the knee but you can also feel the weight of that jacket as it moves around a lot of blobby shapes - the looser material and it just adds a lot of interest another example almost a similar art style this is the cast of Voltron legendary defender outside of their uniforms and it does a really good job of complementing each character's personality so Shiro is the leader there on the left and he has very segmented sleeves and the high collar Keith in the red has a jacket that's loose-fitting but also terminates higher than his waist so think about the opportunities for a cool pose that a jacket like that would have if it had pockets in it and the character's arms were bent high up dressed in them I guess I'm just really into giving characters cool jackets now in all of these designs there's no one big plain article of clothing instead it's broken up with some really interesting shapes so try and incorporate that into your characters clothes also play with the idea of asymmetrical design with your character so that diagonal line that I was talking about is a good start but also adding some things to one side of the character and not the other another good opportunity for visual interest but you might be saying how do you even draw clothes on characters well here are a few practical technical tips for drawing clothing the main thing you're going to want to avoid is making your characters look like paper dolls and this is where your clothes look like they were just laid flat on top of your character we want to think about the thickness and material of your clothing and then remember that it's largely made up of cylinders and tubes that you're laying on top of people who are in motion so in cloth bends it creates folds and wrinkles so if we bend our cylinder we see that there's some bunching here while the front is stretching with some clothes you might even have a little bit of bunching at the back of the knee naturally to accommodate that flexibility so make sure that when your character is posed that the cloth isn't just magically adapting to the pose it's putting up a little bit of a fight it's being shaped and folded and wrinkled in order to draw wrinkles I recommend to you to just study real cloths of the way that it drapes over a person but you're going to be looking for places where the cloth is being bunched together or being pulled we can generally define wrinkles with curved and jagged lines depending on the intensity of the fold you also need to take into account the material of your clothing so for example silk is a very fine thread that's stitched very lightly so when it moves it will adapt a lot more smoothly than a thick material like a burlap or a denim which are thick materials with coarser stitching these materials might tend to wrinkle more because they're resisting movement a little bit more it's up to you to study these things and just practice drawing them when it comes to where the cloth meets your character in places like the neck the cuffs at the wrists the knees the ankles the midriff you can avoid making your character look like a paper doll by wrapping and cuffing responsibly so what we mean by that well since this is a cylinder we want to rap the cuff or collar around these places and depending on where you're looking at them from in perspective this line will be curved up toward us or away from us looking at a sort of cross-section of a wrist here let's say we want our character to wear a long sleeve shirt and then a button-down shirt that's also got long sleeves over top of it so notice how the clothes tend to have this hem where the cloth folds back on itself and is stitched in place like this you can play around with the thickness of this cloth but you might try to treat this cuff almost like a doughnut or a ring around the wrist you could have a piece of clothing that balloons out in the middle of the arm or leg and then cuffs back tight or you could have an outward paper where the cuff is a lot larger and the material bells out really try to add some variety to your character clothing vocabulary once again a fairly massive video a lot of things to cover but I hope that this was helpful for you I'm making new videos every week at character design forge subscribing on youtube lets you know when new videos are made available also clicking the little bell icon next to the subscribe button actually tells you when I put a new video up it's a very strange system I make these videos and put them out there for you for free but if you appreciate what I'm making and you're able to please consider backing me on patreon over there on patreon there's even more videos exclusive for patreon backers and that's where I tend to share artwork that I'm making long before I share it publicly my course learned character design at learn character design calm that is a comprehensive character design curriculum my follow up course called designing game characters is a little bit of an addendum to that original learn character design course you'll be able to get it standalone but existing learn character design students will get it absolutely for free thank you for watching and have fun creating [Music]