Dressing Up Advice

[KG Christopher]

Hi,

I just want to see if anyone can help.

I am trying to keep track of various characters, about 20 lets say. Some are children, some adults, some bad, some good, some tall, some thin, some stupid, some handsome etc....

I have been trying different strategies, like keeping a spreadsheet, cross referencing character on y axis against attributle on x axix (hair colour, height, clothes).

I am using this, but find it hard to visualise the character, what I was wondering was this...

Is there some type of character drawing stuff online I could use? like a childs basic body that you can add clothes too, change the colour of hair, height, etc...

My boy used to have a Nintendo WII and you could make avatars that way....

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Bluma Bezbroda]

Ok, that's going to be really silly, but there are "dress up" games online- there are very infantile and meant for little girls, though (but for free). When I typed "create your own character" into google there were also a lot of results, all of them free demos. Maybe that would help?

I just observe people on the streets to get a better idea about how my character could look like, but with 20 of them I can imagine it's not the easiest choice...

Good luck!

 

[KG Christopher]

Thanks Bluma,

Yes, probably not a good idea for a 52 year old man searching for 'dressing up games' online, you never know how in the future, I may be like Smith, portrayed in some dystopian future, like 1984 confessing to ... 'I searched on line for children dressing up'

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Eeeekkkk! But we'll vouch for you. Maybe.

 

[Bluma Bezbroda]

@KG Christopher bet you would'nt be the first OR last

 

[Alistair Roberts]

Eeeekkkk! But we'll vouch for you. Maybe.

Absolutely, for a fee...

 

[Emurelda]

It depends what you are searching for. For an illustrator I worked with recently, I searched for 'parkour kid' and copied the pics for reference. Maybe use the action your character is doing as a search and keep a record of them for the file. Clothes fit a function, activity and depend on the era. So searching within the context of that activity gives a more accurate dress sense for a character.

Not an all-in-one place to find your dressed-up characters but you might have to just put it together manually in your own reference file. I use Scrivener to add any images for notes.

 

[KG Christopher]

I suppose what I am after is some kind of clothing design stuff. My characters live in an alternative world, and there clothes are a bit alternative. I did a search as Bluma suggested, but I haven't found anything suitable yet.

Is there some sort of 'fashion designer' stuff I could use .. I shall have another look, thanks for the comments.

 

[Sea-shore]

Hi,

I just want to see if anyone can help.

I am trying to keep track of various characters, about 20 lets say. Some are children, some adults, some bad, some good, some tall, some thin, some stupid, some handsome etc....

I have been trying different strategies, like keeping a spreadsheet, cross referencing character on y axis against attributle on x axix (hair colour, height, clothes).

I am using this, but find it hard to visualise the character, what I was wondering was this...

Is there some type of character drawing stuff online I could use? like a childs basic body that you can add clothes too, change the colour of hair, height, etc...

My boy used to have a Nintendo WII and you could make avatars that way....

Any help would be appreciated.

I usually do a coloured sketch-up of a character's face and body, with notes describing their clothes, physical appearance and also any TV/film characters they may resemble or share similar features with e.g. boy could have brown hair and eyes and look like boy character in the Sixth Sense - clothes: baggy skater boy style etc.

You'll need to spend time doing 20 of these, but after that you have a physical reference in hand and can easily scribble extra notes and make adjustments. I think it would take the same time to do these on-line but there are no limits except for the range of colours of your felt tips, and perhaps your drawing skills, though no one else need to see them, so doesn't matter.

 

[J. Rook]

If I had to make my way through this problem I think I would turn to notebook and textas and have post-it stickers for cross-referencing. I'm not too strong in the area of visual imagination. But it's an interesting problem.

 

[Boopadoo]

I "cast" my characters as if I'm writing a movie or TV show, giving real actors the role as I develop it. Then when I start writing, I not only have a mental visual, but I can hear their voice in my head speaking my dialogue. It sounds weird, but it really helps me flesh them out and nail down both descriptions and personalities. Even with non-human characters, I cast the voice-over actor as if it were CGI or animation, and draw a sketch for the visual.

I'm weird like that, but it's what works for me.

 

[Jason Byrne]

I "cast" my characters as if I'm writing a movie or TV show, giving real actors the role as I develop it. Then when I start writing, I not only have a mental visual, but I can hear their voice in my head speaking my dialogue. It sounds weird, but it really helps me flesh them out and nail down both descriptions and personalities. Even with non-human characters, I cast the voice-over actor as if it were CGI or animation, and draw a sketch for the visual.

I'm weird like that, but it's what works for me.

Yes! This is exactly what I was going to say. In fact, I created a thread way back for people to post casting choices for their book characters. There have only been a couple times I've created a character with an actor in mind. Usually this is just for fun — to make myself feel more legitimized, in the same way I create soundtracks for the book as well. But this is exactly what I would I would try. It's easier to search for "kind Arabic actor" and pick out Ahmed Helmy than to try to tweak an online character generator to any degree:


I try to pick out the right actor, and then search for many pictures of that actor and find two in particular that capture just the right demeanor.

