Costume/Clothing Design.: Where to Begin

oXYnary

A weak area I have been told Im lacking is in costume design since modern character artist need this skill to play dress up with their characters. Even offer different dress on the same base model (especially RPG/MMO). What have you all done to learn this skill? Take a theatrical costume design class? Study sewing patterns? Where should I begin on this? Linky's?

Rick Stirling

Thats the job of concept artists.

If it's modern day, just research it.

Ninjas

A couple good links were recently posted in the reference thread. The main things I would do is look at real military gear, armor and clthes and extrapolate from there.

rooster

when I'm trying to think of ideas, often photos of fashion shoots, clothing catalogues etc are a good source of inspiration.. maybe find a few visual ideas you like and mash them up into one look

Marine

take something that's functional and make it impossible to wear.
if it's a jacket, make it twelve feet long. add belts and pouches everywhere, add belts to pouches if you want to be daring.
no one wears plain coloured clothes, add stripes, circles, sea turtles, anything you want.
comfort doesn't matter, everyone in game land is a masochist, so give them 9 inch heels that taper to a point, 8 inch heels if they're male.
if it's a woman, they must have their tits on show, and they must have implants, because implants are natures body armour.
clothes that fit are pass

oXYnary

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Thats the job of concept artists/

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Hmmm.. Well.. Hmmm.. I admit the guy who told me was a designer, and not in the art department. (He tried calling over a animator about my modeling questions at first.. heh). This was with Flying Labs who is working on a MMOG 16th/17th century pirates game. So all characters in it had extravagant costumes (which really drew me).

I know Arenanet is set up the same way somewhat.

I assume still the character modeler needs to know how to build these so they can be placed untop or replace the mesh? I guess it depends on the engine. Any good historical series costume books someone can recommend (that show each stage of the dress for a time period (from undergarments to full)? Not just for military, but class dress as well. This is why I thought a theatrical costume design class was relevant?

ChaosEidolon

Check out www.style.com

They constantly update the site with shoots from new floor shows. Go the the couture section (ie: conceptual stuff) and check out the runway shows. My personal favs are Christian Dior and Jean Paul Gautier.

Also buy some design/fashion mags. No this does not make you gay. If someone looks at you weird, just say "im an artists" and you'll get the "Aaaaaaaaaaaaah ok".

It's an excuse for everything i swear.

Downsizer

Marine is'nt even kidding.

Borders has huge fashion magazines for about 12 bucks americana with all the latest and greatest. Gives you good ref. If you want to get technical look up some clothes patterns and see how they are sewn.

oXYnary

Dover to the rescue!

http://store.doverpublications.com/048623150x.html

Edit.. Sorta. It still doesnt give an idea of materials and how the clothes go on, nor multiple views. What do theater and hollywood people use to get this information?

Rick Stirling

concept artists

poopinmymouth

Hel-looks and style.com are both bookmarked now!

Oxy: Costume design has been around forever. There is no magical formula. It draws on all the same aspects that the rest of art does, composition, color theory, shapes, etc. Conceptart.org has a wealth of clothing design to absorb, as do these more couture sites.

I know when I go to design a costume, I like to think up a list of adjectives that I would want to describe the finished character. Then I set about trying to come up with a design that fulfills those aspects. I like to figure out the world the person lives in, what type of culture it is, and how much form over function the costume can afford to have and still be believable. Like others have suggested, I like to make a huge folder of inspirational images that I keep open while concepting. In the end, it's still about your creativity and sense of design/style.

Rick Stirling

The previous post was edited and not marked as edited. Originally it criticised me for posting the same information twice.

Yes, I did post already.

Sorry, have I been allocated a fucking quota?

He asked where 'modern character artist's get it, then he asked about 'theater and hollywood people'.

Ninjas

The guy can't tell animation from modeling and you listened to what he had to say? Come on! The guy is a complete dipshit. He probably thought you had to sew the fucking clothes and scan them in.

oXYnary

^^^^^I looked closer at his card.. Executive Producer. So he is quite removed.

Rick? I didn't disagree. Maybe I used the wrong idea. More we are the seamstresses than the designers. I just thought that knowing both sides would be of benefit. So you can make the cloth fold and texture right as you know whats underneath. It would be like being a character modeler without knowing anatomy.

Thanks for the links, though do any of you have experiences with those Dover books for non modern dress? Again especially that mentions what the materials are, and shows the stages of getting dressed.

Toomas

Materials you can figure out yourself, its the cut that matters.
You just have to find out what kind of materials and in which colours were available to whom and at what price.
Then you follow logically from there, like peasant dress is not made out of expensive material and most likely is of simple cut and practical.

kiril0t

I just picked up the costume book in question at borders the other day actually, and youre right it lacks in some things, like ...color and actual fabric. one suggestion i have is to treat it like a coloring book and make some photocopies of the pages and costumes youd like to focus on them play with some crayons and try out various things. Also take a trip to a fabric store, and feel the difrent fabrics to get a real idea of weight and, sliperiness, and shimeriness, and all of that, even Kmart has a fabric section, and as Toomas said you realy have to think criticaly of the historical time period, do some reaserch and see what was available, only if its important to the game,and if you want to devote time into it. Other than that, I think, its the asthetic people are going to care about so just make it look good and interesting, not everyone whos playing the game is an artist or fashion major. And even though some of you might not agree i think theres an importance as to wether hemp moves like hemp or hemp moves like silk.

>< sorry for the speling

SkullboX

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More we are the seamstresses than the designers. I just thought that knowing both sides would be of benefit. So you can make the cloth fold and texture right as you know whats underneath. It would be like being a character modeler without knowing anatomy.

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Spending a lot of time reading up on fabrics, cuts and the latest fashion isn't going to improve you significantly as a character modeler (which from as far as I understand is the goal of this post). Like Rick said, the design and knowledge on this subject are the job of the concept artist for as far as it's even relevant. Spent time properly conveying concepted characters, and making awesome looking models.

In any case, your folds and knowledge of fabrics will be destroyed by limited game animation and dynamics anyway...

oXYnary

A concept artist can't convey the final texture and with normal maps and with the levels of shader interplay, more so. Like silk versus burlap. That squarely falls into the lap of the modeler/texturer correct?

It wont help significantly, no. But knowing such with the ability to reflect in your characters can't hurt. Should we spend super amounts of time on this? No, as you say skull, work on cranking out good models. It is a minor point, but one where I thought it might be more relevant when trying to mimick 16th and 17th century dress as per to impress the above company.

But hey, since they are giving me the cold shoulder after trying to start a dialogue to show my interest. I guess I will just continue with the character goals I had initially.

Oh check your pm skull. Have a q thought you might know.

firestarter

I think you are leading yourself up the garden path with the `fashion` and `texture` leanings. Check out Falcoon`s stuff to see very successful costume design, that isn`t focused on the tiny details like material texture. If it`s game art you are talking about then `texture` would be last on the list to be concerned with. You should be able to learn `how to design`, to a certain degree, from just viewing people`s work.
http://falcoon.hp.infoseek.co.jp/gallery2.htm