source.
Character Creation – Clothing
So, your character has a
body, a life and a personality. The thing is, they're still naked! Well,
this should solve their problem.
Basics
Before
we decide on their clothes, we need to figure out what they actually do
for a living. This is important because, apart from their personality,
this will decide the type of clothing your character will wear. For
example, a princess will wear a lot of fine dresses and have a lot of
jewellery whereas a peasant will have patched up clothes and little to
no jewellery. A business man will wear a suit to work whereas a person
working on a construction site will wear jeans, steel toed boots, a
shirt, a high vis. vest and a hard hat.
Basically, position in society and career will determine what your character usually wears.
How Personality Fits In
Appearance
is influenced by your personality, not the other way around. For
example, an outgoing person will more likely reveal more skin than a shy
person. A shy person will probably also wear baggy clothes and not want
to show off their figure as much as a confident person.
Note: Pale skinned people will also tend to cover up more than a darker skinned person to prevent sunburn.
Research
I
always find that, when it comes to clothes, there is always a lot of
research involved. There are many, many, many different types of
clothing around the world. Say you are looking for Police uniforms; look
for as many pictures as you can at different angles and research until
you can research no more. I usually stop after everything starts looking
the same. With the internet now available to most of the population
there is no excuse for not doing the research. Remember to always cross
reference the information, everywhere you look, information will be
slightly different. The information that shows up most often is usually
right.
Note: If you happen to be writing fanfiction, make
sure you look at the kinds of clothes that the canon characters wear,
just so they fit into that universe.
Choosing Your Clothes
Dressing
your character is one of the best parts of creating them because you
get to choose what they wear. Of course, it should be realistic and it
should fit with their personality. The career you have chosen for them
is also important. So, what do you want to choose? They could be dressed
in a country's traditional dress (e.g. kimono, dirndl, cheongsam, sari,
etc), they could be trying to fit into some kind of sub-culture (e.g.
Goth, steam punk, Lolita, etc), it could be historical dress (e.g.
Victorian, Edwardian, 1920's, medieval, etc), some kind of uniform
(police, army, air force, navy, school, etc) or it could be as simple as
a t-shirt and pants.
There are loads of different materials too.
Armour would be made out of a strong metal, like steel. A more
primitive culture might make armour out of bone and animal skin,
however, but it will never be as effective as metal for protection
against weapons. For normal, everyday clothes, materials like wool,
cotton, nylon, silk, leather, etc. could be used. Still, make sure it
fits with your character and your setting. (Some people don't like
materials like wool; it can be irritating to their skin. Your character
could be one of these kinds of people.)
To make your character
stand out a little bit, they could have embellishments such as lace or
buttons on their clothes. Remember to not overdo it. If you have to draw
your character all the time, less detail would be better.
A
character for the fantasy genre is usually dressed in medieval type
clothing. They could, however, be dressed in something modern. The only
place where clothing can't vary is historical fiction. If you are
creating a character to be placed in a specific era, their clothes need to match the time and place.
Jewellery
There
are lots of different types of jewellery. Again, giving your character
only a few items would be better. Also, jewellery doesn't have to be
special or magical in any kind of way, it can just be decoration. It
isn't something that is needed; a lot of people don't wear jewellery.
Jewellery
can be made out of many different things, most commonly gold and silver
with precious gems like rubies, emeralds and diamonds. Copper can be
used, but it will almost certainly turn whatever part of the body they
are resting on green (if you've ever worn a cheap, copper ring for a
long time, you'll know what I mean).
Piercings are a common form
of jewellery. Ears are commonly pierced, but so are many other parts of
the body. The navel, tongue, eyebrows, nose, and more can be pierced.
Remember, in modern times, these are acceptable for anyone to have, but
they wouldn't have been in civilised cultures in the past. If you have a
tribal character then it would be fine to have piercings on the face,
it probably wouldn't be unusual – but research is still important, make
sure you do it.
Conclusion
So, your character is
finally dressed. There are probably a few things to figure out though.
If they are going to have skills, they shouldn't have too many different
ones. If they are going to have magical abilities, then there is still
more to come. I hope this was helpful.