 

[Jason Byrne]

Here are a few out of the 80 or so characters I've cast that way:
(<-- protagonist)


For those of you that have read the first chapter or two of The First Vision, just imagine how well Jared Leto could pull off Alyn!

 

[Jason Byrne]

Just for fun, here's another handful, just to show the diversity of the method:
(<-- vampire)


That's Dragoş Bucur as Seneslav cel Rau, a vampire who's lines are all in Romanian. I always try to cast a role with an actor that is actually from the setting of the book. Serbian actor for a Serbian character, Danish, Egyptian, etc.

 

[Alistair Roberts]

Ok, well I've done this for my new series, well the two main characters anyway. I picked Anna Torv to play Wendy and Aaron Pederson to play Jarrah

 

[Jason Byrne]

Is this your murder mystery, or your Arthurian legend series? Because I could see these two very much at home in either...

 

[KG Christopher]

So just an update on how i have achieved this.

1. I have a spreadsheet with my 20 plus characters, and common attributes (age,height,hair,eyes,costume,guild,characteristics....and a few others.) Then, taking @Sea-shore advice, I have a pad that I can sketch the characters into. My children are helping in the process also, but this way its' a bit more formal.

It was ok when my WIP was < 10,000 words, but now its over 40,000 (yeah) and it was starting to get a pain in cross referencing back and forward.

And, following on... My main Protagonist (Rosa) should look a bit like Penelope Cruz

And my main adult Antagonist (Nacho) will look a bit like Rick Mayal as Alan B'stard

 

[KG Christopher]

Pics of the two..

 

[Alistair Roberts]

@Jason Byrne the murder mystery series - Wendy Tuthill. Don't think there are many (zero) abo's in 16th century Britain, although with time travel....

 

[Chase Gamwell]

You could always buy a game with a powerful character editor. There are plenty of relatively cheap games out there that have something like that included. If you're interested in the face only, Bethesda is the best in the business at making character creator software for faces. Look into Skyrim or Fallout 4 - either of those may help. If you want a whole body, The Sims is always a safe bet. it lets you customize facial attributes as well as body and clothes. You're creations can also be saved as a "family" which you could then name after a work.

Kind of a roundabout way of doing things, but both of these methods could potentially work if you need to visualize.

Personally, I played DnD a lot when I was younger, so all I do to "visualize" my characters is write an extensive outline on each. Once that's done, the characters usually coalesce fairly easily in my mind.

 

[Jason Byrne]

@Jason Byrne the murder mystery series - Wendy Tuthill. Don't think there are many (zero) abo's in 16th century Britain, although with time travel....

Abo — American Board of Ophthalmology?

 

[KG Christopher]

You could always buy a game with a powerful character editor. There are plenty of relatively cheap games out there that have something like that included. If you're interested in the face only, Bethesda is the best in the business at making character creator software for faces. Look into Skyrim or Fallout 4 - either of those may help. If you want a whole body, The Sims is always a safe bet. it lets you customize facial attributes as well as body and clothes. You're creations can also be saved as a "family" which you could then name after a work.

Kind of a roundabout way of doing things, but both of these methods could potentially work if you need to visualize.

Personally, I played DnD a lot when I was younger, so all I do to "visualize" my characters is write an extensive outline on each. Once that's done, the characters usually coalesce fairly easily in my mind.

I actually did try this on our WII and PS4, but its pretty much confined to the framework, not ideal for printing off, inserting in a document.

 

[Jason Byrne]

You could always buy a game with a powerful character editor. There are plenty of relatively cheap games out there that have something like that included. If you're interested in the face only, Bethesda is the best in the business at making character creator software for faces. Look into Skyrim or Fallout 4 - either of those may help. If you want a whole body, The Sims is always a safe bet. it lets you customize facial attributes as well as body and clothes. You're creations can also be saved as a "family" which you could then name after a work.

Kind of a roundabout way of doing things, but both of these methods could potentially work if you need to visualize.

Personally, I played DnD a lot when I was younger, so all I do to "visualize" my characters is write an extensive outline on each. Once that's done, the characters usually coalesce fairly easily in my mind.

That's true — Oblivion came to mind for me because that's where I left off. I tried Sims for that around maybe 2001-ish, but it was too cartoony.

 

[Alistair Roberts]

@Jason Byrne too funny. Sorry Abo, is Aussie slang/abbreviation for Aborigines.

 

[Jason Byrne]

@Jason Byrne too funny. Sorry Abo, is Aussie slang/abbreviation for Aborigines.

Oh! Well that makes more sense. Yeah, you're probably right about that, then...
Though it would certainly be noteworthy if there was!