Visual Guide: Tips On Designing Your Character

After reading the How to Create an OC page, you’ve got yourself a character in terms of personality and backstory. But what about when it comes to deciding on their clothes? You may find yourself being unable to put a finger on your character’s fashion taste, so this tutorial is the one for you. Here, we'll be seperating this into the following sections:

Canon
In this section, we'll be talking about some of the "rules" Mattel seems to be using during their process of designing their characters.

One of these is a color scheme rule to define a character's alliance. Royals tend to be defined by bright but unsaturated colors; Rebels are defined with purple and pastel colors (saturated colors). For example: Royals we have Blondie Lockes are with vivid indigo, Ashlynn with copper; Rebels we have Cedar with pastel purple, Cupid with pastel pink, Poppy with purple. – Note that some characters don't abide by this rule. – For example, Cerise Hood does not have purple as a major color, neither does Hunter Huntsman, who has no purple or pastel at all (although this could be due to the gender roles than play into colour choice). – Also note that this rule seemed to have lost effect begining the release of the latest Signature dolls (Rosabella, Faybelle, Bunny and Darling).

The doll lines have also been shown to have their specific requirements. For example, in Spring Unsprung, all the designs call for black prints on a white background. In Way Too Wonderland, each character must have at least one color that is not part of their typical color color scheme.

Historical Inspiration
As we all know, fairy tales are meant to be set in the past, so it’s good idea to take a look back in time.

For starters, here are notable time periods in history that are greatly utilized in fairytale illustrations: the medieval times, the renaissance, the 18th and the early 19th century. Stories are paired according to their themes and which time periods they were popularly discussed. For example, knights, dragons and witches are associated with the medieval times, sailors and pirates range from the late 17th century to the early 19th century.

As most people don’t pay much attention into the acurracy of the depictions, you can “cheat” and also take elements from other time periods other than the main one you’ve chosen, just as long as it makes sense. It’s recommended the periods are relatively close, meaning not much has changed between them, as well as focus on a specific theme.

Additionally, pay attention to your character’s social class. This has a significant effect on what they can wear and not. It’s not just what they can afford, but in some past societies, there are certain items of clothing in which members of the lower classes were forbidden from wearing. For example, purple was exclusive to the Roman emperor and senates, Aztec commoners were not allowed to wear any garments not made from maguey cactus fabric.

Aesthetic
One of the major movements amongst teenagers recently is the “aesthetic” movement. This compromises of teenagers and young adults in particular trying to find a mood or atmosphere that describes how they are or how they feel. Aesthetic is often used in regards to clothing.

Raven Queen seems to like feathers a lot, and she’s shown to work feathers in her clothing. That’s a perfect example! If your OC is fond of something, they would probably love to express themselves by putting the thing in their clothes.

If your OC is a funny kind of person, maybe they’ll wear shirts with jokes on them, or wacky/out-there/novelty-items. If your OC is stern and serious, maybe they like to wear blazers and blouses and maybe even bowties.

Subculture
How your OC dresses might relate to a certain subculture they belong in!

Prevalent subcultures amongst teenagers these days are grunge, emo, punk, pastel, and casual.

For example, maybe your OC likes to hang out with punks, where they enjoy disregarding societial conventions. So rather than wearing the poofy dresses of princesses, the varsity jackets of princes or whatever sort of outfits are deemed “appropriate” for their social class, they might dress a little more unconventionally. In canon, this can be shown by Apple, who dresses in the glamour of royalty, in contrast to Darling, who, while still gorgeous, wears armour.

How to determine this? A good way to start is working out what sort of people your OC likes to hang out with. If their squad tends to be more popular, look into movements in modern fashion. If they hang out with those deemed unconventional, look into alternative fashion.

Outside references
Sometimes, there are some hidden references based on a character’s theme are made. For example, in Through The Woods, C.A Cupid wears a beret. A beret is commercially associated with France and the capital of France is Paris, aka The City Of Love.

Your design can allude to destinations, scientific discoveries, historical figures...and amongst other stuff in real life.