Clothes in Animation

S

Smiles4daCamera

New member
Howdy; I know that this thread is in the realm of the unorthodox, but I thought that it might permit us to have some interesting discussions. When you watch an animated program, how much do you care about what the characters are wearing? Most shows have characters who only wear one outfit, but I personally like the shows where characters have many outfits, such as The Weekenders. There are also some shows that are a balance of the two, like Brandy & Mr. Whiskers, which had the character mostly wear one outfit, but still wear many other outfits in different situations.

Clothes make the man, or so the saying goes, but is such true for animated programs? Would David Xanatos be so revered if he had the same personality but always wore bluejeans and a tanktop? Think about your favorite animated characters and ask yourself if you would treat them any differently if they had a different outfit. I’m really curious as to what people will say.
 
I'm sure this has been said before, but there are reasons why most cartoon characters rarely, if ever, change their clothes:

-Animation is a costly and time-consuming process. It's hard enough to produce animation as it is without the artists having to try and come up with a new wardrobe for your characters each episode, or especially for different scenes within a single episode. It's easier for animators to produces hundreds of drawings of just one outfit each time rather than having to animate a different suit every episode. I'm a cartoonist myself, and I'll be hog-tied if I ever thought I had to design 4 or 5 separate outfits for each of my each my characters to wear regularly. Also, given how long it takes for a cartoon to be produced, you run the risk of designing a 'trendy' outfit for your character that will look completely dated by the time your show makes it to the air.

-Also, in some case, a characters' clothes contribute to their overall design and appeal; it's part of what makes them memorable and recognizable. I mean, would Fred Flintstone be Fred Flintstone without his trademark orange leopard skin and blue tie? Can you imagine Charlie Brown tooling around town in a blue turtleneck instead of his yellow shirt with the jagged stripe down the center? Maybe it's just me, but it's just not that important to me for cartoons to constantly switch outfits. Is wearing the same thing everyday realistic? No, but since when do we look to cartoons for realism?
 
Thanks for the reply, chief, but I wasn’t asking about that. I apologize if I sound rude, but I wasn’t saying that every character should have more than one outfit, nor was I asking why they don’t have more than one outfit. If anything, the beginning of your second paragraph summarized the point of this thread. How important is clothing when it comes to animation? Would your favorite characters still be your favorite characters if they wore a different outfit than they had actually worn throughout their respective shows?
 
I'd say a slice-of-life show like As Told by Ginger or All Grown Up it doesn't matter as long as their style stays the same (like goth clothes, prep clothes, etc), but for heroes (like Superman or Batman) it does. Though usually the costume is part of the character (gadgets and what not)
 
There have been a few "girl" shows in which the main characters frequently change clothes. The title characters of Winx Club and Bratz being 2 examples. However, it should be noted that both shows were designed to sell dolls and doll accessories and these outfit changes were so the prepubescent girls these shows were aimed at would have a reason to have to keep going to the toy stores even after they've already purchased the original dolls. So in the cases of these shows, the different clothes was more of a toyetic decision than an artistic one.
 
Eh, Winx Club was made to cash in on W.I.T.C.H. and Harry Potter, not to sell dolls. And the Bratz show was made after the dolls were, not the other way around, as oppose to something like G1 or Beast Wars where the figures are all based on characters from the show.

I think girl shows have changing wardrobe just because girls tend to put more recognition in clothes than boys do. There's a lot of other girl shows that don't involve dolls or any merchendise where they have different outfits (like As Told by Ginger, and Totally Spies)
 
And both W.I.T.C.H. and Harry Potter have spawned many forms of merchandise. What's that sayin' to you? Sorry, but come on! You don't honestly believe that Winx Club wasn't created with selling dolls in mind, do you? Heck, there was even a magazine ad for the Mattel Winx Club line before the series even aired!

