Fun Tip to Draw Anime Costumes

By Rick Feathers

This is a tip especially fun for the girls drawing Shoujo, which is anime and manga intended for the girls. Outfit designs are endless when it comes to anime and their creators. Young girls today have a detailed imagination that exceeds most famous fashion designers.

Here is the fun tip.

Call your anime girlfriends up and invite them over for the evening or for a few hours after school. If some of them hesitate, just tell them that they will get to dress up like anime characters. Sounds like fun already? Of course, it does! Dressing up and putting on all kinds of clothes and makeup appeals to most every teenager girl.

Tell everyone who comes to bring clothes to dress up in. They can bring any clothes, scarves, shoes, hats, and other accessories that they wish. And they don’t have to limit themselves to just their clothes. If get permission to borrow from other family member, that’s great, too.

Next, buy some inexpensive disposable cameras at local department store because you will want to take pictures of all the costume ideas you and your friends will come up with. Or if you have your own digital camera, this is even better because you can add color and enhancements to the pictures with your drawing software packages. Have a pad of paper to take notes because this is also a brainstorming session.

Ask mom and all the other younger ladies at heart to join in the fun, also. The more people you get, the more creative clothes will be available to creating your collection of anime outfits.

Now you are ready to begin. It may get a little messy with clothes flying here and there, draped and hung on every corner of the room. But this can be a good thing because seeing one piece of clothing next to another will spark a new idea that may perhaps be the very outfit you are looking for.

Start by observing the clothes you are wearing now and move on from there by adding mismatch colors, a hat, or glasses. Hold items, move around in different poses, and make funny faces. Then move on to changing outfits. Make something out of paper to wear, go in dad’s closet (with his permission, of course) and put on some of his clothing.

When you run out of film, paper, or you are just plain exhausted from all the fun and laughing, take time to look at the photos and see the results. You will be awestruck by all the ideas for new anime clothing and costumes you will have. Then begin to study and sketch how the clothes folds in certain areas, how the gatherings and waves form on various poses, how oversize outfits bunch up, and the different colors that work together.

Enjoy the anime costume party and let the creativity flow freely.