Tag: clothing

Relative practicality

Posted on March 14, 2022 by Cal

when you are not bound by the practical considerations of manual labor and movement, things get weird pretty fast.

I find that in history the choices of the wealthy or powerful pretty much revolve around “what is impossible for the poor” to do. For example, in many times and cultures, being overweight was/is a sign of wealth and status because you can afford to eat well. In today’s western world, cheap unhealthy food is so readily available that many poor people are actually overweight. It actually takes more time and effort to avoid poor eating habits and physical lethargy. Working Joe may not have time to go to the gym. The amount of sun tan one has is a similar situation, where in ancient days you were wealthy if you could afford to sit inside and have your peons farm for you (or whatever) in order to flaunt your paleness. Today since so many work indoors at office jobs or what have you, it almost is the opposite situation where you are only tan if you specifically have the time to go outside. Of course these are generalizations, but I think there is still truth to them. In my experience it is consistent with human nature.

And as most people do not prefer hard manual labor, those undesirable jobs are often the jobs that the undesirables get. The point being, the wealthy are not subject to as many limitations as the poor. Since human nature says that the grass is always greener and that value is determined by circumstance, sometimes the only factor in what the wealthy do is what the poor cannot.

point in case: you would not want to wear any of these if you are feeding the pigs or have to chop a tree. Even apart from the expense of their materials, the sheer range of movement that is limited would be a deal breaker if your priority is to do your job. still fun to draw nonetheless.

but, since the grass is still always greener, the poor often try to emulate what the wealthy do, causing a silly cycle. People are people wherever you go.

We can take it further

Posted on February 27, 2022 by Cal

some of these had specific design goals in mind, but most are just experimentation to see what I like and what I could potentially use. the colors are interesting, but I need to constantly keep in mind what they will look like in monochrome. silhouette and shape tend to play more to not only my strengths but the comic’s strengths more than patterns and colors. patterns especially can get really tedious for me (learn from toriyama and his regrets with those spots on cell’s design! goodness, what a pain). part of me is interested to see some real wild colors and patterns in scifi work, for the sake of having some design notions that are more alien to our current sensibilities. not everything should be ‘cool’. it’s the same principle why marketing is hesitant to be authentic to, say, some historical hairstyles. I say go for it. depending on your design goals, it is often more prudent to make something strange or alien than something cool. i think that is a huge reason why a lot of scifi design also feels so neutered and tame, because many products catering to those sensibilities often ends up forcing a homogeneous result (not to mention that it is difficult to inspire wonder with the familiar).

a few of these designs will most likely show up again in some form in the future. I won’t elaborate, but I am looking forward to what it entails. I still think i can take them much further 😉

An anachronistic (?) choice of head coverings

Posted on September 18, 2021 by Cal

i’m cool making style choices that might seem anachronistic to us. turns out golf visors would be perfect for antelope ears. even if i doubt they would be familiar with a good 18 holes of the king’s game

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there’s no reason that a baseball cap in our own history couldn’t have been invented way before it was. someone of a completely alien culture would decorate a cap much differently than us I’m sure.

Rene outfittery snazzle bedazzle

Posted on July 20, 2021 by Cal

doing some other art stuff for jobs in real life so haven’t had too much focus for the comic as of late. still gonna be slow going. if only we had some snappy clothes to make the wait less painful—-

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mostly made up designs again but of course have some elements that I stole from other designs I liked. these outfits are ideas for the Renes, the powerful neighboring nation that is attacking Allano at this point of the story. trying to make them their own thing but there are some elements of deco and the byzantines thrown in there among others. some of these designs may be a bit too modern for what I’ll end up using but I have a plan to use them later 🙂

these are clothes worn by rich people. people who do manual labor could neither afford nor would want to deal with getting these dirty. certain colors and patterns were much more difficult and time consuming to create before machine production.