I'm not denying that the Bratz TV series came after the line of dolls was introduced, but surely you're not suggesting that the TV show didn't have selling more dolls and accessories in mind when it was produced. There's no way that someone could say that and keep a straight face. The Bratz characters were based off the doll line. That's a fact.
 
I apologize if I wasn?t being clear enough, as I can often fail to communicate my points clearly, but I?m trying to figure out just what impact clothes have on our recognition and appreciation of the characters. As I?ve said several times, if your favorite character had different clothes than you?re used to seeing them with, would you think of them any differently? As Silverstar said, outfits can be vital for some characters, but I?m trying to figure out just how vital outfits actually are. Cartoons are a visual medium, after all, and I believe great personalities and great spoken dialogue can sometimes fall second to how a character looks.
 
It depends on the particular character and the outfit, I suppose. Charlie Brown isn't the type of person to walk around wearing a black leather jacket and blue jeans a la The Fonz, and I can't imagine Jane Jetson wearing hot pants and spiked heels.
 
Sorry, but "chief"?? Right there, you sounded very rude, I've got to say. Look, I'm sorry that a majority of posters haven't participated in your thread, but there's no need to take your anger out on me. We can have a discussion without the snide name-calling, thanks.

And did I ever say that you wanted every cartoon character should have more than one outfit? No, I don't believe I did, so I'll thank you not to put words in my mouth. You mentioned in your initial post that you preferred shows like Weekenders in which the characters wear multiple outfits, and I listed the reasons why such shows are the exception, not the norm. That's all.

As listed above, the sameness of characters' clothing is very important in animation. For one thing, familiarity breeds notoriety; audiences have an easier time identifying characters when they wear an instantly recognizable costume. As I said previously, in many cases the outfit adds to the overall design. It's also less of a strain for the artists than to have to come up with new clothes for their characters to wear all the time. That's why most animated characters don't change their clothes much, or at all. As you yourself said, animation is a visual medium, and great personalities and dialogue are important indeed, but in a visual medium they often don't supersede design.
 
Perhaps not in your circles it isn't offensive, but among my family, friends and colleagues epithets such as "chief" are considered very condescending, and as such we don't use such idioms on each other unless we're deliberately trying to get under someone's skin. But hey, it could just be a regional or generational thing; different strokes for different folks and all that. But if you weren't trying to offend, then fine. I withdraw my previous remarks. I'm a crank, but I'm not unreasonable. :D

Getting back on-topic: Clothes are important to a degree, in the point Blackstar raised just now and Gryph raised a few posts above: a wardrobe change can be permitted provided that the alternate outfit is still appropriate to the character in question. For example: from time to time Shaggy Rogers of Scooby-Doo fame had undergone a change of clothes, from his usual green tattered T-shirt to a red one for some of his TV movies to the new clean-cut blue-shirt that he wears in Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get A Clue, but each time, the outfit is still what you'd expect Shaggy to wear: something loose and informal. If he were to suddenly shift to a black tux and tails, or a sporty cardigan and loafers, he wouldn't be Shaggy Rogers anymore.
 
It depends on the nature of the cartoon. In an action/drama cartoon that tries to tell a more serious story, variety in the clothing can work very well, in the same way aging your characters over time can work very well. But in a comedy type cartoon, changing outfits isn't really necessary at all.
 
>>
-Also, in some case, a characters' clothes are part of their overall design; it's part of what makes them memorable and recognizable. I mean, would Fred Flintstone be Fred Flintstone without his trademark orange leopard skin and blue tie? Can you imagine Charlie Brown tooling around town in a blue turtleneck instead of his yellow shirt with the jagged stripe down the center? Maybe it's just me, but it's just not that important to me for cartoons to constantly switch outfits. Is wearing the same thing everyday realistic? No, but since when do we look to cartoons for realism?
 
In the early days, you had features which allowed for costume changes and short subjects which tended to keep costumes pretty standard for recognition purposes from short to short.

Then you have the deliberate economy of tv production. Costume changes are a frequent cause of animation errors. I think we're seeing more exceptions with digital steps of production implemented but it still happens.
 
