How to choose clothes for a character - top tips

Clothes can tell you a lot about a character's profession, preferences and talents.

Not to mention basic things like their personality.

In general, clothing is a central element of design: to make it harmonious and interesting enough, we need to have a good understanding of the story we want to tell with it.

But it's not so bad if you don't know how to make the elements of a garment by hand. On our website you will find many variations for Daz Studio and Poser - completely free and without registration.

Read on and we will tell you how to put clothes together so that the character of your design or game project looks as harmonious as possible.

We will give you valuable tips!

Let's start from a distance

The first step is to decide on your design philosophy.

In other words, understand what environment your character will be in. Once you've decided on the setting (fantasy, sci-fi, retrofuturism, etc.), you can move on to other points.

For example, think about what kind of reaction you want the audience to have. What do you want them to feel or understand when they look at the character?

(Even if you're not planning to distribute your art, and you're just making it for yourself, this step should not be skipped - it will help you to evaluate concepts in a more objective and thoughtful way).

Next, you should think about the personality of your character (even if it's going to be some dummy character). Never forget that your character is your child.

And yes, you should keep in mind that people are drawn to personalities. Do you see yourself or someone you know in your characters?

If so, that's a very good thing. You can project their personalities onto the character (if it's appropriate, of course!) - that way you can start to get a better idea of what direction to take when creating designs.

Pick the right colours

All colours have meaning.

Choose wisely to give the right mood to your concepts and characters.

We usually interpret bright colours as happy and energetic, whereas darker colours hold some kind of mystery.

Red is the right choice for anger and passion.

And green, for example, has a huge connection with nature - it's just calming.

If you don't know which colour to choose for your character's clothes, try them all!

Try them all until you settle on one that works.

And yes: don't be afraid of the exotic. There's nothing wrong with making your character more colourful than usual by dressing him in colourful clothes - say, some Hawaiian shirt or colourful jeans!



Just a reminder that going beyond the norms not only helps to enhance your appearance, but also to make it more memorable.

Think about body language!

This point doesn't really apply directly to clothing, but it does apply to posing.

If you want your characters to be expressive, then knowledge of anatomy and body language is essential.

You also need to understand how a character expresses emotions through gestures and poses. References can be found anywhere: for example, you can study the play of actors in films, ask for help from friends or go to the field sketches.

It's also a good idea to look for photos of interesting poses or even experiment in front of the mirror yourself.

Add some contrast

When creating a character, you should always remember to add contrasting elements to your design.

Contrast can be anything: colours, shapes, objects.

You can (and in an ideal scenario, you should even) emphasise the personality of the characters. You can do this by combining different clothing elements in the design. For example, you can find a gloomy hat, but dilute it with slightly lighter trousers - if you pick a successful top, it will look amazing!