To attempt to answer the original question, I definitely think that changing a character's clothing will change the way you look at them. It's the kind of trick that is used all the time in live-action filmmaking, when clothing can be a subtle indicator of status, hierarchy, or mood. The most trivial case is Clark Kent vs. Superman -- changing the clothing definitely changes the way you're supposed to view the character. Superman the Animated Series even introduced a third wardrobe change for when Clark was home with Ma and Pa Kent -- civilian clothing without the glasses. That sent a message that was different from the blue-and-red tights and the suit-and-glasses. They also used a wardrobe change to make you think of Lex Luthor differently between Superman: The Animated Series and Justice League. In the former, he's always in a business suit, but in the latter, we get to see him in the suit, in power-armor for the "mad supervillain" phase, and at least once in a lab coat to indicate a "mad scientist" role. Putting a police officer character in kevlar and riot gear is a quick way to show that the situation is more serious than the norm (or, for comedy, that the cop is totally overreacting).

You're specifically talking about wardrobe changes for a single character, but I think some people are conflating that with giving different characters different outfits. That's really the only choice you have in an ensemble show like G.I. Joe, where the outfits of all the Joes were distinctive. You could argue whether the radically different outfits between Scarlett, Snake Eyes, and Grunt had any real function on-screen or made any sense given the military character of the team, but it definitely served to differentiate the characters from each other AND from the average Cobra soldier. It's a simple message being sent: the Joes are freedom, while the Cobras are conformity. They're all interchangable, while we're individuals. It can also work in reverse -- Avatar does this all the time, with character clothing often indicating which of the four nations a character is loyal to.

It's true that the "one outfit" trick in animation is largely to make it easier for different animators to stay on model. Thinking about that now, I wonder if that visual simplicity is one of the reasons why "serious" filmmakers will dismiss cartoons as somehow less worthy of attention than live-action film. The trick makes things easier to animate, but as a practice it also means that you're taking away or simplifying one of the filmmaker's tools. Maybe some people will think that making something less complex visually also corresponds to making it less complex thematically.

-- Ed
 
i remember the Disney show The weekender's..That show had the characters have multiple outfits. And What was so cool about it is that each character would have at least four tops and bottoms and in each episode they were rotated and mix matched. Sometimes one character would wear the same clothes in two mini episodes while the others would change their clothes. I thought this was great, it added realism to it. The only shows that really make characters change their clothes a lot are Shojo Anime series and some Shonen Anime.
 
John K was talking about his blog where he has difficulty with Animation Studios over seas. One of the main issues he had with them was he'd give them a layout drawn in his style and send it over to them to animate, but when he'd get it back it didn't look anything like he drew it. He'd ask them if they fallowed his layout, and they say yes but obviously they didn't because his drawing doesn't look the same (to his liking anyway). Turns out they were changing the drawing because it wasn't On Model. There's a good chance that if you don't give the character the different change of cloths in the model sheet, the animation studio thinks you messed up the drawing and they change what you drew for them (unless otherwise stated).

As an artists I find that the only reason to leave an outfit the way it is because you get used to drawing the same thing over and over again and making the outfit different can sometimes look bad on the character or give you difficulty drawing it over and over again. It's nice to be able to have a character that's flexible enough to look good in anything you put into it, but it's really all about time, (money might have something to do with it too because Time is Money but giving someone a jacket or tacking off a shirt shouldn't cost that much).
 
Aside from recognizability, the standard "costume" of characters is the design of the character which sustains its copyright. This is not to say that the characers lost their "exclusivity" when placed in other "costumes" as dictated by the story. When MICKEY MOUSE was "modernized, his costume changed in each cartoon to fit the situation. With the exception of the wartime shorts, and a few diversions such as his farmer outings with Chip and Dale, Donald Duck retained the sailor's blouse and cap, which changed from white to blue and remained that way since.:donald:
 
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